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Friday, Jan 4 2019, 6AM
Happy 63rd birthday, Bernard Sumner. He was born in the city of Manchester – Crumpsall Hospital to be exact (now known as North Manchester General) on January 4th, 1956. The birth was difficult. Bernard's mother Laura had cerebral palsy and was confined to a wheelchair.: www.joydiv.org
"In the video for the track, Clay Frankel and Chris Bailoni terrorize Chicago by moped and with loose-limbed, hand-clappy dance moves, viewed through skate-vid fish-eye and accompanied by scrawled sketches of anthropomorphic wine glasses smoking cigs. If you aren’t smiling by the time the sing-shouted chorus hits— “I don’t mind livin’! I don’t mind givin’ it up!”—there’s a decent chance you suck.": www.youtube.com
"Such a Remarkable Day" is one of five songs on Gainsbourg's new EP, "Take 2," released in mid-December. It includes a cover of Kanye West’s “Runaway” plus a live version of “Deadly Valentine.” There are also three new songs on the EP, including this one.
This was the first #1 hit song with a rap. Artists like Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, and Kurtis Blow had been rapping since the mid-'70s, and The Sugarhill Gang had the first Top 40 hit earlier in 1980 with "Rapper's Delight," but until "Rapture," rap had never been incorporated into a hit pop song.
Speaking of Kurtis Blow....In 1979, at the age of twenty, Kurtis Blow became the first Rapper to be signed by a major label. Mercury released “Christmas Rappin,” and it sold over 400,000 copies and it became an annual classic. Its gold follow‑up “The Breaks” helped ignite a still‑spreading international “Rap Attack.” Read more about Mr. Blow here: kurtblow.com
Richard Barratt aka Parrot aka Crooked Man is the Sheffield based producer who is most famous for being one half of the duo Sweet Exorcist, alongside Cabaret Voltaire founder Richard H Kirk. You can purchase the just-released "Take It All Away" at Crooked Man's Bandcamp page: crooked-man.bandcamp.com
Besides writing and composing the track, Prince played all the instruments on the song.
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. : www.youtube.com
This is a reggae-infused version of an old Rolling Stones song. The song isn't a pure cover, as it takes many musical liberties and alters the lyrics. But 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 band felt free to change the lyrics from the Rolling Stones' original, which was necessary because they didn't have them. Lead singer Sean Dickson sang what he could remember and made up the rest.
Among the lines to come out:
"I'm free to sing my song though it gets out of time...
I'm free to choose what I please any old time..."
Among the new lyrics:
"I'm free to be who I choose...
To get my blues any old time..."
After the breakup of a previous band, New Orleans duo Ted Joyner and Grant Widmer, formed the Generationals, so named because as they often watched CNN's coverage of the 2008 presidential election as they recorded, the pair noticed that nearly every issue was dubbed a generational issue.
Don't you love this song? In this podcast, Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden dissect the song, talk about "looking like f**king idiots on Letterman, and more:pitchfork.com
Watch a live performance for KEXP VIP club members from Seattle's Triple Door in 2017: www.youtube.com
This song is often misinterpreted to be about cocaine, which is often consumed on mirrors brought into bathrooms. The song actually has nothing to do with drugs, as Wakeling explains: "In America in the early '80s, everybody gave me knowing winks and said, 'Oh, I know what that one's about, then, Dave.' And it wasn't that mirror in the bathroom at all, it was the one on the wall, and not the one on your knee. And oddly, songs can become sort of strangely prophetic, though. But certainly at the time of writing, nobody had any money or any access to cocaine... until after the song was out."
That's Victoria Bergsman of The Concretes as a guest vocalist.The animated video starts off with Peter and Victoria sitting in a park, on a bench. Peter teaches Victoria how to whistle. Then the video switches over to them both sitting in a bus where the song starts. Throughout the video, scenes of the band playing the song can be seen and eventually the video ends with a big party where everybody "seems to disappear".:www.youtube.com
On this date in 1967, The Doors released their debut self-titled album (that included this song.) :www.rollingstone.com
In this song, M.I.A. plays up the stereotype of a menacing illegal immigrant, forging documents and threatening violence. It was inspired by her efforts to enter America on a visa (she is a British citizen of Sri Lankan descent), which resulted in a months-long bureaucratic morass, something she attributed to her dark skin and exotic real name: Mathangi Arulpragasam. :www.youtube.com
The previous song, "Paper Planes," was built on a sample of the 1982 Clash song "Straight To Hell," which also deals with immigration and xenophobia.
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever performed this song live during a fine KEXP in-studio session last year. Watch the whole performance here: www.youtube.com
Happy birthday, Jeff. "I'm feeling thankful for the small things today..." Here are the lyrics: genius.com
Speaking of birthdays, today is Michael Stipe's 59th birthday. He is described as an "American singer, songwriter, musician, film producer, music video director, and visual artist." (Whew!)
Blur's Graham Coxon played a rare 10-event acoustic tour last year.: consequenceofsound.net
In April, 2018, ShadowParty – a supergroup consisting of Devo, New Order and Verve members -- announced their first ever gig. The band is made up of Josh Hager, currently playing guitar and keyboards in Devo, New Order bassist Tom Chapman and guitarist Phil Cunningham and Devo drummer Jeff Friedl.: www.nme.com
Ahhh.....the Friday song. Thanks, Henry, for that fine introduction. Be sure to listen on Tuesday, January 8th, for an important Clash announcement (You can listen on Monday, too.).
