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Thursday, Feb 9 2023, 7AM
Happy birthday to Carole King! She is the most successful female songwriter of the latter half of the 20th century in the US, having written or co-written 118 pop hits on the Billboard Hot 100.
Check out 12 famous songs you may not know she wrote: www.biography.com
Kacey Musgraves paid tribute to Loretta Lynn on Sunday night during the 2023 Grammy Awards, performing Coal Miner's Daughter.
Tayla Lynn, Loretta’s granddaughter, said that watching Musgraves’ performance made her feel as if Lynn “was with us.” “The roses, the red dress, the long black hair with bare feet. Playing Memaw’s guitar. We all cried and we all knew Kacey was the perfect choice,” Lynn tells Rolling Stone. “The simplicity radiated Memaw’s presence. It was a heartbreaking moment full of love.”
www.rollingstone.com
This is a cover of the 1988 song from When In Rome.
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Sturgill Simpson performed it live in the UK in 2020: www.youtube.com
Young wrote this about the caretaker of the ranch he bought, Louis Avila. The ranch was the Broken Arrow Ranch, purchased for $350,000 in 1970 (just think about those real estate prices compared to now!). Reportedly, Avila was giving Young a tour of the place and asked him how a young man like him could afford a place like this. Young, aged 25, replied "Just lucky, Louie, just real lucky."
The Independent asked Guy Garvey which were his favorite lyrics of all the ones that he had written. The Elbow frontman replied: "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."
Peter Gabriel has released the Dark-Side Mix of a new song titled “The Court,” the second offering from his upcoming album i/o.
"I had this idea for ‘the court will rise’ chorus, so it became a free-form, impressionistic lyric that connected to justice, but there’s a sense of urgency there,” Gabriel said in a statement. “A lot of life is a struggle between order and chaos, and in some senses, the justice or legal system is something that we impose to try and bring some element of order to the chaos. That’s often abused, it’s often unfair and discriminatory, but at the same time, it’s probably an essential part of a civilized society. But we do need to think sometimes about how that is actually realized and employed."
petergabriel.bandcamp.com
Phantogram released their debut album, 'Eyelid Movies', 13 years ago today!
They performed this song live at The Triple Door for KEXP VIP Club members in 2013: www.youtube.com
The Cure released "Hot Hot Hot!!!" on this day in 1988! The song reached number 45 in the UK, in Ireland it reached number 18, in Spain it reached the Top 10, and in the United States, the song reached number 68 on the Billboard Hot 100
Midnight Oil released the album Blue Sky Mining 33 years ago today!
The lead single, "Blue Sky Mine", refers to the Wittenoom asbestos mine in Western Australia where blue asbestos was mined between 1947 and 1966. The once-thriving town is now a virtual ghost town. Shops are boarded up, the two schools are closed, the local cinema is derelict. In their ignorance, the original settlers used asbestos in gardens, school yards and roads. Wittenoom is without doubt Australia's greatest industrial disaster and it is estimated that 25% of the 20,000 men who mined asbestos there will die from related diseases.
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Watch Midnight Oil performing "Blue Sky Mine" live in Paris in 2019: www.youtube.com
"Really Really Light," co-written by AC Newman and Dan Bejar, is The New Pornographer's first single off their forthcoming album, Continue as a Guest, out March 31!
This track was originally written for the band's 2014 album 'Brill Bruisers'-- “Part of my process throughout the years has been messing with things I never finished,” Newman said of this song. bit.ly
Check out their most recent in studio performance at KEXP: www.youtube.com www.thenewpornographers.com
Another great release on this day, this time Dinosaur Jr's album, 'Where You Been" is the big 3-0!
Check out this article in glide magazine reviting this breakthrough album: glidemagazine.com
Local group Spirit Award is releasing their new album, The Fear, on May 19th! "Pushing Forward" is the first single. Pre-order the upcoming record: spiritaward.bandcamp.com
The group writes: "'The Fear' album is an exploration of the supernatural, love, dreaming/waking, and most of all facing the things that scare you or you think you can’t do, all encompassed in a warping and changing landscape, shedding your perceived notions of what you think life or the world is and being open to new ideas or experiences."
