John Richards

Good Morning! It's the first Friday of 2022 and you're listening to The Morning Show with John Richards! This year, KEXP is celebrating its 50th anniversary! Thanks so much for being here with us! -- Station Approach is the road that leads to Manchester Piccadilly, gateway for prodigal Mancunians (like local Guy Garvey) returning from London by train. Guy Garvey once said, "My favorite lyrics either describe a familiar feeling in a new way or describe a specific feeling that you've never heard described before - an emotion that's too complex to be put into words usually, ways of getting to specific feelings. In 'Station Approach,' that's a very particular civic pride, which is a very specific civic feeling. I love Manchester."

In 2020, Doves released their first album in 11 years, "The Universal Want." Last October, they cancelled their tour because of frontman Jimi Goodwin's mental health: www.radiox.co.uk -- "There Goes the Fear" is part of the list of Doves' best songs: www.stereogum.com

"I remember listening to 'Urban Hymns' for the first time and I was completely enthralled with it," said a Virgin Records executive. “I couldn't stop listening to the album from beginning to end. It was pure brilliance. Each song could stand on its own and the album was flawless." -- This album is now nearly a quarter of a century old. Enjoy this retrospective: www.albumism.com

Lead singer Thom Yorke on "Let Down": "I was pissed in a club, and I suddenly had the funniest thought I'd had for ages - what if all the people who were drinking were hanging from the bottles... if the bottles were hung from the ceiling with string, and the floor caved in, and the only thing that kept everyone up was the bottles? It's also about an enormous fear of being trapped." -- "Let down and hanging around... Crushed like a bug in the ground..." Here are the lyrics: www.azlyrics.com

Good morning John, Owen and team. Snow day here in South Jersey! Aria would love to here ‘Seventeen’ by Sharon Van Etten. We are also taking our chicken “Daisy’ to the vet, so if you have a go-to snow day/chicken vet day song would love to hear that as well 😉 Love KEXP and all the creatures of this world ---Aria, Jo and AJ --- Van Etten explained that this song, a love letter to New York, shows "the chain reaction, of moving to a city bright-eyed and hearing the elders complain about the city changing, and then being around long enough to know what they were talking about." Watch the bittersweet video: youtu.be

Hey John, I hope you’re having a good morning. Our mother Jeanne (“Jean”) has been a listener for over a decade—since we caught you on the air here in New York for a beautiful and brief moment. Your show mirrored our family’s musical taste and went on to shape our discovery. Our parents met around our mother’s birthday 27 years ago. They listened to the song Protection by Massive Attack on a snowy day in early January, much like the day we’ve woken up to here. Whenever it comes on at home, our mother sings along. It transports her in the way only music can. Whether or not a new year means anything, it invites us to assess all the pieces of our lives and to express our gratitude. We love our mother and we are grateful to see her get lost in a song. We want to wish her a very happy birthday. ♥️Maddie and Nina -- "Protection" is a collaboration between Massive Attack and Everything but the Girl singer Tracey Thorn. They sampled James Brown's "The Payback."

"Killing Me Softly," composed by Charles Fox with lyrics by Norman Gimbel, earned Roberta Flack a Grammy in 1974 for Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. In 1997, the version by Fugees (with Lauryn Hill's beautiful vocals) won the Grammy for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.

This one's for Tamar, packing to move in Brooklyn, who wanted her "favorite 'happy' sing along song." -- KEXP premiered the video for this infectious song from Baby Dayliner (real name: Ethan Marunas): www.kexp.org

This is Fruit Bats' cover of the Smashing Pumpkins' song from the latter's second album, 1993's "Siamese Dream." Want to hear the original?: www.youtube.com -- Perhaps Fruit Bats will play it when they perform at The Showbox on Saturday, March 19, 2022.

Please play Shadow People by Dr. Dog. No special reason, it's just nice. It's a snow covered day in Baltimore but it's fluffy and that's okay --Dennis in Baltimore -- Watch this band from West Grove, Pennsylvania perform "Shadow People" live on KEXP in 2010: www.youtube.com

Happy birthday, Sophia (birthday buddy with Cheryl)! -- Originally, Harrison wrote this for Billy Preston with sort of a gospel feel. After it ended up being a fast rocker, he decided it wouldn't be right for Preston and released it himself. Bobby Whitlock played keyboards on this song. On the album, the "O'Hara-Smith" singers are credited as background vocalists. Whitlock explains: "That's Eric Clapton and me. If you listen, you can hear Eric and me wailing away."