Want to have Bobby Bare, Jr. perform at your home?: www.bobbybarejr.com
In September of last year, an article appeared with this title, "30 Years Later, Boston-Spawned Pixies Still Won't Take Credit For Changing Guitar Rock": www.wbur.org
Become conversant with their biography when you visit The Museum of Canadian Music: citizenfreak.com
Watch a full live performance by Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks in KEXP's Gathering Space last May: www.youtube.com
There's a Pavement reference ("I know him and he is") in this fine song.
Kurt Cobain was very much aware that many people would not get the point of his songs and simply sing along with them blindly. On this song, he wrote a very sing-a-long chorus so that people would find themselves singing about not understanding the song: "He's the one who likes all the pretty songs, and he likes to sing along, but he knows not what it means."
"Feeling Good" (also known as "Feelin' Good") is a song written by English composers Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for the musical "The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd." Nina Simone absolutely made it hers in 1965.
This is a cover of the classic Four Tops song. “Reach Out, I’ll Be There” was written by Motown’s defining songwriter trio Holland-Dozier-Holland—composed of Lamont Dozier and brothers Brian and Eddie Holland. While Dozier and Brian Holland handled the production and composition of their songs, Eddie Holland would write the lyrics and arrange vocals.
Win Butler said, "I remember being in a cafe once and I was overhearing this woman talking about watching The Sopranos and they had just finished watching The Sopranos, like they kind of binge-watched The Sopranos over a weekend. One of them was saying, 'Oh, it’s so annoying that there’s no more Sopranos. I guess I’m gonna have to find something else to watch.' This was maybe six years ago–five years ago and it just hit me that this thing that took ten years to make someone watched in a weekend and was annoyed there wasn’t more. I was like whoa; I feel like culturally the moment and this kind of era that we’ve entered into of kind of everything-nowness has positive and negative sides to it but it’s definitely a new way of being."
This is a cover of British synth-pop band Heaven 17's "(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang." The original single was first released in 1981 and was banned by the BBC for libeling then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
"Arrest the president, you got the evidence..." Read the lyrics to this discussion of POTUS: genius.com
Watch an "official min-documentary" about Mr. Lif & Akrobatik (The Perceptionists):www.youtube.com
Jeffrey Haynes (born December 28, 1977), better known by his stage name Mr. Lif, is an American hip hop artist from Boston, Massachusetts.:www.mellomusicgroup.com
We were talking about apocalyptic hip-hop, weren't we? Deltron 3030 performed this song live at The Triple Door as part of a KEXP VIP Club Concert in 2013: www.youtube.com
This song is included in the "top 10 Adam Yauch Beastie Boys' lyrics": diffuser.fm
Read a KEXP interview with Jurassic 5's Chali 2na: www.kexp.org
Watch the official music video for "My First Big Break": www.youtube.com
Read a Washington Post article on "what Public Enemy taught me about policy":www.washingtonpost.com
Learn how The Chems stitched all the element of this song together: www.musicradar.com
The video begins with the members of De La Soul sit in a high school guidance counselor's office, lamenting that they have to take a class taught by Professor Defbeat.:www.youtube.com
This is "a fun little commentary on sex education featuring a dynamite guest vocal by Michael Stipe, who even raps at one point.":meetinmontauk.com
This won the 1998 MTV Europe Music Award for Best Video. The song's music video featured a plastic fetus in the womb, lip-synching the song. They told The Guardian: "We kept the Teardrop baby but being made of old latex, it just doesn't have the longevity. It's now just a primitive animatronic half-creature in a puddle of rotten latex. It's still quite scary: it's like a museum piece, but for all the wrong reasons.": www.youtube.com
Today is the birthday of Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthrie, born in 1962. Here's a brief autobiography from this talented Scottish musician: www.robinguthrie.com
The Icicle Works were named after the 1960 short story "The Day the Icicle Works Closed" by science fiction author Frederik Pohl. :www.youtube.com
This was originally recorded in 1965 by a group called The Strangeloves. The group was actually three producers from New York - Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Richard Gottehrer - who put this song together and made up a story about the band. They claimed to be from Australia, and said they were shepherds who got rich by crossbreeding sheep. The story made them sound much more exotic than the truth, and this hit #11 in the US.
"Blackalicious‘ 'Make You Feel That Way' is a laid back anthem to feeling good and keeping a positive outlook. The song features DJ Chief Xcel flipping a mellow harp and horn sample while Gift of Gab raps on top of it.": www.djdmac.com
See video of Bay Area rapper Lyrics Born in the KEXP studio in 2009: blog.kexp.org
"We were kind of a hybrid at the time," says frontman Rob Birch. "Rap purists wouldn't dig us as we weren't straight-up rap. We weren't an indie group, or a rock group. We were a bit of everything. Nobody could put their finger on us. What got us through was that we were realist music, saying something about where we were coming from. That helped us to make a record that was, at one point, commercial but was also conscious of the times." Read about the making of Stereo MCs third album, "Connected": www.musicradar.com
This band "virtually defined the Madchester movement of the 1980's":www.allmusic.com
"Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with people...
I think they've gone simultaneously soft or stupid...
Or they're living in fear...
But I dunno why...
There's nothing to fear about space...
Space is brilliant...": genius.com is brilliant