John Richards

Go back to 1992 to see a youthful Pearl Jam performing this one live on "MTV Unplugged": www.youtube.com

Interviewer: Was it an easy song to write? Dramarama's John Easdale: Because of my personal turmoil, it was the easiest thing in the world. I wish they were all like that—sans the turmoil, of course. Here's how a single song defined a band: www.vice.com -- Watch an out-of-focus live video of the band performing "Anything Anything": www.youtube.com

You know "there ain't no party in a sad, sad city...." -- Someone wrote, "'Sad Sad City' soon became one of my new favorite songs. It’s like if Daft Punk and Prince had a baby." Watch Ghostland Observatory performing "Sad Sad City" live in Austin: bit.ly -- Then, watch the late Chris Cornell perform an acoustic version of this song: www.youtube.com

“Mexican Radio” is a single from Wall of Voodoo’s second album, Call of the West (1982). The release label, I.R.S. Records, was unwilling to invest much in promotion, but the band spent a couple of days in Tijuana to make a video for the song. MTV (Music Television) was still a new cable channel at the time, and the era of the music video was heating up. The video was a hit. Once the song was established on MTV, US radio stations started playing it, too, and it became the band’s highest charting single in the United States. Here's that special video.: www.youtube.com

Nation of Language will definitely perform this song at the Day In Day Out Festival in Seattle on Sunday, August 13th. -- "Rush & Fever" was selected by John as KEXP's Song of the Day back in 2020. www.kexp.org

Did you know that Phil Collins is playing the drums here? The song was written by Plant, bassist Paul Martinez, and guitarist Robbie Blunt.

No, that's not Bono on the lead vocals for this U2 song. Producer Brian Eno tried to get songwriter Bono to sing the song, but Bono maintained it was Cash's voice he imagined singing the song. -- In the band's autobiography "U2 by U2", Bono explained the lyrical inspiration: "I wrote the lyric based on the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament, which in some translation is called The Preacher. It's a story of intellectual wanderlust. The preacher wants to find out the meaning of life and so he tries a bit of everything. He tries knowledge, educates himself, reads every book, but that doesn't do it. He tries travel, sees every sight, but that doesn't do it. He tries wine, women and song, that doesn't do it. All, he says, is vanity, vanity of vanities, striving after wind. As you read this book you think, 'I can't wait to hear what does do it!' And the most extraordinary line is: 'There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour.' Love your work. That's what it is. It is good to love what you do. I think there's a lot to that."

Prince Rogers Nelson....Here's the official video for this classic song: www.youtube.com

"Just like his dad, just like his dad (The same mistakes)..." It has been speculated that this song is about US president George W. Bush, but these claims have been denied by the band on multiple occasions. Kele Okereke stated that he’d actually written the lyrics of “Helicopter” about himself. He said, "It’s frustrating that people attribute something to certain songs and that’s not what they’re about at all. It’s a common misconception that “Helicopter” is about President Bush. It’s kinda patronizing."

Go back to 2010 to our old studio (See those Christmas tree lights hanging on the wall?) to watch The Wedding Present perform "Kennedy" live: www.youtube.com

Happy birthday to Yusuf/Cat Stevens, born on this date in 1948. Here's one list of the best Cat Stevens songs of all time: singersroom.com Yusuf/Cat Stevens just performed this song live at Glastonbury this year, more than 50 years after its initial release. Watch the crowd sing along: www.youtube.com

Didn't we hear Johnny Cash singing a U2 song earlier? -- Check out Ray Charles and Johnny Cash performing "Ring of Fire" together on the Johnny Cash TV Show in 1970: www.youtube.com

The song was written by Andrew Eldritch for bassist Patricia Morrison, who, he said: "always strikes me as a Lucrezia [Borgia]-type person." --- The lyrics "once a railroad, now it's done" are a reference to "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime," a 1932 song about the disastrous effect the Great Depression had on the American way of life. : www.azlyrics.com

Good morning, John. Since you asked for requests, I might have to dig out my request for Big Black, since I haven't done that in a while... Many thanks! --Daniel -- This song (and its namesake EP) was named and written for Racer X, the mysterious masked rival and secret brother of Speed Racer. From the liner notes: The guy was just plain cool, see. He was Rex, Speed Racer’s brother, but nobody knew it. It was a big secret. Really big. Speed Racer was a pansy-ass wimp next to Racer-X. Speed, spying, machinery, little beads of sweat — he had it all. He was hooked on the excitement. Hooked on the speed. Hooked.

