John Richards

Adan and Eve was the fourth studio album by Catherine Wheel and released on this day in 1997. This was the band's last album to feature original bassist Dave Hawes. Dave Hawes said of the album "Adam And Eve is my personal favourite album. I think we were at our musical peak and Rob and Brian were writing amazing tunes. Add in Bob Ezrin as an executive producer and hey, presto! He produced Lou Reed's Berlin album (a top 5 album of mine), and I think he added some of that magic dust to A and E."

Just sounds so good this morning.

Built to Spill will play the Timber Outdoor Festival in Carnation, Washington on Saturday, July 23rd, 2022.: www.builttospill.com -- This was the local bands 3rd album release but their 1st on a major label. It was produced by Phil Ek at Avast! Recording Co. in Seattle.

Built To Spill announced their first new album in seven years, When The Wind Forgets Your Name, their first for Sub Pop after 20 years on Warner Records. They'll perform LIVE in the KEXP Studio on Friday, July 22 at 12PM. They'll also be at Timber Music Festival that weekend in Carnation. summer.timbermusicfest.com

Happy birthday to Steve Shelley, producer and drummer of Sonic Youth! 60 years old today

Here's Quivers performing "You're Not Always On My Mind" live in the KEXP studio in 2019. - www.youtube.com Melbourne-by-way-of-Tasmania band Quivers is the project of Sam J. Nicholson, who started it to keep singing after losing a brother in a free-diving accident. Nicholson previously said this about the song: “I wanted to write a simple song, just four quick chords and a slow realisation. I think I somehow stole the lyrical idea from Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” – that a song might be trapped inside just one thought. And in that one thought there might be everything. That’s how good that Kylie song is anyway.” quiversss.bandcamp.com

Sweet Relief: A Benefit for Victoria Williams is a 1993 tribute album that features bands covering songs written by Victoria Williams. The project was inspired by Williams being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and led to the creation of the Sweet Relief Fund, a charity that aids professional musicians (of any stature) in need of health care. sweetrelief.org

New Beths out in September! Playing Cap Hill Block Party on July 22nd. thebethsnz.bandcamp.com thebeths.com --- Expert In A Dying Field will be out on September 16. "Silence Is Golden is about stress and anxiety manifesting as an intolerance to noise,” the band’s Elizabeth Stokes said. “Where each new sound makes you more and more stressed.” - bit.ly

Saints was the third and final single from Last Splash

Sudan Archives will be at Capitol Hill Block Party on July 22nd, but if you can't catch them then, they'll be back in Seattle at Neumos on Saturday, October 1st. sudanarchives.com Sudan Archives say this new song is “about women and the celebration of hair. It’s about representation of different hair textures and embracing all colors and textures of it.” bit.ly

NEW MUSIC! New Beyoncé released in anticipation of forthcoming seventh solo studio album, 'RENAISSANCE'. "Break My Soul" samples New Orleans' Queen of Bounce, Big Freedia, and "Show Me Love" by Robin S.

Tom Tom Club's debut self-titled studio album was released on this day in 1981. "Genius of Love" peaked at No. 31 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the US Dance Chart.

Not only is this one of 1977's best songs, but, according to science, "Mr. Blue Sky" is the happiest song on earth! #science We're not even kidding. Netherlands-based researcher Jacob Jolij developed what he calls the "Feel Good Formula," with which he feels it is possible to determine the happiest song on earth. groovyhistory.com

Andrew Eldritch described the track in a 1987 interview with Sounds magazine: "It's about the idiots, full of sound and fury, who stampede around this world signifying nothing. It's about people who sing about the revolution while selling it short, about people who sing about the corrosion of things while they themselves are falling apart. People who miss the point... It's also stupidly over-the-top bombastic, but rightly so." - bit.ly

Sigur Rós released Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust 14 years ago! Happy anniversary!

After announcing some shows and signing to Secretly Canadian, Yeah Yeah Yeahs have announced a brand-new album, "Cool It Down," which will be out in September. “I see the younger generations staring down this threat, and they’re standing on the edge of a precipice, confronting what’s coming with anger and defiance,” Karen O said of the new song, "Spitting Off The Edge Of The World," featuring Mike Hadreas (Perfume Genius). “It’s galvanizing, and there’s hope there.” bit.ly -- Don't miss Karen O in the video for this new song: www.youtube.com

Porridge Radio will be at Barboza on September 13th! Here’s what Porridge Radio member Dana Margolin had to say about the song: At the beginning it was a song about a power dynamic where I was in control, by the end it was about one where I had none. My friends always accuse me of making up idioms and using them like they are well known phrases and I think this song is full of those. I love the idea of something being sick at the seams, like it’s disintegrating from its core. I like things that are so simple they are universal. I wanted it to sound like when your heart breaks so badly that your entire body aches. I wanted it to feel like your soul is dropping out of your body. porridgeradio.bandcamp.com porridgeradio.com

DJ Morgan interviewed Portishead’s Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley in 2019 to break down their album 'Dummy' 25 Years after its release - read (and listen to) more at the KEXP blog: www.kexp.org

This was first released by Gram Parsons' Flying Burrito Brothers in 1970. The Stones' version was written in 1969, but had to wait for Sticky Fingers in 1971.

