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Tuesday, Sep 17 2019, 6AM
In the wake of Ric Ocasek's death, his family have posted a statement saying The Cars star died unexpectedly but peacefully in his sleep.
"I found him still asleep when bringing him his Sunday morning coffee," wrote the musician's wife Paulina Porizkova.
"I touched his cheek to rouse him. It was then I realised that during the night he had peacefully passed on." Find more about Ric here: www.kexp.org
DJ Abbie was the lucky one that hosted TR/ST back in May. Their in-studio was recently posted and you can see that live version of "Destroyer" here: bit.ly
Back in the days when groups released “long-playing records” on vinyl, the first thing you’d hear when flipping Power, Corruption & Lies over to play the second side was this statuesque stunner. In 1983, the interview-shunning New Order were still shrouded in mystery and regarded with reverence. So Sumner’s eyebrow-raising, straight outta Salford kiss-off – “You’ve caught me at a bad time, now why don’t you piss off?” – was astonishing to fans. Morris later explained: “It was a very majestic piece, and we thought, ‘Ah, it’s getting too serious.’” Read "New Order: 10 of the Best" here: bit.ly
Moore will release “Leave Me Alone” as the B-side to a trio of seven-inch records (“Pollination,” “Swing Swells” and “Three Graces: Alice Moki Jayne”), out November 8th, featuring excerpts from Thurston Moore Group shows recorded throughout 2019. The three singles follow the band’s upcoming triple-CD box set, Spirit Counsel, out September 21st.
Local supergroup CCFX were live on The Morning Show in April, 2018. You can check out the full in-studio here: bit.ly
As he neared the age of thirty, Cure frontman Robert Smith found himself worried about getting older. This song, which finds him singing about "running out of time," was one of several tracks on Disintegration where he ruminates on feeling washed up. "The biggest frustration (of getting older) is not being able to feel strong emotions anymore," Smith said when discussing the album's lyrics. "Cynicism enters your world and you get numb."
Angel Olsen is back in Seattle at The Moore on December 11th! There are a few seats left but it looks to be nearly sold out... Tickets and info: bit.ly
Recorded 30 miles outside El Paso at Sonic Ranch Studio — surrounded by 3,000 acres of pecan orchards — the Brooklyn band called Two Hands “the earth twin” to its sister record U.F.O.F., known as “the celestial twin” (that LP was recorded in a cabin in the woods of Washington State). The new album was recorded live with almost no overdubs, giving it a raw desert feel.
“Two Hands has the songs that I’m the most proud of; I can imagine myself singing them when I’m old,” singer Adrianne Lenker said in a statement. “Musically and lyrically, you can’t break it down much further than this. It’s already bare-bones.” Catch Big Thief at The Moore on October 26th!
"Flash: is the secong single from The Hecks' forthcoming sophomore LP, My Star, which is due out October 11th. Find the first, "So 4 Real" here: thehecksdotcom.bandcamp.com
This was the first INXS song to hit the charts in the United States, just as the band embarked on their first tour of America, initially as the opener for Adam and the Ants, then for The Go-Go's.
“Hank Williams if he’d been born in Israel, come of age in the post-punk era, and hung out with the art school crowd” - The New Yorker on Clem Snide
In a press release, collective mastermind A.C. Newman gives more background:
“There are so many songs like ‘the something of love’ — you know, there’s ‘The Book of Love,’ ‘The Freeway of Love’…. Then I thought of ‘falling down the stairs of your love,’ and I thought, that kind of works. I think it has that element of how do you deal with the ideas of love and happiness in this world right now? When current events are stressful, that makes a stress on people’s relationships, and you’re trying to figure out how to be happy in this loving relationship in this world that seems ugly at every turn.”
“I was about two-thirds of the way through the record when I began to notice that lyrically so much of it was pointing toward car songs. The opening track is ‘You’ll Need a Backseat Driver,’ and that was a metaphor that seemed to be running through other songs, too. Next to the love song, I feel like the car song is one of the most iconic kinds of songs in pop music, from Chuck Berry to the present. There was so much of that throughout it that I started thinking: ‘Oh, no, there’s too many references to cars on this record!’ And then I thought, ‘No, that's good — people might think it’s a concept album.’”
Marika Hackman will be at Neumos on November 1st. Tickets & info: bit.ly
"Angie McMahon: 'I was super-reclusive, now I’m out in the world. Welcome to my anxiety'" Read The Guardian's interview: bit.ly
Two music videos were made. Andy Delaney and Monty Whitebloom, known as Big TV!, directed the UK version, which is a twisted take on the Wizard of Oz. Tori directed the US version herself, along with Nancy Bennett, which follows the singer tooling around the desert with a truckload of girls.
Remembering Ric Ocasek of The Cars who passed peacefully on Sunday from heart disease: www.kexp.org
The Pleasure Principle recently turned 40 and Gary Numan sat down with Billboard. Read "Gary Numan on 'The Pleasure Principle' at 40 & the 'Luck' That Led to 'Cars'": bit.ly
Stevie Nicks got the idea for "Stand Back" from this song. She heard it in her car, drove to the recording studio, and put down some tracks. "It just gave me an incredible idea, so I spent many hours that night writing a song about some kind of crazy argument, and it was to become one of the most important of my songs"
The lyrics do a great job in conveying sexual tension. Certainly the best that reference corn! Can you remember writing them?
