John Richards

Good morning and happy Friday. What's this? The PIXIES on The Morning Show!! Shocking! Here's your very own guide to 8 notable covers of this famous song: www.stereogum.com

"Over the years, many have postulated that Talk Talk’s “It’s My Life” is about a man in a relationship with an unfaithful partner whom he is well aware cheats on him. And although the lyrics are quite-ambiguous, that seems for the most part to be correct." Read a discussion, published earlier this week, of the classic written by the late Mark Hollis: www.songmeaningsandfacts.com

"Everyone’s sifting through something, right?,” says Tunde Adebimpe. Watch him encouraging strangers in the video for "Trouble": www.youtube.com

The band licensed this song to the National Football League (NFL) to use in the 2010 Super Bowl. It was agreed that all proceeds from the license would be donated to Partner's In Health's relief efforts in Haiti after the earthquake that devastated the country in January 2010. Arcade Fire have a personal connection to Haiti as multi-instrumentalist Regine Chassagne was born there before her family immigrated to Canada during the years of the Papa Doc dictatorship. Another Funeral track, "Haiti," was penned in tribute to Chassagne's home country.

Spike Lee used a version of the previous song by Arcade Fire on the 2009 movie, "Where the Wild Things Are." See the video for "All Is Love": www.youtube.com

Yes, it's Friday on KEXP! "I woke up today in a very simple way... in the morning all i could do was sing....": songmeanings.com

This song was the theme song for "Smallville" in 2001. Want to know more about this Birmingham, Alabama band?: www.allmusic.com

John Richards hosted The Helio Sequence in the KEXP studio for a live performance last year: www.youtube.com

While the title of this song was a "Ringoism" particularly liked by John Lennon, the lyrics were largely taken from "The Psychedelic Experience," a 1964 book written by Harvard psychologists Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert, which contained an adaptation of the ancient "Tibetan Book of the Dead.": www.beatlesbible.com

Noel Gallagher started writing this song when he was a roadie for The Inspiral Carpets. It helped convince his brother Liam to let him join his band, Oasis.Noel Gallagher told Q magazine in 2011: "With every song that I write, I compare it to The Beatles. I've got semi-close once or twice, with 'Live Forever,' for example... the solo on that is one of the greatest things in rock music."

There is no bass on this song. Prince took out the bass track at the last minute to get a different sound, though he hated to see it go. "Sometimes your brain kind of splits in two - your ego tells you one thing, and the rest of you says something else. You have to go with what you know is right," he told Bass Player magazine.

This album is 45 years old (!) today. It came out on this date in 1974. "Rebel Rebel" is notable for its gender-bending lyrics ("You got your mother in a whirl / She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl") as well as its distinctive riff, which rock journalist Kris Needs has described as "a classic stick-in-the-head like the Stones' 'Satisfaction'".Bowie himself later said, "It's a fabulous riff! Just fabulous! When I stumbled onto it, it was 'Oh, thank you!'"

This live in-studio performance by Dilly Dally last year included "I Feel Free": www.youtube.com

Go hear Stef Chura at Barboza on Wednesday, July 31st, 2019. She says of this song, "[It] was born out of a total frustration regarding a man who seemed “methodical” to me. He was literate. He waxed poetic. Almost someone…how do I say this…that you wanted to be condescending to you?" Read more about "Method Man": www.thebarboza.com

"Good morning! Consider I Always struggle with the right word... Meow meow meow meow meow....": www.youtube.com

Here's a shirtless Fugazi performing "Waiting Room" live: www.youtube.com

IDLES will be LIVE on KEXP in our Gathering Space on Wednesday, May 29th, at 1:30 PM. They are playing a sold-out show at Neumos the night before, Tuesday, May 28th, 2019.

John Lydon said about this song: "'Disappointed' is what it says, it's just about the many and varied ways people let you down. But, you know, that's what people will always do. You can't change the human race. You've just got to accept that as a fact of life. Friends will let you down, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have friends. You should enjoy it for the very fact that they are human beings and fallible, that that very fallibility is what you should enjoy about human contact. Otherwise, really what you're asking for is sycophantic robots that merely compliment your ego. And there's no enjoyment in that."

Christopher reported that he listened to this song on repeat almost all the way from Portland to Seattle (as John says, about six hours). Spoon sang it live in the KEXP studio in 2017: www.youtube.com

Thinking back to World Goth Day on Wednesday, Love and Rockets were an English alternative rock band formed in 1985 by "gothic rock icon" Bauhaus members Daniel Ash (vocals, guitar and saxophone), David J (bass guitar and vocals) and Kevin Haskins (drums and synthesisers) after that group split in 1983.

Happy May 23rd birthday, Jim. Here's your annual birthday request. Don't you relish the "slap fight" that begins the song's official video?: www.youtube.com

In March, Gossip announced a reunion tour (their first in seven years) to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their landmark album "Music For Men." : www.stereogum.com

Oh, watch a live version from The Royal Albert Hall. Someone wrote, "The instrumentation in the beginning was heavenly and then she opened her mouth and the heavens indeed opened.": www.youtube.com

They'll be in Portland at Mississippi Studios on Friday, July 12th, 2019. See a live in-studio performance at KEXP: www.kexp.org

Tom Jones played this at some of his live shows, to the delight of the band. Jones performed the song with EMF on a British TV show where he told them about how he sang it in Vegas. According to the band, Jones got them really drunk that night.