"These Are Days" was released as the lead single from the1992 album Our Time in Eden. It reached #1 and they also performed it for MTV Unplugged.

"Being alive is fucking hard!" proclaims Danish-Faroese singer/songwriter Helena Heinesen Rebensdorff. Her stage name, Brimheim, is an homage to her Faroese roots, translating to "home of the breaking waves." On writing the album, Rebensdorff revealed, "I attempted to write songs while I was feeling like shit and had no energy, and it ended up just being very small snippets that I recorded on my phone with my guitar. Small ideas to set the bar for success really, really low for having been creative that day." https://bit.ly/3aEj6tC www.brimheim.com

Hole was fronted by Courtney Love, who wrote "Miss World" with the band's guitarist, Eric Erlandson (their only male member). The song draws on contrast between Love's sinful life in the public eye and the Miss World pageant, where contestants are always poised, wholesome, and well-spoken. Love had always owned up to her indiscretions, which is reflected in the line, "I've made my bed, I'll lie in it." And, she's willing to live with the consequences: "I've made my bed, I'll die in it." bit.ly

Fontaines D.C. was live on KEXP in May! Check out the full performance: bit.ly -- A "Jackeen" is a derogatory term used by people from other parts of Ireland to describe someone from Dublin. The Irish city traditionally had a strong association with Britain, and when Queen Victoria visited Dublin, folks there waved Union Jacks as a welcome to Her Majesty. This led to them being referred to as Jackeens. Fontaines D.C. singer Grian Chatten, along with the rest of the band, left Ireland to pursue his music career in London. Here, he explores the transformation of their Irish culture and identity after moving to a different country. "It's this kind of mutation of Irishness or loss of Irishness as it exists, or fails to exist, in a different environment," he explained

This was one of the first U2 songs produced by Brian Eno. Eno also produced The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby.

Ben Gibbard describes "Roman Candles' as a concentrated effort to create something “succinct, loud and strikingly direct,” sharing that “the lyrics were cobbled from a couple of different songs dealing with my general sense of anxiety; the feeling that the fabric that weaves a functioning society together was crumbling during the pandemic.” Death Cab for Cutie will play The Paramount Theatre on Wednesday and Thursday, October 26th and 27th. -- Don't miss the video for this new song: www.youtube.com

Helmet's second studio album and major label debut, released 30 years ago today! "Unsung" quickly became the band's signature song and the video was a MTV favorite during late 1992. Watch it here: www.youtube.com

Relationship of Command is the third studio album by At the Drive-In, released in 2000. A BBC Music review hailed "One Armed Scissor" as one of the "most invigorating rock songs released in the last 20 or 30 years, let alone the past 10." In October 2011, NME placed it at number 113 on its list "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years".

Japandroids are a Vancouver, BC duo who met while attending the University of Victoria in the early aughts. 'Celebration Rock' is their sophomore album, released in 2012. --- This reviewer writes, "Celebration Rock is one of the most apt titles ever for an album. The record is 8 tracks of joy, energy, and nostalgia — it’s a remembrance and celebration of youth well spent and misspent.": bit.ly

This was the title song of The Boss' third studio album, released in 1975, which became a huge commercial success. One of the most emotional performances of this song came at The Spectrum in Philadelphia on December 9, 1980, the night after John Lennon was shot and killed. Springsteen opened the show by saying, "If it wasn't for John Lennon, a lot of us would be some place much different tonight. It's a hard world that asks you to live with a lot of things that are unlivable. And it's hard to come out here and play tonight, but there's nothing else to do." The band then launched into "Born To Run" in a kind of catharsis: Steve Van Zandt had tears in his eyes and Danny Federici hit his keyboard so hard he broke a key. Thirty-three songs later, Springsteen closed the concert with "Twist And Shout" in tribute to Lennon.

