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Thursday, Jan 26 2023, 7AM
Bowie came up with this after he was asked to put English lyrics to a French song called "Comme d'habitude." Paul Anka ultimately bought the rights to the original French song and rewrote it in English as "My Way," later made famous by Frank Sinatra. "Life On Mars?" uses practically the same chords as "My Way" and the "Hunky Dory" liner notes state that the song is "inspired by Frankie."
Watch the official video for "Life on Mars?": www.youtube.com.
If you're of a certain age this song will always make you think of the 1990 film. Pump Up the Volume. A favorite of protagonist Mark Hunter (Christian Slater, as the operator of an FM pirate radio station), Cohen's song is played from an on-screen phonograph several times during Mark's clandestine broadcasts. A cover by Concrete Blonde is used at the film's end, and it is this cover version that made it onto the film's soundtrack album rather than Cohen's version.
Talk hard!
Allan Dias, bassist for PIL on "Seattle":
“A song like "Seattle", which came from a couple of riffs that Bruce and Lu Edmonds had, they brought it to me and I put a bass line on it, sitting on a bed in a hotel room! It was a nice bouncy groove, but it was nothing until John sang on that. Once he added some vocals to it, I was flipped out, it just became amazing.”
Although Smashing Pumpkins would achieve international fame with their second and third albums — "Siamese Dream" and "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness," they first caught some attention with the release of their debut disc, "Gish," which arrived on May 28, 1991.
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Read a track-by-track breakdown of "Gish" here: bit.ly
Richard Ashcroft told Q magazine in 2017 that he considers this to be his favorite song that he's ever written, "because it seems to be able to ignite or connect with an energy every time it's performed, without fail."
He added: "I'll have to be on death's door not to be able to connect to the energy with the audience and that's something special. It's a rarity to express that feeling, to try and seize that moment when you're on top of the world and you're stood there naked smiling, like it says."
At the time of the release of this song, "Britpop" was attempting to encapsulate all things British in its music and thus create a sort of soundtrack for the time. John Harris said in his book The Last Party: "Blur's 'The Universal' identified a condition of tranquilized (and very British) denial as the illness of the modern age."
www.songfacts.com
Happy birthday Remy! The big 6!
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Animal is the first single from the band's 2009 self-titled debut album.
Here's Miike Snow performing live in the KEXP studio in 2009. - www.youtube.com
Billy Nomates second album CACTI is out now!
Speaking of the process of writing the new album, Billy Nomates – aka Tor Maries – said: “Writing ‘CACTI’ took just over a year. I wrote very intensely and then none at all. (This seems to be the way I work best).
“I picked up old drum machines, mapped out things in my kitchen with the same small micro keyboard I always use and then raided the cupboards and rooms at Invada Studios, to play and experiment with old synths, an upright piano, this weird organ thing. I hope everyone finds their own narrative in ‘CACTI’. I think it’s about surviving it all.”
bit.ly
billynomates.bandcamp.com
In a 2001 interview with Q Magazine, PJ Harvey called Stories From the City... "pop according to PJ Harvey, which is probably as un-pop as you can get according to most people's standards."
Before there was a song called “Gloria,” there was a poem called “Oath.” Smith wrote “Oath” in 1970, opening with a line that wouldn’t become famous for five more years: “Jesus died for somebody sins but not mine.” A giant kiss-off to her Jehovah’s Witness upbringing, the poem rattled off lines like “Christ, I’m giving you the goodbye, firing you tonight.” That poem and a loud bass note became the basis for "Gloria." Read the story of the origin of this great song: www.covermesongs.com
Paste Magazine ranked all 69 songs on the album and they only put this one at #65! Here's what they had to say:
"Points have been deducted for toxic levels of “nice guy-ism” here. Sure, this syndrome had not been as thoroughly studied at the time of the album’s release as it is today, and it was severely under diagnosed, but that isn’t really an excuse. At least it’s slightly self aware, but not enough to save itself."
They need to lighten up.
www.pastemagazine.com
Brand new song from the upcoming album, due out April 28th. americanmary.com
The album it features guest appearances from National pals Taylor Swift, Sufjan Stevens, and Phoebe Bridgers!
See them at Marymoor park on June 4th!
Matt Berninger and his wife Carin Besser wrote the lyrics. The title is a term the couple use to describe the habit of obsessively scrolling through negative news. The song looks at how constantly consuming negative news can lead to isolation and sadness, making it difficult to form meaningful human connections.