Written by Ray Davies and recorded for The Kinks' 1964 self-titled debut album, this was later covered by The Pretenders as their first single. The Pretenders' recording of the song led to the relationship between Davies and the band's frontwoman Chrissie Hynde, which eventually resulted in the birth of a child. -- In order to convince guitarist James Honeyman-Scott to join the Pretenders, Chrissie Hynde hired one of his favorite recording artists, Nick Lowe, to produce this song.

Eno’s groundbreaking solo debut album, made after he left Roxy Music, released in 1973. Brian Eno wrote this with Phil Manzanera, one of his colleagues from Roxy Music. Manzanera plays guitar on the song.

"The meaning of existence Can't be supplied by religion or ideology...": genius.com -- Those are the voices of Laetitia Sadler and Mary Hansen—the group’s second vocalist from 1992 until 2002, when she was killed cycling in London.

"First of all, it has a great title, one that grabs you immediately even if it has only an impressionistic connection to the song itself. Then there’s the music, as propulsive, melodic and tough as anything that came out of the British New Wave era. But what ultimately makes 'Love Vigilantes' one of New Order’s most memorable tracks is a story with a kind of choose-your-own-interpretation ending." Read this discussion of the song that established New Order as its own entity separate from Joy Division: americansongwriter.com

“When I first made that, I felt stupid,” French indie-pop artist Anthony Gonzalez said in 2011, the same year he unleashed the song. “It’s my voice under heavy distortion, and I was feeling so dumb doing those high-pitched vocals while my girlfriend was sleeping downstairs.” The song that made Gonzalez feel “dumb” ended up being the lead single for M83’s magnum opus, "Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming," Here's a 2021 retrospective on this song on its 10th anniversary: www.mtv.com

Ahhh...the Friday song! -- Good. Morning. Last week, you were so kind to play this request and shout out Camp Goodtimes. Just a camp follow up: this place ROCKS. We've been celebrating being a "regular kid" all week with cancer taking a backseat. What an incredible force they have been to remind us to live each day to the fullest, to spread joy, love and what brought us to camp isn't what defines us. Can you send out one more shout? Can The Friday Song be for them? Thanks for all you do. Anne Marie in Texas (now in the Seattle area) -- "The Goodtimes Project is a 501(c)3 non-profit dedicated to raising money for and producing programs that support the children, siblings, and families in Washington and Alaska dealing with pediatric cancer. We believe that until there is a cure, there is camp.": www.thegoodtimesproject.org

M/A/R/R/S was a one-off collaboration between members of A.R. Kane (Alex and Rudi Kane) and Colourbox (Martin and Steve Young), both veteran 4AD artists. They took their name from the four collaborator's initials plus that of label boss Ivo Watts-Russell, who suggested they get together. -- The song derives its title directly from a lyrical sample from "I Know You Got Soul", a hit single by labelmates Eric B. & Rakim, released months in 1987. Here's that Eric B. & Rakim song for your consideration: www.youtube.com

This song sampled the vocals from "Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaataa and Soulsonic Force. It also borrows the rhythm of Killing Joke's "Change," which was a favorite beat that James Murphy would play when warming up when DJing. -- Murphy says about this debut single, "To me, 'Losing My Edge' was the perfect narrative song that could have ever come from me. Everything had a layer behind it. Was it making fun of other people? Sure. Was it making fun of myself for making fun of other people? Sure. But it was also about me kind of believing the things I was saying, and it was also about being a little embarrassed for being the kind of person who would believe those kinds of things."