Queen and David Bowie wrote 'Under Pressure' while drunk and then forgot about it. Mere mortals might just get sloppy when drunk, but if you're David Bowie or the members of Queen, apparently you create musical masterpieces. Read the full story: ew.com

New album is out tomorrow! L.A. trio Automatic will perform at Neumos on Saturday and Sunday, September 10th and 11th! -- In May, John selected Automatic's song "Skyscraper" as a free KEXP Song of the Day. Download it for yourself here: www.kexp.org

"I Know What Boys Like" is a song written by guitarist Chris Butler in 1978, while he was still a member of the rock band Tin Huey. It was recorded by Butler and released as a single in 1980, but beyond some club success, it did not appear on any charts. When he formed the band The Waitresses, with Patty Donahue as lead vocalist, the band recorded the song for its debut album, Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?, released by Polydor Records in 1982 en.wikipedia.org

Some songs have all the right notes. You found them this morning Would The Mighty Lemon Drops - Inside Out fit with today’s playlist? It would sound great here in Chicago! Have a great day! Mike ========== English band that was active between 1985–1992, and originally called themselves the Sherbert Monsters. ""Inside Out" is a minefield of sparkling pop hooks -- finger-snapping percussion, toe-tapping guitars, and a chorus so catchy that one listen to the song can turn into an addiction." bit.ly

Not to be confused with their first album, which is also called 'The House of Love'. This one was released in 1990. It is generally referred to either as 'Fontana' (after the record label it was issued on) or 'The Butterfly Album' (after Trevor Key's sleeve art). bit.ly

In the liner notes to her 2004 compilation Artist's Choice, the Canadian songwriter Joni Mitchell praised "You Get What You Give" for "rising from the swamp of 'McMusic' like a flower of hope". In 2006, Ice-T was asked on Late Night with Conan O'Brien about what he has heard, besides rap music, in the last few years that really grabbed him and his only reply was "You Get What You Give". In a Time interview, U2 lead guitarist the Edge is quoted saying "You Get What You Give" is the song he is "most jealous of. I really would love to have written that."

Explaining this song, lead singer Michael Stipe said: "The words come from everywhere. I'm extremely aware of everything around me, whether I am in a sleeping state, awake, dream-state or just in day to day life. There's a part in 'It's The End Of The World As We Know It' that came from a dream where I was at Lester Bangs' birthday party and I was the only person there whose initials weren't L.B. So there was Lenny Bruce, Leonid Brezhnev, Leonard Bernstein... So that ended up in the song along with a lot of stuff I'd seen when I was flipping TV channels. It's a collection of streams of consciousness."

Good morning Owen and John. My divine mother, in her words, "shuffled off this mortal coil" Sunday. She and my father adopted me in SF when I was a baby and it was the best fucking thing that ever happened to me. Being a navy wife she knew how to instantly put people at ease and make them feel welcome. She leaves a divine stepfather in Sonoma who thank God is surrounded by many friends and family. I have many wonderful memories of that woman, Anne PS Wray. Please play Louis Armstrong what a wonderful world. When I hear that song I think of her. And of course as always the little girl frog song Lynibop in magnolia ========= You are not alone

This song is about the quest for power, and how it can have unfortunate consequences. In an interview with Mix magazine, the band's producer Chris Hughes explained that they spent months working on "Shout," and near the end of the sessions, Roland Orzabal came into the studio and played two simple chords on his acoustic guitar, which became the basis for the song. Said Hughes: "'Everybody Wants to Rule the World' was so simple and went down so quickly, it was effortless, really. In fact, as a piece of recording history, it's bland as hell." bit.ly vimeo.com

It's his life indeed. Talk Talk was fronted by Mark Hollis and signed to EMI in 1981. The label sent them on tour with another one of their acts, Duran Duran, and commissioned a slick video for their single "Talk Talk." Both bands had a new-wave synthesizer sound, but that was about all they had in common. Hollis did the required promotion but didn't enjoy it - interviews were clearly a work obligation. Musically, he was not going to be swayed by popular taste or record company pressure, and for the second Talk Talk album, which didn't appear until two years later, he included "It's My Life," a manifesto of sorts where he asserts his independence. www.songfacts.com

Depeche Mode's Andy (Fletch) Fletcher passed away May 26th at the age of 60. He leaves behind wife Grainne, to whom he was married for almost 30 years, and two children, Megan and Joe. Broadcaster and DJ Richard Blade told the BBC that Fletcher was the driving force behind the band. "People always think of Dave [Gahan] being the singer and frontman and Martin [Gore] being the songwriter, but Andrew was the backbone of Depeche Mode," said Blade. "Martin Gore said to me one time that there would be no Depeche Mode without Andrew Fletcher, he was the one who would always get Dave and Martin and at the time [former bandmate] Alan Wilder together and say, 'get in the studio, let's work on a new album, let's get a tour together'."

Dedicated to Eva, Jesus and Death...and their bizarre love triangle