"The idea of referring to the darkness of the news in such a light way unlocked something in me," said Matt. "It became a song about having a hard time expressing yourself and trying to connect with someone when the noise of the world is drowning out any potential for conversation."
Because this song always sounds good. Fact.
Check out Bob Mould performing "Hoover Dam' Live on KEXP in 2013: youtu.be
After the well-received first EP “Of My Mind” released in the spring of 2019, the Seattle based 4-piece Tourist Activities is back with a two-track single “Wrong Side / Oh For One” via fellow DIY label Den Tapes, as a preview from their forthcoming debut album
touristactivities.bandcamp.com
In 2016, Pitchfork ranked 'Ferment' at No. 23 on its list of "The 50 Best Shoegaze Albums of All Time", with reviewer Ben Cardew commenting that "a good half of the songs on Ferment [...] are enduring shoegaze-disco classics, while 'Black Metallic', in its full seven-minute glory, makes a strong claim to being the genre's 'Stairway to Heaven'." In 2017, Paste ranked the album at No. 6 on its list of "10 Shoegaze Albums for People Who Don't Like Shoegaze".
Object of Affection are playing with Glitterer at The Vera Project on March 7th!
Object Of Affection — a Los Angeles band featuring members who have played in Fury, Warfare, Lock, and Death Bells have announced their first full length album, Field Of Appearances, out March 3rd
The Dandy Warhols are performing at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland on March 16 with the Oregon Symphony!
This track was also on The Dandys' second album, "...The Dandy Warhols Come Down." Rolling Stone called it "the most exhilarating '60s-into-'90s excursion yet attempted by an American band.": www.slabtown.net
On December 11, 1965, the Velvets appeared at the Summit High School Auditorium for one of their first paid gigs, alongside two other bands since long forgotten. Their set began with this song, then went to "Venus In Furs," and finished with "Heroin." At a high school. Sterling Morrison later recounted in a 1983 interview that a "murmur of surprise" changed to "a roar of disbelief" and then to "a mighty howl of outrage and bewilderment" over the course of their three-song set.
www.songfacts.com
The new album, Islands in the Sky, is due out February 23rd!
Bandleader Bonnie Bloomgarden said of the track:
Over the past few years I learned you have to feel and move through your feelings or they get stuck, and then you become a vessel or container for all the feelings you are trying to avoid! If you acknowledge, feel, and process them, you get to release and move them out of you! This song is to honor that process! Feel your feelings, be so sad you wanna cry forever, and then move on, you gotta keep moving!
Watch their 2019 in-studio (hosted by Troy Nelson) here: bit.ly
Formed in 1985 in Portsmouth, England by siblings Alison and Jim Shaw and named after the many mechanical cranes around the city's docks, Cranes are best known for the singular childlike vocals of lead singer Alison.
bit.ly
'Shining Road' is the opening track off their third album, released in 1994.
"Fuse,' the first new album in 24 years (!) from trip-hop duo Everything But The Girl (married couple Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn) arrives on April 21st.
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The duo started writing the new LP back in March 2021 and recorded it in secret, both at home and in a small studio outside Bath, England, with engineer Bruno Ellingham. “We were aware of the pressures of such a long-awaited comeback, so we tried to begin instead in a spirit of open-minded playfulness, uncertain of the direction, receptive to invention,” Thorn said in a statement.
Bassist Mark King, whose percussive slap bass technique provided the driving groove for this and other Level 42 hits, is known as the "Man with the Golden Thumb." He is such a good bass player that his hands were insured in the late 1980s for a fortune.
Many of the songs on the album were influenced by Smith's departure. "A lot of the songs were written while I was in a sense going through the 'divorce,'" Orzabal told The Washington Post in 1993. "Things like 'Break It Down Again' refer to that to some degree, and 'Fish Out of Water,' obviously. I did psychotherapy for about six years. I stopped going regularly when I'd finished Elemental, which I think probably says something. I think I'm moving on."
Smith returned to the band in 2004.
tearsforfears.com
This Irish post-punk band will be at The Vera Project on Monday, April 10th, 2023.