Thanks, Blake, for reminding us of this passage in the KEXP Bible: “Thou shall always play Jesus Jones after EMF.”

Ahhh.....the Friday song. Yesterday, KEXP focused its Music Heals programming on Addiction and Recovery. Read KEXP's own Kevin Cole's powerful story: www.kexp.org

This " last time"excursion begins with this gospel song by The Staple Singers. Learn about his very important group here: www.facinghistory.org

The Rolling Stones song “The Last Time” is their version of that previous Staple Singers song. Watch the very young Stones performing it live on the Ed Sullivan Show: www.youtube.com

We're getting there! That symphonic version you just heard was then sampled in The Verve’s 1997 breakout hit “Bittersweet Symphony." The song LITERALLY became a bittersweet symphony for the band when the lawyer who owned the rights to the Rolling Stones musical catalog pre-1970’s sued The Verve, claiming the band had reneged on their original 50/50 split of royalties by using more than 5-notes of the symphonic version of the song. Now we’ve learned that the son of lawyer Allen Klein and the Rolling Stones themselves have finally given the rights and royalties back for the song. "It's been a fantastic development," singer Richard Ashcroft said. "It's life-affirming in a way." Phew.

Happy birthday, Bob Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman on this date in 1941. "Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story" by Martin Scorsese, the long-gestating new film, now has a release date. It will be out on Netflix on June 12th. Here's a synopsis: “In an alchemic mix of fact and fantasy, Martin Scorsese looks back at Bob Dylan’s 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour and a country ripe for reinvention.”

See the late, lamented Sharon Jones performing "this Land Is Your Land" live: www.youtube.com

Did you know that Dylan himself was never a fan of this song? “I never… thought it was representative of anything I do,” he told Clive Davis, the president of Columbia Records.: ig.ft.com

Perhaps Mr. Dylan would have liked this cover by Ministry. Instead of Dylanʻs lines "Why wait any longer for the one you love, when heʻs standing in front of you?", Al barks out "Why wait any longer for the one you love, when heʻs standing OVER you?": www.youtube.com

Here are the lyrics to this song, released by Dylan in 1965 on the album, "Bringing It All Back Home.": www.bobdylan.com

SIFF will be showing the documentary, "A Dog Called Money" next week. "For her ninth studio album, alternative-music icon PJ Harvey visited Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Washington, D.C., to talk with locals and let their stories inspire her song lyrics, while filmmaker Seamus Murphy captured the moments in this ambitious documentary.": www.siff.net

See the birthday boy himself, performing this song live: www.youtube.com

We're pretty sure that Bob Dylan didn't write this song. INXS' Andrew Farriss had the idea for the riff for this song while waiting for a taxi to take him to the airport. He asked the taxi driver to wait for a couple of minutes as he'd left something behind in the motel. He kept the unfortunate taxi driver waiting for an hour while he quickly recorded the riff and eventually returned to a very frustrated driver with a tape.

This one's for you, Max and Olivia, as you head to school. Did you know that The Muppets rocked out to this song?: www.youtube.com

Kate Tempest performed this song live in the kEXP studio in 2017: www.youtube.com

Follow this guide to the tracks that were sampled in "Shake Your Rump": www.whosampled.com

This review of "Kirby" begins this way: "First off, it’s my journalistic duty to inform everyone that I am in fact a cat person. I think we can all agree that cats are objectively great. They’re tiny murderers that we genetically engineered to cuddle with us. What’s not to love?": medium.com

In 2015, Slick Rick looked back at his "three-decade legacy": www.billboard.com

This is a cover of a John Kongos song called "He's Gonna Step On You Again," originally released in 1971. It was written by Kongos and Christos Demitriou and hit #4 UK and #70 US. John Kongos wrote this as a protest song against white man's appropriation of native territory in Africa. It was built around a riff lifted from an African tribal dance recorded in a jungle, and it is cited by the Guinness Book of Records as the first ever sample used on a record.

Jon Spencer was in the KEXP studio in 2012 (Notice the Christmas tree lights.) for a powerful live performance: www.youtube.com

The video was "Filmed 2010-2015 at Blue Star Cafe, The Regent, Union Transfer, Music Hall of Williamsburg, Paradise Rock Club, Che Cafe, Timewarp Music, The Echo, American Electric Tattoo Co, Bottom of the Hill, 9:30 Club, Cafe Du Norde, Cloyne Co-op, Catnap, Bowery Ballroom, Lola's Saloon, FYF, ACL, and Spanish Moon.": www.youtube.com

"Hey man where'd you get that lotion?" The song's lyrics contain a number of references to William S. Burroughs' experimental novel "The Ticket That Exploded," most notably mentions of "Johnny Yen" (described by Burroughs as "The Boy-Girl Other Half strip tease God of sexual frustration") and "hypnotizing chickens".: genius.com

Read a brief history of Jake Gyllenhaal in music videos, entitled "Serial Killers, Liquor, and Short Shorts": moveablefest.com

Listen to the Chemical Brothers discuss their new album, "No Geography," in this recent interview: www.udiscovermusic.com