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Thursday, Dec 8 2022, 7AM
'This Woman's Work' is about being forced to confront an unexpected crisis during childbirth, written from the male partner’s point of view.
Kate said: "It was written for John Hughes' film She's Having A Baby. Really light comedy about this young guy who gets married, very much a kid. His wife is pregnant and it's alright until they get to the hospital and the baby's in the breach position.
"That's the sequence I have to write the songs about and it's really very moving, him in the waiting room, having flashbacks of his wife and him going for walks, decoration. It's exploring his sadness and guilt, suddenly it's the point where he has to grow up. He'd been such a wally up to this point."
Moriah Bailey on "The Ocean Life": "‘The Ocean Life’ is about a lot of things and can be interpreted in different ways. In its broadest sense, for me, the song is longing and hoping for a different kind of life, and its also lamenting losses resulting from the ways that we relate to one another, places, and other beings."
moriahbailey.bandcamp.com
Husband and wife, Don and Karen Peris, lead this band that hails from Lancaster, PA. Glow, their third album, was recorded over a several-month period at Kingsway Studios in New Orleans and Bad Animals Studios in Seattle
theinnocencemission.com
This song's title was a kind of joke. It had taken the Sundays a couple of years to follow up the debut album and the first single from the second album - this song - was "Goodbye" prompting the NME to say "Goodbye already? You only just bloody came back!"
Check out Camp Cope's KEXP in-studio performance from 2018 (bit.ly) and get this track as a free KEXP Song of the Day: www.kexp.org
Earth is the ninth studio album from British band Sault, one of five released for free via digital distribution on November 1, 2022 along with 11, AIIR, Today & Tomorrow, and Untitled (God). The download was available for only five days via a password-encrypted link and made as an offering to God.
Alexandra Lockhart started Cumulus as a solo project while still an undergrad at Western Washington University. In 2010, she moved to Seattle and the band really started to take off, with a rotating cast of backing musicians.
Sunbeam was recently the song of the day at KEXP www.kexp.org
Kevin Cole hosted Cumulus -- Live in the KEXP studio in 2018: youtu.be
cumulus.bandcamp.com
Happy 56th birthday to Shuhada Sadaqat, born Sinead O'Connor!
"I Am Stretched on Your Grave" was taken from an anonymous 17th-century poem titled "Táim sínte ar do thuama". The album was nominated for four Grammy Awards in 1991, including Record of the Year, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.
Watch her perform this song live at a 1990 Brussels concert: youtu.be
“Wing” means different things to different people. To some it’s a tribute to departed loved ones; to others, it’s a song about how they wish they could give their gift of lightness of being to others. But at its core it seems to be a song about the joy of personal freedom, each verse ending with the lines I was free needed nobody/ It was beautiful, it was beautiful. It was inspired by the work of Nobel Prize-winning philosopher Albert Camus, whose books The First Man and A Happy Death influenced Smith as a young artist.
americansongwriter.com
First Aid Kit and Hurray for the Riff Raff are playing the Paramount Theatre on May 24, 2023!
We’ve grown up,” says Klara Söderberg, the younger sister of the Swedish duo First Aid Kit, in the accompanying material about their fifth album ‘Palomino’. “As we get older, the music is more about having fun and being positive… like a palomino riding through the desert”.
While walking about New York in the video, Maggie runs into some NYC heroes. Wait, was that David Byrne on his bicycle? Yes! She also finds photographer Quil Lemons in a taxi and the Walkmen’s Hamilton Leithauser busking outside a building. See the video here: youtu.be
The Beths are playing TWO nights at Neumos! February 17th & 18th!
The Beths performed at KEXP back in 2018 bit.ly
thebethsnz.bandcamp.com
Chicago-based Smut's debut album! The band enlisted Stephen Street, best known for producing for the Cranberries and Blur, to mix “Let Me Hate,” a tribute to frontwoman Tay Roebuck’s late sister.
smutonline.bandcamp.com
The debut LP from the Irish group. Fueled by the singles "Dreams" and "Linger," it firmly planted itself in the U.S. charts for 130 weeks after its release in 1993.