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NME calls "Gigi's Recovery" the "first great guitar album of 2023": www.nme.com
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah performed this live on KEXP back in 2015: www.youtube.com
Hibou is the solo project of former Craft Spells touring drummer Peter Michel. Born in Seattle and now based in Paris, his just-released EP "Arc" is his first release since his 2019 full-length LP "Halve." Engineered and produced by Michel himself, the multi-instrumentalist also performs vocals, guitar and bass on each track, with drums courtesy of Jase Ihler. : hibouband.bandcamp.com
Hibou's most recent stop by the KEXP Studio was in 2019: bit.ly
Bad news for fans of Belle And Sebastian - they're cancelling their North American tour. As bandleader Stuart Murdoch noted in his statement, he’s been suffering from serious health issues for some time, writing that, “As you might be aware my health took a dive around November 2022. While I am hoping that I will improve over the coming months, we felt it would be a safer route to cancel this tour and leave a clear path to recovery, rather than take a risk and have to cancel at the last minute.”
We hope he's better soon!
Dave Wakeling, who sang and played guitar in General Public, told Songfacts about writing this song: "I used to like traveling with the trucks that carried the gear. I'd always been a big fan of that TV show Cannonball when I was a kid, and thought that the idea of American trucks was very romantic. So when we came on tour, I used to love to drive overnight with the truck drivers and talk rubbish on the CB in there. And so it was as if the trucks were driving in what's called 'the endless gray river.' And the notion was that you were driving around in there in America searching for the tenderness, whereas, of course, it's in your heart all the time. So it's like you're looking in the outside world for something that can only be discovered in yourself, because love is a verb, not a noun. That was the notion of it."
Hi,
Could you play Three Little Birds by Bob Marley? I need a bit of sweetness and optimism today.
Many thanks!
Leslie
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This uplifting tune from Bob Marley & The Wailers' ninth studio album, Exodus, is famous for its reassuring refrain, "Don't worry 'bout a thing, 'cause every little thing is gonna be alright" – a message Marley received from the birds that frequented his porch stoop in Kingston, Jamaica. "That really happened," he told Sounds magazine. "That's where I get my inspiration." bit.ly
Released in 2005, 'Illinois' is Sufjan Steven's fifth studio album. The album is filled with songs celebrating the state of Illinois. This was Stevens' second album based on a U.S. state, the first being his 2003 album 'Michigan'. Both were part of his ambitious "50 States" project, which he has since acknowledged as a joke. bit.ly
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Read NPR's tribute to "Chicago," a "song we love": www.npr.org
This tale of anxiety and self-harm was very real to Sia. The very night she wrote it, she attempted suicide by taking 22 Valium and downing a bottle of vodka, something she didn't reveal until a series of interviews in 2018. After, a phone call from an old friend convinced her to get sober.
You are not alone. There are great people who want to help. Reach out if you need it. www.kexp.org
Robert Smith said that the songs "Mesmerise" by Chapterhouse, and "Human" by The Human League were an influence on the album, he commented on both songs in 1993: "For every album we do, I assemble a bunch of songs that have something that I'm trying to capture. For Wish, I would listen to 'Mesmerise' by Chapterhouse for its feeling of abandon and 'Human' by The Human League. You couldn't spot anything sonically or structurally that would influence anything we did, but there's an indefinable something that I'm trying to capture. One night I must have played 'Mesmerise' 20 times, drinking and turning it louder and louder, putting myself into a trance."
Mike Score, the Flock frontman revealed the meaning behind this song:
"'Space Age' was just about intimacy, if you'd like. When you meet somebody there is an instant eye contact if the chemistry is right. If everything is right, you catch their eye... that whole 'across the crowded room/caught your eye' thing. The lyrics explain that: 'I saw your eyes and you made me smile.'"
Ladytron are playing the Neptune on May 10th!
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A press release said “City of Angels” “inverts sensuous imagery into a vision of a near future collapse of cultural memory.” Ladytron’s Daniel Hunt added: “It’s about forgetting…how fragile it is…not about one particular place or other, but a merging of them.”
www.ladytron.com
Smut is the Chicago-based band composed of Tay Roebuck (vocals), Andrew Min (guitar), Bell Cenower (bass/synth), Sam Ruschman (guitar/synth), and Aidan O'Connor (drums).
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Here's a review of their second album, "How the Light Felt": pitchfork.com
Olympia's Waves Crashing are hosting a release party for 'The Viewing' on March 2nd at the Spanish Ballroom in Tacoma! They're also plying LoFi on March 24th!
wavescrashing.net