Ahhh...the Friday song (the first of the year!) Thanks, co-host Henry, and have fun at school! -- KEXP is celebrating 50 years of existence this year. Meet a station DJ from 50 years ago: www.kexp.org

Hi John, Can you play ‘Let the day begin’ by the Call? Dedicated to all the healthcare workers and caregivers, we haven’t forgotten about you. --Daniel -- This was written by the group's lead singer, Michael Been, who was in his late 30s when it was released. The bearded Been, who died of a heart attack in 2010 at age 60, was a gifted songwriter. A Christian, he sometimes made religious references in his lyrics - in this one he honors the "preachers of the sacred words." -- Simple Minds sometimes performed "Let The Day Begin," and recorded it for their 2014 album "Big Music." "'Let The Day Begin' is like a gospel for the working man," said Jim Kerr . "We feel really proud to play it, especially to people that don't know it, therefore it's a kind of lost treasure."

Went to bed sad last night after hearing about the death of yet another loved one due to COVID, and woke up with this song in my head. Feeling these lyrics today: Today is flat beneath the weight of next day, next day, next day, next day. God, this feels like it's lasting forever. I know it won't, but it just feels that way. Thank you KEXP today and every day for lifting my head and my spirit on yet another hard day. Best, Jenny in Ypsilanti --- Here are the lyrics: genius.com

Wet Leg are playing at the Sunset Tavern on Saturday, March 26, 2022! -- Wet Leg swept KEXP by storm with their singles, “Wet Dream” and “Chaise Longue” in 2021. They dropped two new singles and announced their self-titled debut album will be released in April 2022. DJ Larry Mizell Jr. sat down with British band Wet Leg for a recent KEXP Sound & Vision podcast and found out just how silly they really are. Check out the whole segment here: www.kexp.org

John was the host when Tanya Donelly and Belly performed live in the KEXP studio in August, 2018.: www.youtube.com

Pom Pom Squad will be at Neumo's on Friday, March 11th, 2022. -- Pom Pom Squad have leaned even further into their punk-rock cheerleader pastiche, entirely remaking Nada Surf’s 1996 “Popular” music video, with band leader Mia Berrin playing all of the key characters. Adding to the video’s authenticity, Pom Pom Squad actually filmed at the same high school as the original video. (Also appearing in the clip is the school’s real cheer squad and football team, presumably in on the song’s irony.) Even better, Nada Surf’s Matthew Caws joins Pom Pom Squad’s Mia Berrin on vocals. Aysia Marotta directed the video." : www.youtube.com

Speaking of Matthew Caws... In this KEXP interview, Caws breaks down every song on Nada Surf's "Let Go": www.kexp.org

For Laura, in memory of her former husband. -- " Like so many Merritt compositions, it will keep you laughing right until you find yourself all choked up." Read a wonderful tribute to this song: americansongwriter.com

This song was the theme for the 1967 film, "To Sir With Love," starring Sidney Poitier. Lulu also starred in the film. The song became the best-selling single of 1967 in the United States.

Request time for my wife Katie's birthday -Bill Withers 'lovely day' please! --Kevin in Bothell -- Iconic artist Bill withers died in 2020 of heart complications at age 81. Watch the videos in KEXP's tribute to this great artist: www.kexp.org

Good morning!! Our son Wren turns 11 today and we're having a mini donut breakfast celebration now to kick off the day. We'd love a birthday shout out or even a song dedication = 3 Little Birds by Bob Marley and the Wailers. Thanks. ---Bru and Shannon -- The inspiration for this song? Some maintain it was because Bob Marley loved birds. However, three female singers from the reggae group I Threes, who did shows with Marley, claim it is actually a reference to them. I Threes member Marcia Griffiths said: "After the song was written, Bob would always refer to us as the Three Little Birds.: bit.ly

In an interview, Howard Jones, said he decided to write this positive song for the audience he had garnered following the success of his debut album, Human's Lib: "We're talking about the second album, now, and I'd had great success with the first one. I thought, People are listening to me, so what can I give them that is really going to help? And everyone goes through s--t. Everyone goes through bad times. Every single person on the planet goes through bad times. And it's great sometimes to have somebody say to you, 'Come on, even if it gets so you lose everything and everything goes horribly wrong, you can still pick yourself up and go forward, and you can make it right, you can make things get better.'" -- See Howard Jones perform it live (with Ringo Starr): www.youtube.com