Check out Spirit Award's 2018 in studio performance : www.youtube.com
www.spiritawardmusic.com
The new album, out on January 27th, is "A heavenly neo-psychedelic roots odyssey, infused with soul fire, dusty grooves & storming rock, featuring a top-shelf crew of studio luminaries (including the late Richard Swift). Produced by Dan Auerbach & Leon Michels."
KEXP's Emily Fox spoke with Leon Michels about how the album was recorded while Richard Swift was alive and how “the process of finishing the record helped me and Dan [Auerbach] grieve his death.”
Check it out on Sound & Vision: www.kexp.org
www.thearcs.com
Algiers will be at Madame Lou's on Sunday, March 26th! Get tickets here: bit.ly
They call the new album, 'Shook': "a defiant, genre-eclipsing, technicolor Atlanta front porch party." Pre-order "Shook" on vinyl and digital: algierstheband.bandcamp.com
Check out Algiers 2017 in studio session: www.youtube.com
'Black Panther: The Album' was also released on this day!
The lead single from the soundtrack to Marvel's 2018 Black Panther is the first song from a Marvel Studios film to receive an Academy Award nomination for best song.
Sza will be at Climate Pledge with Omar Apollo on March 16!
Mariana "Ladybug Mecca" Vieira - with Craig "Doodlebug" Irving and Seattle's own Ishmael "Butterfly" Butler - and the album-versary of Digable Planets' 1993 debut album 'Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space)'.
On "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)" they sampled Fred Wesley and The J.B.'s 1974 "Blow Your Head" and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers' 1978 "Stretching."
In 2016, the trio performed live for KEXP from the Kex Hostel in Iceland:
youtu.be
New Music! Jazz quintet Ezra Collective covers Fela Kuti's "Lady." The track is a tribute to the Afrobeat pioneer and a celebration of his enduring legacy.
ezracollective.bandcamp.com
The Smile — the Radiohead side project featuring Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood alongside drummer Tom Skinner — played “The Opposite” live in the KEXP studio on December 15, 2022. Watch it here - www.youtube.com
Local writer Ijeoma Oluo was lucky enough to be in attendace during The Smile's recent in-studio session! She wrote a feature for KEXP called "Reflecting on The Smile's Performance at KEXP." You can read it here: bit.ly
Happy birthday to Holly Johnson, lead singer of Frankie Goes to Hollywood! Want to know whatever happened to him? bit.ly
"These lyrics speak to the unwavering power some leaders have over their followers, a power sometimes based more on charisma than the actual impact or effect that any of their deeds might cause." americansongwriter.com
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See the video for this groundbreaking 1988 release: youtu.be
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livingcolour.com
The Race for Space is the second studio album by British alternative group Public Service Broadcasting. Working with sound samples from the British Film Institute, the album relives the story of the American and Soviet space race from 1957–1972. This track features the speech by John F. Kennedy on September 12, 1962 at Rice University.
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Here's Public Service Broadcasting performing live in the KEXP studio in 2017: www.youtube.com
"Go" commemorates the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, piloted by Neil Armstrong, with Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, the first manned landing on the moon. Armstrong landed the "Eagle" lunar module at 20:17:40 UTC on Sunday, July 20 1969, with roughly 50 seconds of fuel remaining.
Public Service Broadcasting performed "Go!" live in the KEXP studio in 2017:
youtu.be
"Go!" was a KEXP Song of the Day in 2015.
www.kexp.org
publicservicebroadcasting.bandcamp.com
New album coming March 23rd the same day they start a world tour! No Seattle date, you'll have to head to California.
Though Memori Mento means “Remember you must die,” Gore says it isn’t meant ominously, especially in light of Depeche Mode co-founder Andy “Fletch” Fletcher’s sudden death in May 2022 from an aortic dissection. “I don’t think it’s a morbid title.” Gore told SPIN. “I like to look at it positively, like, ‘Make the most of your life. Life’s short.’”
The new album is out March 23rd!
