John Richards

Good morning and happy Friday. The lyrics of this song convey the dark impulses of a desperate man. At an LA concert on November 18, 1987, Bono said, "[It's] about a religious man who became a very dangerous man when he couldn't work out the mystery, on the hands of love." Bono later wrote,"It is all very well to address America and the violence that is an aggressive foreign policy but to really understand that you have to get under the skin of your own darkness, the violence we all contain within us. Violence is something I know quite a bit about. I have a side of me which, in a corner, can be very violent. It's the least attractive thing in anyone and I wanted to own up to that."

The essence of Matt Berninger's lyrical themes has essentially remained the same since The National's early days. "Sometimes, I want to remind myself of ideas I've written, so I write them again in a different way," he told American Songwriter. "Usually that idea is one of three things: I'm freaked out about the world, I want to be a good husband and dad and I'm trying but sometimes I'm a bit of an asshole, and I'm sorry. So it's either: I'm scared, I'm sorry, or I love you. It's one of those three things, almost always.": songmeanings.com

Jose Gonzalez will be here in Seattle, playing The Paramount Theatre on Tuesday, April 2nd, 2019.

Here's a review of "We Can Create," the debut album from James Chapman (aka Maps): pitchfork.com

Watch M83 perform "Midnight City" live at the Sziget Festival (That's Budapest.) in 2016: www.youtube.com

Read a little "random weirdness from a music freak" as he waxes poetic about Love and Rockets: unclee.wordpress.com

“Let’s just go by the phrase ‘Where is My Mind?’ alone,” Joey Santiago says. “It relates to disenfranchised people, and there’s certainly a lot of them, so it unites them. It’s like, you’re not the only f**king disenfranchised one, you know? It validates your feelings of being not alone, as someone else is singing about it.”: www.dazeddigital.com

It was on this date in 1993 that Radiohead released their debut album, "Pablo Honey."

Tim Showalter will, no doubt, sing this song when he performs at Neumos on Friday, April 26th, 2019. He will be LIVE on KEXP at 1:00 p.m. that day. The public is invited to sign up and view that performance (75 tickets!).

This was the first single off The Jesus and Mary Chain's fourth studio album, "Honey's Dead." It attracted some controversy for the lyrics "I want to die just like Jesus Christ", and "I want to die just like JFK". Banned by Top of the Pops, the track peaked at #10 in the UK charts.: genius.com

They call themselves "punks from the dirty South---Malmo, Sweden": www.facebook.com

You can hear Liz Phair at the Treefort Music Fest in Boise, Idaho, March 20th-24th, 2019.: www.treefortmusicfest.com

Tomorrow, Saturday, February 23rd, Nilufer Yanya will play The Neptune Theatre, opening for Sharon Van Etten. The debut album, "Miss Universe," will be released on March 22nd, 2019.

"This is a song about looking back on life, or at least a significant stage of life…the sort of thing you might do as a significant birthday approaches…and asking yourself “did I get to where I’d hoped?” Read this loving tribute to this fine song:medium.com

Klara Soderberg started writing lyrics for "Stay Gold" after reading Robert Frost's classic poem, 'Nothing Gold Can Stay.' "I had this collection of poetry, and I thought, 'I'll open this and see if there's anything in here that inspires me,' and I came upon the line 'Nothing gold can stay,'" she said. "That was literally the first thing I saw, and it was perfect." Here's the Frost poem: www.poets.org

Justice McClellan explained, "The song is about a person who's relationship is in a repetitive rut and they're trying to communicate to their partner, "Let's get away from this together." The opening line of the song, "If you feel nothing when you hold me in your arms / I wouldn't ask for you to lie," sets the honest tone of a very late night conversation and leads up to the romantic chorus and idea of escaping: "Let's leave this town / Grab your bags and lets go / The sun's coming out."

You can purchase the debut album from los Angeles musician Corey Cunningham's Business of Dreams at his Bandcamp page: businessofdreams.bandcamp.com

"Tell me more," you say, "about this English band active in the 80's and early 90's": www.allmusic.com

This is Oldham, England's Inspiral Carpets homage to the rocket that launched the Apollo 11 space mission: www.youtube.com

Someone wrote: "So the earth is 4.5 billion years old, and I was lucky enough to be in high school and college exactly between the years of 1985-1995 to witness birth and explosion of goth, alternative, rock, grunge, BritPop, Madchester, shoegaze, power pop and indie classics like this gem." See it live www.youtube.com

According to the book "The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock" by John Harris, this song was written about the fall of the Iron Curtain and taken up as an anthem by bomber pilots during the first Gulf War. The song reflected the optimism felt around the free world as nations came together.

It's "Unbelievable" that Mandy would read the KEXP Handbook in its entirety. Tom Jones played this song 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.

The video for the single was filmed at Pleasureland Southport and features a cameo from actor Bill Dean, who at the time was in Liverpool soap opera "Brookside." His character, Harry Cross was a retired train driver, and Dean is seen in the video driving a train with the band aboard.: www.youtube.com

"How old are you? Are you old enough? Should you be in here watching that?..." You've probably wondered what Happy Mondays are crooning here: songmeanings.com

The lyrics "I was blind, now I can see, you made a believer out of me," were taken from the German rock band Can's 1969 song "Yoo Doo Right," from their debut album, Monster Movie.

Education is important! We want you to know more about Warren "Dermo" Dermody: www.imdb.com

This cover of The Rolling Stones song features Junior Reid, the Jamaican reggae/dance hall artist who replaced Michael Rose as lead vocalist with Black Uhuru. Although it's not an exact cover, it's similar enough that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the writers of the original, are credited as the only composers on the Soup Dragons version.

