John Richards

Good morning! Yes, it's a Friday and you're listening to The Morning Show with John Richards! Thanks so much for being here! -- "Everything about this song gets to me. The lyrics are perfect, and very classically Ben Gibbard. The visual he paints of the feeling of distance between two people is so beautiful, and yet so full of desperation and agony. And musically it’s gorgeous, the way it builds into this huge cathartic ending is so moving." Read this essay about the song "Transatlanticism": bit.ly -- Now, watch a live version: www.youtube.com

"Three Days" was written in 1986 about Xiola Blue’s visit to Los Angeles, where she came to attend her father’s funeral and stayed for three days with Perry Farrell and Casey Niccoli, experimenting with drugs and sex. -- The spoken-word bit performed by Perry Farrell at the beginning of this song has been debated for years, and will likely continue to be until an isolated recording of the song surfaces. Here's the current "best" transcription: janesaddiction.org

Rob Dickinson is now the CEO and founder of Singer Vehicle Design, a company that restores vintage Porsches.: bit.ly In an interview in the 90's, he said that this song was about an automobile, a 1968 Camaro in gloss black.

Enjoy an oral history of The Wrens' classic "The Meadowlands": bit.ly

See Kate Tempest's entire live performance in the KEXP studio in 2017: www.youtube.com -- "We're Sisyphus pushing his boulder... The kids are alright, but the kids will get older..." Read the lyrics to another one of Kate Tempest's fantastic poems: www.lyricsbox.com

“This Is America" is Childish Gambino's (aka Donald Glover) Grammy-winning exploration of trap music, gun violence, and America’s festering relationship with its long and bloody history on race. -- Do not miss this video! youtu.be

Vocalist Karl Hyde wrote the lyrics for "Born Slippy .NUXX" after a night drinking in Soho, London, hoping to capture the way a drunk "sees the world in fragments". The vocals were recorded in one take; when Hyde lost his place, he would sing the same line repeatedly, creating the line "lager, lager, lager, lager". Hyde, who was struggling with alcoholism, said he did not intend the song to be a "drinking anthem" but rather a "cry for help". He was disturbed when audience members raised their lager cans during performances.: bit.ly

"The Daptone Super Soul Revue LIVE at the Apollo" was performed and recorded over three nights in front of a sold-out crowd at The World Famous Apollo Theater in Harlem, NY in December 2014. -- " Featuring live sets from: Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Charles Bradley and his Extraordinaires, Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens, Antibalas, The Budos Band, Menahan Street Band, Saun & Starr, The Sugarman 3, as well as our em-cee, Binky Griptite. This album is lovingly dedicated to the memory of our dear friends Sharon, Charles, Naomi and Cliff.": bit.ly

This was written by Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, and Phil Spector. Greenwich and Barry were married from 1962-1965 but kept working together after their divorce. They were one of the most successful songwriting teams of the '60s, with a string of hits that included "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" and "Leader of the Pack." -- This was written specifically for Tina Turner to sing. Phil Spector made very dense recordings that required a strong vocalist to cut through, and he knew Turner and her flamethrower voice could handle it. -- Here's the original 1966 promo: www.youtube.com

Be sure to include this on your running playlist! -- On March 27, 2012, Pitchfork Media awarded the song "The House That Heaven Built" a Best New Music designation, with Pitchfork's Jenn Pelly calling the song "a rapturous head-banger, requiring only one, oft-repeated hook of clearheaded subversiveness: 'And if they try to slow you down/ Tell them all, to go to hell.'" bit.ly

My guy Stephen just said, "I really just want to go to KEXP and give all the DJs hugs." Can you send him a virtual hug, via song? He LOVES the band RIDE. Thank you ❤ Ann Marie in West Seattle -- Watch a performance by Ride for KEXP listeners from Seattle's Triple Door in 2019: www.youtube.com

John, it was a long week! How about Between the Eyes by Love Battery? Thanks, and good morning! -- Matt -- See Love Battery performing this song live in the KEXP studio in 2018: www.youtube.com

Hmmm..... "a musical tale of a man who loses his prized package while drunk at a party, only to find it later being hawked by a street vendor in New York’s East Village." -- Here's the...uh...oral history of this song: www.spin.com