Burt Bacharach, the composer and bandleader whose elegant melodies dominated pop radio for several decades, has died at the age of 94.
During his heyday in the Sixties, Bacharach — along with his earliest and most productive partner, lyricist Hal David — wrote songs that became both hits and eventually standards. Among their many classics were “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” “The Look of Love,” “Walk on By,” “Always Something There to Remind Me,” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” and this track, "What the World Needs Now."
www.rollingstone.com
Produced by Burt Bacharach...
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While working with the Drifters, Bacharach met a Jersey-born gospel and pop singer, Dionne Warwick (then Warrick), who was part of a female backup group supporting the Drifters. “After the first rehearsal, Burt approached me and asked me if I could do some demonstration records of songs he was writing,” Warwick said later.
“Right from the first time I ever saw Dionne, I thought she had a very special kind of grace and elegance,” Bacharach said in 2013. “She had really high cheekbones and long legs, and she was wearing sneakers, and her hair was in pigtails. The more Hal and I worked with her, the more we saw what she could do. Dionne could sing that high, and she could sing that low.”
RIP Burt Bacharach
www.rollingstone.com
Raised on jazz and classical and not rock and roll, Bacharach brought a level of melodic sophistication and romanticism — unconventional 5/4 time signatures, melodies that didn’t stick to standard iambic pentameter — into the Top 40. “Odd bar lines, odd time signatures, things that musicians couldn’t play in the studio when we were recording,” Bacharach said in 1979. “I was always swimming upstream, breaking rules.”
RIP Burt Bacharach
Burt Bacharach described this Naked Giants version as "very nice"
www.rollingstone.com
Warwick, and her first single with Bacharach and David, “Don’t Make Me Over,” marked the beginning of a remarkable union of Warwick’s supple voice, Bacharach’s complex melodies and David’s conversational lyrics. Later singles like the frisky “I Say a Little Prayer” and the bossa-nova-inspired “Walk on By” both hit the top 10. But those were only a few of the glorious pop records that emerged from that trio, which also included “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” “Message to Michael,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” “Promises, Promises,” “Alfie,” “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself” and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” which all hit the Top 40 or Top 10.
RIP Burt Bacharach
www.rollingstone.com
Aretha Franklin recorded this song Burt Bacharach written song less than a year after Warwick's version was released. In the UK, Aretha's recording was the big hit, making #4 (her highest-charting UK single after "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)," which hit #1). In the US, Aretha's version - produced by Atlantic Records head Jerry Wexler - was first released as the B-side of "The House That Jack Built," but quickly flipped when it was apparent that "Prayer" was the hit. Her cover went to #10 in the US.
The thread connecting these two versions of the song is the backup singers, the Sweet Inspirations. After performing on the original, the singers found themselves working with Aretha Franklin, who started singing it with them during sessions for her Aretha Now album. She came up with an original arrangement, and when Wexler heard it, he insisted on recording the song.
Burt Bacharach said that he likes Aretha's version the best, describing it as "much better than the cut I did with Dionne."
RIP Burt Bacharach
"The Look Of Love" was written by Bacharach for the movie Casino Royale. In the same Record Collector interview he discussed writing specifically for a film: "When I'm scoring a picture, whether it's Butch Cassidy or Casino Royale or What's New Pussycat?, all those melodies that turned into what became hit songs came from what I saw on the screen when I was scoring and what I heard. The first thing is you service the motion picture. If you're lucky enough and you have a theme that turns into a hit whether it was Dusty (Springfield) singing 'The Look Of Love' in Casino Royale, what was most important there was the sexuality of Ursula Andress wearing very little clothes and making very sexy theme with the saxophone playing the melody of 'The Look Of Love.' Then we put Dusty on. First and foremost is it's written for the picture, you don't force it in."
RIP Burt Bacharach
Burt Bacharach (from Record Collector magazine):
"'Walk On By' was the first time that I tried putting two grand pianos on a record in the studio. I can't remember if I played and Artie Butler played or if Paul Griffin and Artie Butler played but here were two grand pianos going on. I knew the song had something. It was a great date. I walked out of that studio and we had done two tunes in a three-hour session, 'Walk On By' and 'Anyone Who Had A Heart.' I felt very good leaving knowing that I had two monster hits on my hands. You never know for sure but you feel a great satisfaction."
