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Tuesday, Aug 21 2018, 6AM
Apparently Prince had concerns that "Purple Rain" might be too similar to Journey's hit ballad "Faithfully." The song's composer, Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain, recalled to Billboard magazine that Prince called him at Columbia Records' office in Los Angeles. "I want to play something for you, and I want you to check it out," Prince told him. "The chord changes are close to 'Faithfully,' and I don't want you to sue me."
Cain had no problem with the song he heard. "I thought it was an amazing tune," the Journey musician said. "I told him, 'Man, I'm just super-flattered that you even called. It shows you're that classy of a guy. Good luck with the song. I know it's gonna be a hit.'"
"Chloe Dancer" is about lead singer Andy Wood's muse/fiancee, Xana La Fuente, who had planned to be a stripper to support the pair, but left the club after one hour. "Crown of Thorns" was written about their nasty breakup over his on and-off-again dabbling in heroin and alcohol. “This song is about a relationship ruined by drugs,” she explains. “He wrote it about our near breakup, and how I tried to control him and the drugs--hence his allusion to being tied to the ceiling."
Ritual de lo Habitual, is the band’s second studio album. Released 28 years ago, on this date in 1990, the record contained some of the band’s catchiest songs — like “Stop!” and the dog-bark-assisted “Been Caught Stealing,” both of which reached Number One on the Modern Rock charts — as well as such enduring epics as “Then She Did…” and “Three Days.” Ritual de lo Habitual reached Number 19 on the Billboard Top 200, and went on to sell over 2 million records in the U.S. alone. On the album's 25th anniversary, Rolling Stone broke it down: https://rol.st/2nUa2Fh
The War On Drugs performed this song live on The Midday Show! https://bit.ly/1K1fLO3
Conner Youngblood will be playing The Sunset on December 9th and Portland's Doug Fir on the 10th. Tickets to the Sunset show here.
Big Red Machine is a music collective headed by The National’s Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, with roots that date back to the 2009 Dark Was the Night benefit record. The pair officially announced their debut LP, out August 31st, will feature contributions from the likes of Bryce Dessner, Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry, Lisa Hannigan, Phoebe Bridgers, The Staves, Hiss Golden Messenger’s JT Bates, and This is the Kit’s Kate Stables.
This is the opening track from their new album, released last week. You can see them in Portland on September 25th and there still appear to be tickets available. Find tickets for all their shows here.
An acoustic version was featured in the 1995 film Clueless and its accompanying soundtrack. In the movie, Cher (Alicia Silverstone) criticizes her stepbrother's taste in music when she overhears him listening to the tune, calling it "crybaby music."
When asked by Vox if he minded the insult, Yorke replied: "I mean, I suppose it does piss me off, but I am a moaning crybaby from Hell, really. Besides, the characters in that film aren't the kind of people I'd want to like Radiohead. They're just average, two dimensional Beverly Hills kids, and the person who is actually listening to them to us in the film is the only three dimensional character. So the answer is: 'Fuck you, we're for 3D people!'"
Kristin Hersh said this about "Possible Dust Clouds", out October 5th:
"I usually play all the instruments on my solo records - essentially the sound of having no friends - but sociopaths can’t realize their potential without people to work out their grievances on and this record is a freakin’ sociopath. So I invited my friends to the party I wanted to hear. Not a live record but an alive record. ...My friends helped me make a nice party noise, a goofy sociopath. Everyone who stopped by the studio was asked to make some noise and they pretty much did. A party that lasted for a few years, it’s only now dying down. A friend called this morning asking when the bus was leaving. A rickety, squealy, squeaky bus...none of us want to miss it.”
"I usually play all the instruments on my solo records - essentially the sound of having no friends - but sociopaths can’t realize their potential without people to work out their grievances on and this record is a freakin’ sociopath. So I invited my friends to the party I wanted to hear. Not a live record but an alive record. ...My friends helped me make a nice party noise, a goofy sociopath. Everyone who stopped by the studio was asked to make some noise and they pretty much did. A party that lasted for a few years, it’s only now dying down. A friend called this morning asking when the bus was leaving. A rickety, squealy, squeaky bus...none of us want to miss it.”