Happy tenth birthday, Luisne (pronounced Lish-na) --- This was initially written as a parody, and Robert Smith later distanced himself from the song. Smith said: "'The Love Cats' is far from being my favorite song: composed drunk, video filmed drunk, promotion made drunk. It was a joke." The video, directed by Tim Pope, was shot in a mansion which had been "borrowed" from an estate agent who believed they wanted to buy it. In the morning they returned the keys. Lots of actual cats were used in the filming, and some band members wore giant cat costumes for the shoot. A few of the shots are of Lol Tolhurst roaming the streets outside while wearing one of the cat costumes.: www.facebook.com

Ohhh...a cat theme! -- This isn’t just a song about a cat, it’s about Aesop’s battle with clinical depression, and the hope he finds in “an M.D. recommended sense of purpose.” His psychiatrist recommends a cat. The “Kirby” video finds Aesop replaced with a puppet avatar, in order to match his kitten’s cuteness. Don't miss it: www.facebook.com

For Bryan's dad Judd's birthday! Hendrix claimed this was inspired by a dream where he was walking under the sea. In the dream, he said a purple haze surrounded him, engulfed him and got him lost. It was a traumatic experience, but in his dream his faith in Jesus saved him. At one point, Hendrix wrote the chorus as "purple haze, Jesus saves," but decided against it. -- This contains one of the most misheard lyrics ever, with "Scuse me while I kiss the sky" interpreted as "Scuse me while I kiss this guy." Hendrix added to the confusion by sometimes singing it that way and pointing to one of his band members. You can visit the archive of misheard song lyrics here: www.kissthisguy.com

IDLES performed "Car Crash" live during a recent visit to the KEXP studio: www.youtube.com -- Watch the video for Car Crash here: www.youtube.com

The Smile is a new trio comprising Radiohead members Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood plus Sons Of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner. This is their debut single. -- "Behind some rocks, underneath some bridge Some gangster troll promising the moon...Yeah right...Sleep tight...All night...." Perhaps you would like to read the lyrics: www.genius-lyrics.com

The 18 year wait for new Wrens music is over, sort of. (www.nytimes.com) The Wrens' Kevin Whelan has signed with Sub Pop and has released his first album under the name Aeon Station. "Observatory" includes contributions from fellow Wrens Jerry MacDonald and Greg Whelan. -- 'Whelan describes his writing on Observatory as “fastball,” plainspoken and direct, motivational without being cloying, the sort of pep talks people usually wish they’d get from a higher-up at the office.' bit.ly aeonstation.bandcamp.com/ --

Bachelor is the project from Melina Duterte (Jay Som) and Ellen Kempner (Palehound). John selected this song,"Stay in the Car," as a free KEXP Song of the Day last year: www.kexp.org -- Bachelor shared a live performance recorded exclusively for KEXP in August 2021. They closed out their set with "Stay in the Car": youtu.be

"Responsible for some of the sweetest and, unfortunately, most overlooked indie rock of the '90s, New York City's Madder Rose featured guitarist Billy Coté, drummer Johnny Kick, bassist Matt Verta-Ray, and guitarist/vocalist Mary Lorson. Their lovely 1993 debut album, 'Bring It Down,' introduced the band's winning combination of Lorson's dulcet voice and Coté and Lorson's eloquent songs; while it was a critical success, that album and its equally graceful 1994 follow-up, 'Panic On,' both eluded commercial success." Read a biography of these musicians: www.allmusic.com -- Did you know Madder Rose put out an album in 2019 and it's great? Here you go: store.tromerecords.com

Geese will be in Seattle playing Barboza on Tuesday, March 29th, 2022. Last year, NME called Geese's debut album, "Projector," "one of the year’s most thrilling rock debuts": www.nme.com Geese shared a live performance recorded exclusively for KEXP and chatted with Cheryl Waters in October, 2021. Check out the full session, including "Low Era" here: youtu.be

"bad advice good people" is the debut mini LP by Berlin post-punk trio Clear History. : clearhistoryband.bandcamp.com

The title of Nevil Shute's "A Town Like Alice" inspired the title, but the inspiration for the song came from Paul Weller's friend Dave Waller way of describing urban life. The song is about unemployment in a working town and Paul Weller confessed, "It could have been written about any suburban town, but it was in fact written about my hometown of Woking." -- Did you know that Weller sampled Martha and the Vandella's 1966 "I'm Ready for Love"? -- Watch the official video: www.youtube.com

English Beat singer/guitarist Dave Wakeling said of this wonderful song: "I wrote it when I was a teenager. I wrote it before The Beat started. And it was about turning from a teenager to someone in their 20s, and realizing that the effortless promise for your teenage years was not necessarily going to show that life was so simple as you started to grow up. So it was about being lost, about not really knowing your role in the world, trying to find your place in the world....and you'd have all sorts of people telling you this, that, and the other, and advising you, and it didn't actually seem like they knew any better. So it was like keep your advice to yourself. Save it - for later." -- When performing their 1994 song "Better Man" in concert, the American rock band Pearl Jam often play it as a medley together with this song.