This cowbell crashing cult classic was produced by James Murphy. You won't want to skip this live performance on The Letterman Show in 2003: www.youtube.com -- You want "more cowbell"?: www.youtube.com

Whale, whale, whale...what have we here? --- Request for the only song guaranteed to make me stop whatever I’m doing and immediately start dancing (squirrels be damned)… Whale "Hobo Humpin Slobo Babe” --Jeff, Menlo Park, CA --- Someone wrote, "I remember hearing this song and wondering if Bjork and the Beastie Boys got into a car accident together." See the award-winning video: www.youtube.com.

Pop Will Eat Itself (PWEI) got their name from the headline of a newspaper article about the band Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, who in turn got their name from the headline of a small town newspaper article about a recently deceased old man named Carter who had had a voracious sexual appetite. -- The sample in which a male voice is heard yelling "Can you dig it?" several times and the female voice at the beginning of the track saying "Let's get down to it, boppers..." were taken from the cult classic 1979 U.S. action film The Warriors. The song also samples "Black is Black" by Belle Epoque and Faith No More's "We Care a Lot."

:I've seen her naked twice!" -- Enjoy this review of Art Brut's terrific debut album, "Bang Bang Rock & Roll": pitchfork.com

"The raw spirit of indie rock. An amplified, rocking version of ’60s protest folk. The soulful passion of the Violent Femmes and The Waterboys.” All of these comparisons have been made in attempts to describe Delta Spirit, the southern California five-piece...": thevogue.com -- Watch the San Diego band combine this song with "Shout":www.youtube.com

On Sunday night, July 30th, Fishbone will be at The Paramount Theatre with Parliament-Funkadelic and Georg Clinton. -- See Fishbone performing live in the KEXP studio in 2016: www.youtube.com

Just got word that my partner's dear friend Nancy has been declared cancer free! Kevin actually closed out his Music Heals: Cancer Day by reading her story, and we are over the moon down here. If you could play any Tom Petty for Nancy, it would be amazing. Hope you enjoy your time off, John! John (Los Angeles) -- The lysergic, Alice in Wonderland-themed video starred Petty as a smirking Mad Hatter, young actress Wish Foley as an edible Alice, and the song’s co-writer, Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart, as a ‘shrooming, sitar-strumming caterpillar. It has gone down in pop history as one of the greatest videos of all time, but not without controversy. While it may seem tame now, that infamous cake-cutting scene, which featured Petty and his tea-partying Heartbreakers slicing and gobbling up Alice’s layer-caked torso, caused such a fuss 38 years ago that it was partially responsible for Tipper Gore launching the Parents Music Resource Center.: www.youtube.com

Robert writes: Thanks for sending that tribute out to Jessie Kwak just now. I'm her husband of 14 years and that really made her day. Crying now, but wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart. 🥂🥂❤️❤️

If it suits you, could you play You’re Not Always on My Mind by the Quivers. My fiancé Elijah and I leave for our Honeymoon in Portugal a month from today and it’s very much on our mind! Heard this song first on your radio show and we’ve both developed quite a liking for it! Have fun on Vacation, --Jamie from Richmond, VA -- Happy marriage, Jamie and Elijah!! -- John selected this wonderful song as a KEXP Song of the Day: www.kexp.org

What song captures the feeling of community? Maybe the Helio Sequence’s JITM-inspired “You’re not alone” ? Thank you for the Sad Sad City before. But bigger thanks for sharing the stories of other listeners.-Peter -- This is the message of The Morning Show ---You Are Not Alone.

OMG, watch Bruce Springsteen performing "Born to Run" live: www.youtube.com -- Springsteen played this song for the first time on May 9, 1974 when he opened for Bonnie Raitt at Harvard Square. Rock critic Jon Landau was at the show and wrote in Boston's Real Paper: "I saw rock and roll's future - and its name is Bruce Springsteen."