"Touching yourself..."? Is there a theme here? --- “'Wet Dream" is a breakup song; it came about when one of my exes went through a stage of texting me after we’d broken up telling me that ‘he had a dream about me’." - Rhian Teasdale of Wet Leg. -- Watch the quite interesting lobster-filled video for 'Wet Dream': youtu.be. wetlegband.com

Ahhh....the Friday song. (Thank you, taped Henry!) KEXP is counting down the Top 90.3 Albums of 2021, as voted on by all of you! Vote for your Top 10 albums of the year, and then tune in on Friday, December 17th to see if your favorites make the list.: www.kexp.org

De La Soul member Trugoy the Dove added: "Originally, it was us trying to make sure we're saying we're not hippies. We were just being ourselves. People are now taking the song to be, 'OK, it's cool to be me and I don't have to be hard' - it wasn't really about saying that, even though the video came off like that.": www.youtube.com

Like all the songs on "Paul's Boutique," "Shake Your Rump" is a "sampling smorgasbord": hiphopgoldenage.com

The coolest Christmas song of all time almost didn’t happen. Kurtis Blow released the holiday track “Christmas Rappin’ ” in 1979, and the group worried about looking like copycats by releasing another. “In hip-hop culture, you can’t duplicate what’s already been done, so we weren’t sure about doing it,” says DMC.: nypost.com

Good morning! I live in Seattle, but, my wife Ryan moved to Mexico City for a work project and she'll be here for a couple of years. This morning, I said "ALEXAPLAYKEXP" and what a joy it was to hear your voice! Thanks! I'll be back in a few days but we'll still be listening to the same music. Can you play Ooh La La from Run The Jewels?-Ben Gracias! == They'll play the Tacoma Dome on Saturday, April 30th, 2022. -- The track is centered around a sample taken from Greg Nice (of Nice and Smooth)’s verse on the 1992 Gang Starr classic, “DWYCK,” while it also features record scratching from DJ Premier. -- Watch Run the Jewels perform "Ooh LA LA" live: www.youtube.com

Co-written by Brian Eno, this electronica-influenced track finds David Bowie in the grips of paranoia thanks to a guy named Jonny, whose propensity for violence and insatiable lust for material possessions frightens the singer. -- "It's not as truly hostile about Americans as say Born In The U.S.A.': it's merely sardonic," Bowie explained. "I was traveling in Java when its first McDonald's went up: it was like, 'for f--k's sake.' The invasion by any homogenized culture is so depressing, the erection of another Disney World in, say, Umbria, Italy, more so. It strangles the indigenous culture and narrows expression of life."

Mitski plays two sold-out shows at The Moore Theatre with CHAI on Wednesday & Thursday, March 9-10, 2022. "Throughout this new song, Mitski contemplates the knife—a metaphor for the systems that ensnare us, the expectations of others, our own standards—as if it were a cold object resting in her hands. Though her knife is capable of cruelty, it can carve out a reason to keep living in moments of deep despair.": pitchfork.com

Warpaint’s JennyLee is releasing the second single of her ‘Singles Club’, featuring A-side ‘Tickles’ - which was produced and mixed by Trentemøller - and B-Side ‘Heart Tax’. “I love, love, love collaborating with Trentemøller…he never ceases to amaze me!” JennyLee says of ‘Tickles’. “And more often than not, I usually like his version of the song better!”

"Kylie Minogue is the most charming and unassuming pop superstar of all....The performer who was dismissively dubbed ‘the singing budgie’ when she broke through with The Loco-Motion in the late 1980s is now a gold-plated icon whose first name alone stands for joyous dance-pop brilliance." Read a tribute to Australian's best-selling female artist who released her fifteenth album, "DISCO," last year: bbc.in -- Wanna dance? “We’re a million miles apart/In a thousand ways. Baby you can light up the dark/Like a solar-scape." We can transcend that distance. Watch Kylie Minogue and her dancers grooving to “Say Something” in front of an interstellar backdrop, with the pop singer sometimes delivering the track from atop a horse statue.: www.youtube.com

ABBA's first new music in 40 years (!!) was released last month! Someone who works in a record store in Sweden said that the Friday release day was the biggest sales day in well over a decade. -- This track was inspired by ABBA's Björn Ulvaeus' tour of Kilkenny, Ireland: bit.ly

The song was produced by Arcade Fire along with Steve Mackey, who is best known for playing bass guitar in the band Pulp and Thomas Bangalter, whose day job was as one-half of the French house music duo Daft Punk. Bangalter also played synthesizer on the track. -- Also, that's Patrick Bebey playing the pan flute-his part is based on the flute in "The Coffee Cola Song" by his father, the late Cameroonian artist Francis Bebey.