David Lowery: "My recollection is that the first two lines are loosely paraphrased from the book. But the rest is just something I came up with. It's funny you ask specifically about the "corn" line, because I thought a lot about this. It's such an awkward word to sing, but it somehow made everything else that came before it more natural. Also since it's loosely based on the two English characters in the 1940s, they wouldn't actually have said "corn." They would have said "maize" or "Indian Corn." But that would have really been too much."
Tweedy says the album overall is defiantly joyful in the face of global political and cultural upheaval. "The record is, in a weird way, an ode," he says in a statement announcing the album. "This terrible stuff is happening, this deepening sense of creeping authoritarianism that weighs on everybody's psyche on a daily basis, and you're allowed to feel a lot of things at once. And one thing that is worth feeling, that is worth fighting for, is your freedom to still have joy even though things are going to s***."
Sault instagram check... in addition to the 9 images of the 5 album cover there are now 9 of what appears to be another album named 7... www.instagram.com
You can find a couple more tracks from Rudy Willingham on his website: www.rudycorp.com
Sampa the Great will be at Barboza on April 8th. Only 9 stops on the North American tour!
In regard to The Score's unified themes and production, Lauryn commented "It's an audio film. It's like how radio was back in the 1940s. It tells a story, and there are cuts and breaks in the music. It's almost like a hip hop version of Tommy, like what The Who did for rock music."
Public Enemy's sixth album was one of two official soundtracks released in support of Spike Lee’s film about young basketball player Jesus Shuttlesworth. Far less commonplace in the 1990s, artists recording full soundtracks for films was a leftover of the 1970s, when the Isaac Hayes’s and Curtis Mayfield’s of the world recorded masterful soundtracks to Blaxploitation films.
Heaven or Las Vegas is the sixth studio album by Cocteau Twins and their last for the music label 4AD. It was released nineteen years ago today.
Despite 4AD president Ivo Watts-Russell proclaiming it one of the best-ever releases on his label, he released the group from their contract at the end of 1990 because his relationship with the band had soured.
Bombay Bicycle Club's new album, Everything Else Has Gone Wrong is coming out on 17 January 2020. You can pre-order here: bombaybicycleclub.lnk.to
In a press release, frontman Yannis Philippakis said of the new track: “It’s a call to find a sense of purpose and perseverance despite the odds and despite the troubles we may find inside or outside ourselves.”
"'I Will Follow' came out of a screaming argument in the rehearsal room," Bono recalls in the book U2 by U2. "I remember trying to make a sound I heard in my head, and taking Edge's guitar from him and hammering away. It was literally coming out of a kind of rage, the sound of a nail being hammered into your frontal lobe."
Fontaines D.C. were live on The Afternoon Show on May 28th. The full in-studio was recently uploaded to the KEXP YouTube channel and you can find it here: bit.ly
You can see Velvet Negroni at Barboza on Monday! Tickets & info: bit.ly
Vampire Weekend are playing at WaMu Theater on the 27th. Stay tuned for your chance to win tickets to this sold out show!
After utilizing a full band and all the amenities of the world-famous Hall of Justice studio alongside producer Chris Walla for last year's Something Familiar, Michel went back to the familar route of recording new album Halve by himself. Read the KEXP interview here: bit.ly
Recorded in one take, this originally missed the UK Top 40 in 1984, though it made #1 in Belgium. The song was re-recorded with producer Stephen Hague. As Stephen explained, "I heard the Bobby O version and thought it had potential. I felt it should be slowed down and the story told a little clearer. Neil and Chris agreed once they'd heard it."
Jacques Greene has announced a new LP, Dawn Chorus, due out October 18 via LuckyMe. The LP also features Lost In Translation composer Brian Reitzell on percussion, Radiohead collaborator and cross-genre cellist/producer Oliver Coates, and singers Ebhoni and Rochelle Jordan, as well as Julianna Barwick. “Instead of sampling R&B vocals, I was trying to sample studio mythologies and mindsets,” Greene says.
Using various sounds sampled from an airplane, Chong has partnered with Singapore Airlines for quite the unique concept.
Partnering with Singapore Airlines to announce its new nonstop flight route between Seattle and Singapore, Chong is seen in a new video employing samples via an Airbus A350 aircraft.
Betty Everett had a hit in 1964 with "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss)," which Cher covered in 1990, setting off a shoop revival. The R&B singer Michael Cooper released "Shoop Shoop (Never Stop Givin' You Love)" in 1992, the year before S&P did their "Shoop." Whitney Houston recorded "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)" for the 1995 movie Waiting To Exhale.
Rhapsody: ""Me and Murs were talking and I was telling him I wanted a tattoo. He showed me this tattoo he has of Queen Latifah on his ribcage. I was like, 'Yo, that's one of the illest tattoos that I've seen.' We started talking about the tattoo, and he asked me if I've ever tried to work with Queen Latifah. I been wanting to work with Queen Latifah forever. She's one of the reasons that I rhyme, that I am the artist that I am. 'U.N.I.T.Y.' was one of my favorite songs. It taught me to demand self-respect as a woman and never let nobody call you out of your name. I met her once at the White House when I went for one of Obama's parties, but I only got to talk to her briefly 'cause everybody was talking to Queen at the time. It was so brief I don't even know if she really knew who I was. "
Latifah called out the misogyny in hip-hop at a time when women in the industry weren’t being given opportunities to ask for much at all. She infused feminism into rap music when female artists were barely allowed through the door. And then she left it open.
You can see Noah again in Bellingham on Thursday at the Wild Buffalo: bit.ly
Noah Gunderson will be playing at The Showbox on Saturday, November 16th. Tickets & info: www.axs.com