Sadly, songwriter Dolores O'Riordan of The Cranberries passed away at the age of 46 in 2018. Read this KEXP remembrance of this talented artist: www.kexp.org
Random track but I really like it: “The Wolf is Getting Married”
I just recently got into Sinead and I’m really liking a lot of her later stuff. Nothing released in 1996 that I can tell.
Hope you are feeling better, John!
Yesterday was great. 1996!
Amy
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This is the first single by Sinéad O'Connor (I know, right?!), from her ninth full-length album, titled How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?. The song's title is taken from an Arab expression for a break in the clouds: "The wolf smiles as he's on his way to his wedding." The singer first heard the phrase from a taxi driver and crafted a joyful celebratory song around it.
Redcar Les Adorables Étoiles (Prologue) (translation: “Redcar the Adorable Stars”) is the first part of an avant-garde pop opera. As the character “Redcar,” a new persona inspired by the happiness frontperson Chris felt seeing red cars outside his home during isolation, he sheds his past. Redcar dresses like Serge Gainsbourg and writes lyrics (usually in French) that are sometimes nearly as louche as Gainsbourg’s. www.rollingstone.com
christineandthequeens.bandcamp.com
The third instalment of a series of albums that have been steadily released over 2022, Profound Mysteries III makes for a climactic finisher. The ambitious project has included thirty new tracks, each accompanied by a short film and animated visualizations. Back in 2014, the pair formally said “goodbye to the traditional album format"
thequietus.com
Check out PVA's Live on KEXP at Home performance and interview with DJ Troy Nelson: bit.ly
South London trio PVA’s stunning debut BLUSH consolidates the beating pulse of electronic music with the raw energy of a life-affirming gig and reveals more than they’ve ever shared before. Ella Harris & Josh Baxter (who share vocals, synths, guitars & production) and drummer Louis Satchell, create 11 blistering tracks from a formula of acid, disco, synths, the dancefloor & queer-coded post-punk. pvaareok.bandcamp.com
Beat is the second studio album by American band Bowery Electric. Lawrence Chandler of Bowery Electric told Alternative Press "Beat is the beginning of us learning our way around a proper sampler and software which allows us to work with samples on the computer. We can sample ourselves, manipulate sounds, create our own beats and basically work with fewer restrictions."
boweryelectric.bandcamp.com
"It's about spending your life making money and then spending it to fill the void created by said job," explained bassist/vocalist Halle Saxon, with bandmate Lola Dompé cheekily adding, "Kind of like going to LA to live your dreams." Download this KEXP Song of the Day from May here: www.kexp.org
Chemical Brother Ed Simons remembers in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh, "He (Noel Gallagher) got wind that we wanted to do a track with him. He phoned us up and said, 'I'll come down now and do it.' I told him I would send him a tape of the track that we thought might appeal to him as it had a Beatlesque feel to it. The whole track took us a day in the studio with him, then us mixing for a while and it was in the can." Sony didn't want to release it as a single but Noel persuaded them to. Despite little radio play on its week of release it sold nearly 100,000 copies in its first week and reached #1. Chemical Brother Tom Rowlands recalls in the book, "I think it had the lowest number of radio plays ever for a #1 hit. It was cool, circumventing all the conservatism, and till getting to #1 with a banging record. It was our aim to make a record that stuck out. We wanted to make records that people just couldn't help but remember."
www.songfacts.com
Speaking to Radio X's John Kennedy for a special program celebrating his life and work, Noel Gallagher said he feels this song was given to him. "I don't ever sit there and think that I wrote that, you know, the Oasis songwriter explained. "I think it came from somewhere else. I think it was a song that was there somewhere, and if I hadn't have written it, you know, Bono would have written it. You know, it's like those great songs, 'One' and 'Let It Be' and yeah, I did just compare myself to Paul McCartney there. You know, they're there. If they fall out the sky and land on your lap, then lucky you."
The death of John Lennon, outside the home he shared with Yoko Ono at the Dakota building on Manhattan's Upper West Side, shocked the world on 8 December 1980. This legendary, intimate half-hour conversation with Bob Harris sees Lennon talk with unprecedented candour about The Beatles and his new life in New York: “when Mick Jagger, or Paul, or when David Bowie is in town, all the rockers, they come and say ‘what's happening?!’”.