"Out of Time: The Material Issue Story" is a feature music documentary that covers the biography of the band Material Issue. The film examines the tragic story of a rock band on the cusp of superstardom cut short by front man Jim Ellison’s suicide.: bit.ly -- The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 800-273-8255.

Material Issue had an excellent cover of this song. -- Someone wrote, "I have determined that it is an objective fact that Kim... is one of the top ten greatest pop songs in the history of the Universe." --- Joe Ross tells the actual story of Kim the Waitress here: www.angelfire.com --- Watch a live version from Seattle's Silver Platters Records: www.youtube.com

You can purchase this great song at the Red's Recovery Room Bandcamp page: dannypearson.bandcamp.com

"And when I caught your eye.. I saw you break into a grin.. It feels so good feelin' good again..." When Robert Earl Keen was inducted into The Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas, he told the story behind this wonderful song. He said, "Kathleen, the love interest in the story coming down the stairs, is my wife because occasionally she would wake up and figure, oh he’s not here, he must be at Arkey Blue’s Silver Dollar Saloon. And she would come down and see me and we would all sit and drink. And sometimes Arkey would lock the door and we would keep going after hours and go as long as we wanted to.”: bit.ly

In this unsettling album track from Tori Amos' second solo album, the alt-rock songstress - singing from the perspective of a waitress - calmly explains how she'd like to murder her co-worker. "If I did it fast, you know, that's an act of kindness," she reasons. Even more disturbing is that it was based on a real incident after the singer had a bad experience with a nasty server. The resulting song provided a dark element that was missing from the album. Amos said in 2002: "At one point, engineer Paul McKenna said to me, 'You know, Tori, this record's missing something.' I said, 'Oh, okay.' And within 48 hours, I had this horrible argument with a waitress. I'm not kidding. She was the devil. She was Satan. She was a meanie. She became the embodiment of a few women in my life that I was having it out with, and 'The Waitress' got written. And Paul said, 'The record's complete.'"

Speaking of waitresses... "I could move to a small town And become a waitress Say my name was Stacy And I was figuring things out..." Watch First Aid Kit performing "Waitress Song" in our studio in a great 2014 live performance: www.youtube.com

Speaking of waitresses... The title is a play on "Christmas Rappin'," a 1979 song by Kurtis Blow that was the first Christmas rap song released on a major label. In 1981, rap music was just starting to enter the mainstream, and The Waitresses used a spoken style that could be considered rapping. Also, Chris Butler liked the play on the word "wrap," since the story wraps around, coming full circle at the end. The lyrics came from Butler's hatred of Christmas: "Everybody I knew in New York was running around like a bunch of fiends. It wasn't about joy. It was something to cope with."

Happy birthday to John Michael "Ozzy" Osbourne, born on December 3rd, 1948.: www.biography.com -- Was it those Christmas bells, John and Owen, that made you think of this song? "Supernaut" has a strong showing on the bell scale with a 4.07914! www.ultimatecowbell.com

William Antranig Maranci is a 25-year-old American YouTuber from Massachusetts. He created his main channel on October 5, 2017. He is known for uploading bizarre mashup videos of popular songs. He also has a second channel called DumphopTV where he uploads full albums.

Bassist Geezer Butler said, "The song 'Paranoid' was written as an afterthought. We basically needed a 3-minute filler for the album, and Tony (Iommi) came up with the riff. I quickly did the lyrics, and Ozzy was reading them as he was singing.": tinyurl.com -- In Finland, "Paranoid" has the same status as "Freebird" in the US or "Stairway to Heaven" in the UK. Regardless of the band or the type of music they play, someone will often shout "Soittakaa Paranoid!" (Play "Paranoid").

The 10th annual SMooCH (Seattle Musicians for Children’s Hospital) Benefit Concert happens Saturday, December 11th. Shaina Shepherd will be opening the event and Modest Mouse will be playing a special set of songs from their early recordings.: www.kexp.org