RIP Burt Bacharach
Hayes' version of this Bacharach/Warrick song was originally 12 minutes long, and reduced to 5 minutes for airplay. Tim Burgess (frontman of The Charlatans UK) said about "Walk On By": "The song involves tears in the street, unrequited love and Groundhog Day-style heartbreak. If you listen properly it's everything but easy listening. It's utter devastation."
RIP Burt Bacharach
The Stranglers’ surprising take on “Walk On By,” the Hal David and Burt Bacharach composition originally popularized by Dionne Warwick in 1963, probably hurt their reputation with die-hard punk fans. Has a feel of The Doors about it.
RIP Burt Bacharach
This was written by Burt Bacharach for Peter Sellers' character in the movie What's New Pussycat? He told Record Collector magazine: "It was an instrumental first and then words were put on it. If it's got a good melody it can always fit the lyric."
RIP Burt Bacharach
Watch Bill Frisell Trio Bless a socially distant Brooklyn concert with “What The World Needs Now”
livemusicblog.com
Just last month Elvis Costello announced a box set out in March - "The Songs of Bacharach & Costello" celebrating three decades of songwriting partnership.
www.elviscostello.com
RIP Burt Bacharach
This was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David for Dionne Warwick, who released it as the B-side of her 1963 single "This Empty Place." Springfield recorded it later in 1963, and it became her first American Top 10.
Bacharach commented: "I remember talking Dusty into putting the record out. Dusty was always very insecure, about what to release, about her voice. What a great singer. Powerful. She was a great girl. 'Wishing And Hopin'' was great and it was a big hit."
RIP Burt Bacharach
Burt Bacharach said: "I had just gotten out of the hospital. I'd been on the road and gotten pneumonia. We were on the road with Promises, Promises and we'd try to get this song written and into the show the next night or two nights later. That's where Hal's line came from, 'what do you do when you kiss a girl, you get another germs to catch pneumonia, after you do she'll never phone ya.' So having been in the hospital for five days with pneumonia, I got out and struggled to write that song feeling not too great. You should take a rest after that and not go back into the Broadway show environment out on the road!"
RIP Burt Bacharach
The staying power of Burt Bacharach tracks and the myriad interpretations and covers... his impact is immeasurable.
RIP Burt Bacharach
Covering Burt Bacharach's 1965 tune on this standalone single.
“I wanted to release a song with a message of hope,” says Chan Marshall. “‘What the world needs now is love sweet love,’ is a lyric we all can embrace right now.”
Dusty Springfield, whose first solo recordings had included covers of the Bacharach/David compositions "Anyone Who Had a Heart" and "Wishin' and Hopin' " - had brought back "I Just Don't Know..." from an overnight trip to New York City where she met up with Bacharach in February 1964.
RIP Burt Bacharach
In addition to the Dusty Springfield and Dionne Warwick versions of this Bacharach song there are at least 24 others according to wikipedia, including this one by the White Stripes.
en.wikipedia.org
RIP Burt Bacharach
If you grew up in the Nineties, this cameo in 'Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery' is probably your first memory of Bacharach
www.rollingstone.com
Lyricist Hal David on "What the World Needs Now":
"We showed the song to Dionne Warwick, who had recorded many of our songs, and it is the only song of ours that she ever turned down. We put it aside and then received a call from Liberty Records to meet with Jackie DeShannon. We played this song for her and she wanted to do it. Burt did a great arrangement and we recorded it."
Dionne Warwick evidently changed her mind, as she did later record the song for her 1966 album Here Where There Is Love."
RIP Burt Bacharach
Welcome to the Midday Show with the wonderful Cheryl Waters!!
"Walk On By" is a song originally composed by Burt Bacharach, who passed away yesterday at 94 years old. Cake covered it for their album Prolonging the Magic.