Find the interview and more: www.bbc.co.uk
Grace & Dignity came to be in winter 2020 when Benjamin Woods lost his job in lockdown and moved back to his parents’ house. The only work he found find was as a worker at a building site outside of Truro.
From Woods: “It was such a bleak winter – waist-deep in mud digging holes and rolling out turf on top of building waste, really grim stuff, which became the backdrop to the stories I was trying to write." He cited Raymond Carver, Lydia Davis and Richard Hugo as influences for the album.
thegoldendregs.bandcamp.com
On this day in 1967 The Rolling Stones released Their Satanic Majesties Request, the title a play on their malevolent image featuring "She's A Rainbow" and "2000 Light Years from Home."
The distinctive string section was arranged by John Paul Jones, who was doing session work two years before he joined Led Zeppelin.
“You Get What You Give” became the signature song of the New Radicals, released as the lead single from their only album Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too. The song received critical acclaim, with Rolling Stone calling it one of the greatest One Hit Wonder songs and later calling it one of the best songs of the 90s. In an 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."
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See the official music video: www.youtube.com
On this day Queen released the soundtrack to the alleged movie, Flash Gordon.
There are two versions of the song. The album version ("Flash's Theme") is in fact the start to the film, with all the dialogue from the first scene. The single version contains dialogue cut from various parts of the film, most memorably, Brian Blessed's character exclaiming "Gordon's alive?!"
For "Terminator X to the Edge of Panic" Public Enemy sampled 9 songs including Queen's "Flash's Theme" and 3 of their own tracks. See the full list: www.whosampled.com
Public Image Limited released "First Issue" on this day in 1978. It wasn't released in the US until 2013 (!!!), when Light In The Attic reissued it. According to Pitchfork, "Released mere months after the Sex Pistols’ infamous implosion, PiL's First Issue was deemed too uncommercial to release in the U.S. This Light in the Attic reissue marks the first time the band's scabrous debut album has been officially available Stateside." [pitchfork.com]
Public Service Broadcasting performed this song live in the KEXP studio in 2017. "Go!" right here to watch it: www.youtube.com
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Go!"(commemorating the 1969 Apollo 11 mission) was a KEXP Song of the Day in 2015.:www.kexp.org
Bob McGrath, one of the founding cast members of Sesame Street, has died aged 90, his family has announced.
The actor, who was on the children's TV show for nearly 50 years, "died peacefully at home, surrounded by his family", they posted on Facebook.
McGrath first appeared on Sesame Street in 1969, portraying the friendly music teacher Bob Johnson.
The show's production company Sesame Workshop said he "embodied the melodies of Sesame Street like no one else".
"His performances brought joy and wonder to generations of children around the world, whether teaching them the ABCs, the people in their neighbourhood, or the simple joy of feeling music in their hearts," it said in a statement on social media.
www.bbc.com
The Seventh Symphony was premiered in the great hall of the University in Vienna on December 8, 1813, as part of a charity concert for soldiers wounded in the Battle of Hanau.
The final track on Odesza's dazzling new record, The Last Goodbye. "If you continue to let Light Of Day play through the end you’ll find yourself at the beginning of This Version Of You. There is no Last Goodbye." - Odesza
Jim Morrison's birthday! He would have been 79 today.
The final Doors album to feature Jim Morrison as lead singer during his lifetime, 'L.A. Woman' was released in April 1971 and is heavily influenced by blues music. Lynn Veres Krieger, the subject of Love Her Madly, was a go-go dancer from New Jersey who met The Doors in New York in 67 at the Ondine discotheque – a place frequented by The Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol’s Factory crowd. She caught Morrison’s eye when her falsies slipped out of her bra, and they had a brief fling, before she gravitated to Robby. Lynn and Robby would marry in 1972.
Celebrating Toots' birthday! Reggae gets that name from this song!
The Scottish group One Dove brought together Dot Allison, Ian Carmichael, and Jim McKinven -- this track brought Stephen Hague in to perform a remix