General Public was formed by Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger, who were members of The English Beat, along with Mickey Billingham from Dexys Midnight Runners and Horace Panter from The Specials. -- Wakeling said about "Tenderness": "There was a darker side to the song, because it came out in that period of AIDS, fear of AIDS. Nobody really knew much about it, and everybody was all of a sudden terrified to touch a door handle. Being a terrific hypochondriac, and everybody was always having colds on the road on tour, it's like any time anybody sneezed, I was like, could that be AIDS? So it was to do with that, but in sort of non-obvious way."

Did you know that Norman Cook a.k.a Fatboy Slim, was the bassist for this band prior to his electronic career? -- The Housemartins were compared by many to The Smiths. However the Smith's guitarist Johnny Marr was not impressed. He complained that "'Happy Hour' was a complete rip-off of 'I Want The One I Can't Have', and they've nicked others too."

Musically, this song is based on T. Rex's glam rock anthem, "Metal Guru." Guitarist Johnny Marr recalled in 1999: "When we wrote 'Panic' Morrissey was obsessed with 'Metal Guru' and wanted to sing in the same style. He didn't stop singing it in an attempt to modify the words of 'Panic' to fit the exact rhythm of 'Metal Guru.' He also exhorted me to use the same guitar break so that the two songs are the same!"

This song was written by Ted Ottaviano (No relation to frontwoman Susan Ottaviano) about feeling excluded from a popular gay bar in the East Village. He said, " all of the sudden, there were these new places that were coming up that were identifying their clubgoers by their sexual politics… In our world, that was a big deal. We basically lived the life of art students and at night, we would go out to our favorite clubs. Now, all of the sudden, if you were a girl, you couldn’t go to this place.” Read the story behind this song: daily.redbullmusicacademy.com

Fun Boy Three was a band consisting of three ex-members of the UK ska band the Specials: Terry Hall, Neville Staple and Lynval Golding. Where are they now, you wonder?: talkaboutpopmusic.com This is their cover of The Go-Go's 1981 hit.

Go-Go's bass player Kathy Valentine wrote this song in 1980 when she was a member of a Los Angeles band called The Textones. Kathy grew up in Austin, Texas, and on a trip back to the city, met a dreamy boy named Billy who sang in a band called Boy Problems. On the flight back to LA, she wrote these lines on a napkin: Now that I'm away, I wish I'd stayed Tomorrow's a day of mine you won't be in "The short romance had softened me, and the words, written from true-life longing, resonated forever," she wrote in her memoir, "All I Ever Wanted."

This one's for Cheryl...and everyone else who's celebrating a birthday today! -- The song was written by Altered Images members Clare Grogan (vocals), Tony McDaid (guitar), John McElhone (bass), Gerard “Caesar” McInulty (guitar) and Michael “Tich” Anderson (drums). Here's the official video: www.youtube.com

Well, maybe THIS one's for Cheryl...and everyone else who's celebrating a birthday today! -- "Birthday" is the song that brought Björk into the popular American consciousness. Released in August 1987 on the Sugarcubes debut album "Life's Too Good," it was the band's first international single. The song is most notable for Bjork's unique vocal gymnastics and for its odd lyrics about a girl who "threads worms on a string," "keeps spiders in her pocket," and "collects fly wings in a jar." You may want to fast forward through parts of the official video: www.youtube.com

Travis's frontman Fran Healy told Yahoo!: "'Sing' - You could replace that word with 'Dance' or 'Cry' or 'Laugh' or just 'Let Go.' 'Cause as an expression, when you're a child, you sing all the time. And then when you get older, you don't - you just go, 'I don't want to, my voice is crap.' But when you're a kid, you don't care! And I think that's what you should always have - a little bit of that still in you. People look at people in the street that sing like they're mad, like, 'What are you singing for?' But it's about having fun and feeling good and all that stuff." bit.ly