The Irish guitar pop ironists A House formed in Dublin in 1985 from the remnants of the group Last Chance.:www.allmusic.com

This was the song that launched the Charlatans career utilizing the Hammond organ which became part of their sound. It is one of the songs of the Manchester "Baggy" sound in the early 1990s in North West England and its still played at Indie clubs to this day. The catchy organ riff was lifted from Deep Purple's 1968 hit "Hush." Sadly, the Hammond organ player responsible for this sound, Rob Collins, was killed in a 1996 car crash.

Here's the video for "Come Home": www.youtube.com

A few people said, "What about Oasis?" If you're in Slovakia in July, you can hear Liam Gallagher at the Pohoda Festival.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this writer says that "Live Forever" changed his life: www.pastemagazine.com

"You're taking the fun...our of everything..." This was the second single from Blur's debut album, with a beat typical of the Madchester and "baggy" scene.: www.youtube.com

Here's a track-by--track review of Blur's "Parklife,"now almost 25 years old: www.billboard.com

Read a 2017 Guardian tribute to Siouxsie Sioux at age 60: www.theguardian.com

This is the new live album by LCD Soundsystem, recorded at New York's famed Electric Lady studios. (Incidentally, the same folks who designed that studio were instrumental in designing KEXP's DJ booth and in-studio performance space.)

Hold it, Lorraine (Please)! In 1985 The Stone Roses were locked in a room by their record producer Martin Hannett and told they weren't allowed out until they wrote a song. This tune was the result of this curfew. (That sort of sounds like your experience, Lorraine.)

Read about the "band you should have loved." Adorable were a band that should have been huge, but were hindered by their poor relationship with the powerful music press of the early 1990s.: www.isolationrecords.co.uk

Watch a live in-studio performance by We Were Promised Jetpacks from last October: www.youtube.com

No, this isn't Billy Joel. "'Need You Tonight' is probably the most lustful INXS song ever. This was a throwaway song that became their biggest hit. Andrew Farriss came up with the riff, and Michael Hutchence (JohnRichards' first boy-crush) quickly added some lyrics" .:genius.com

Here's the whole story: "My wife and i went out bar hopping last weekend and sat next to a very animated guy who was explaining to his girlfriend exactly why billy joel sucked. what a welcome invitation to meet the guy on the stool next to you. what followed was a warm and hilarious 80's conversation between the four of us and the bartender, whose axe to grind was the fact that DJs never played Mediate after Need You Tonight, when these songs, in his mind, were inexplicably linked and should always be played together. what a great night. PS. the billy joel hater guy had a litmus test for potential billy joel likers.... he asked them if they liked bruce springsteen, and if they said yes, he'd ask whether they liked Nebraska. if they said no... they probably were into billy joel... f**kin river of dreams motherf**kers. OH, BUT THERE’S MORE! Bar Toto in brooklyn. i should add that the guy was irish, and every time he said his name, he spat it out in a contemptuous and disgusted "billy jo-EL." made it all the more ridiculous.

You were probably wondering how the INXS song "Mediate" led into "Subterranean Homesick Blues":ultimateclassicrock.com

Ahhh......the Friday song. Did you know that we're going to Mexico City for a live broadcast, February 26th through March 1st, 2019?: www.kexp.org

Thanks so much, Cole! Singing the Spanish parts of this song with Joe Strummer was Joe Ely, a Texas singer whose 1978 album Honky Tonk Masquerade got the attention of The Clash when they heard it in England. When Ely and his band performed in London, The Clash went to a show and took them around town after the performance. They became good friends, and when The Clash came to Texas in 1979, they played some shows together. They stayed in touch, and when The Clash returned to America in 1982, they played more shows together and Ely joined them in the studio when they were recording Combat Rock at Electric Ladyland Studio in New York.

On the M83 song "Raconte-MoiUne Histoire," producer Justin Meldel-Johnson's five year old daughter sings backup vocals. M83 singer Anthony Gonzalez says the little girl is a "born actress" and that in the studio she talked to him for "30 minutes non-stop."

"Grow some big feet, holes in history.... Is where you’ll find me, is where you’ll find... All is love, is love, is love, is love....": www.youtube.com

Kermit and The Muppets were joined by songwriter Paul Williams at The Hollywood Bowl in 2017. Watch!:www.rollingstone.com

We say, "Don't let the disparagers deter you." Star Slinger says, "This song will help you get out of a rut. This song will help when you feel you’ve lost your way. This song will help guide you.": starslinger.net

Tears for Fears were followers of American psychologist Arthur Janov's school of Primal Therapy. This song was inspired by his primal therapy treatment, which worked by getting people to confront their fears by shouting and screaming. The name of the group came from Janov's book "Prisoners Of Pain." The music video for "Shout" features vocalists Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith venting their anger on a gorgeous, isolated cliffside at Durdle Door in Dorset, England.: www.youtube.com

"Now if you're feelin' weary... If you've been alone too long... Maybe you've been suffering from A few too many Plans that have gone wrong... And you're trying to remember How fine your life used to be....Well that was the river... This is the sea!... Wooo!": songmeanings.com

Who's coming? The Who are coming ....to T-Mobile Park in Seattle on Saturday, October 19th, 2019.

Big Audio Dynamite sampled The Who's "Baba O'Riley" in this song. Here's some of the other samples: www.whosampled.com

As requested by Cole's older and wise sister, Margeaux! What a great, inspirational family. Thanks for visiting KEXP!

Lizzo plays a sold out show here in Seattle at the Showbox on Sunday, April 28th. bit.ly

KEXP reviewed the 2012-2017 A.A.L. record last year, check out more tracks and what we had to say about it on the blog. www.kexp.org