Ellis is the musical project of Linnea Siggelkow. She expanded on the song’s background to Stereogum:
“‘The Drain’ is one of the first songs I wrote for this project. It’s probably also the most hopeful. It’s about self-sabotaging a relationship because you’re afraid of how deep it’s getting, but then saying ‘fuck it’ and diving in anyway.”
“‘The Drain’ is one of the first songs I wrote for this project. It’s probably also the most hopeful. It’s about self-sabotaging a relationship because you’re afraid of how deep it’s getting, but then saying ‘fuck it’ and diving in anyway.”
More from Ritual de lo Habitual, released 28 years ago today. Classic Girl by Jane’s Addiction is a love song about Perry’s then girlfriend Casey Niccoli, written in early 1987 by Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro. In early performances of this song Perry sang the line ‘circus bears on the quilt I wore’ instead of ‘dinosaurs on the quilt I wore’.
Black Belt Eagle Scout kick off their tour Friday night in Portland. If you can'r make it this week they'll be playing more local shows in November. Find all the dates on their Bandcamp page: https://blackbelteaglescout.bandcamp.com/
This was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance in 1996, but lost to Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know." Ahem.
In May, Neko performed live on The Midday Show! See it here.
Happy birthday to Joe Strummer! He would have been 66 today.
This song drew from the works of the civil-rights campaigner Marcus Garvey, who in a 1937 speech said:
"We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind."
"We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind."
Originally released on The Equals' Baby, Come Back album in 1968, this song enjoyed a revival in the manner of Junior Murvin's "Police And Thieves" when The Clash recorded a cover of the song in 1980 for their Sandinista! album. "We used to play the Equals' version on the tour bus, Mick was the first one to play it to me" said bassist Paul Simonon. "We recorded it at the Power Station, just the three of us, me, Mick (Jones, guitarist) and Topper (Headon, drummer). Paul put his bit on later in Wessex," noted singer Joe Strummer.
There was a slight problem with recording in New York as no record store in NYC had a copy of the album, so Clash aide Kosmo Vinyl had to bring a copy of the LP over from London to help the band remember the lyrics.
This song was cited by some critics in reviews of the Sandinista! album as the most Clash-sounding song on the album - with the irony being that it's a cover!
Some interesting chart timing on this song: It made #2 in the UK in January 1983, but didn't reach that position in the US until July. The difference was MTV, which popularized the song when they put the video into rotation not long after Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" made the network much more accepting of black artists.
Another track from Single Rider, O.M.G. (I'm All Over It) was KEXP's Song of the Day in June: https://www.kexp.org/podcasts/song-of-the-day/2018/6/22/jenn-champion-omg-im-all-over-it/
The new album, Kingdoms In Colour, is out September 7th. You can preorder it on turquoise vinyl here.
Foxing comes to Chop Suey on Saturday, September 22nd. Tickets and info here.
"Although critics consistently nudge away the term, M83 create high-concept emo embossed with glittery snow angels, packing more synthy bombast than a Tangerine Dream/Mineral mash-up." -Pitchfork Find their full review of Before The Dawn Heals Us here.
Founding member Lol Tolhurst received a credit on this track (and the rest of the album) for playing "other instruments." He was suffering from severe alcohol problems during the recording session, and his bandmates have revealed that despite the credit he in fact did not play on the album at all. The band subsequently gave Smith an ultimatum to fire Tolhurst or they would quit. Tolhurst was fired in 1989, but rejoined the band in 2011.
Ritual de lo habitual is 28 years old today. Just let that sink in.
Method Man: "I don't rap I flow"
Before this single, The Prodigy mainly used samples for their vocal tracks. However for "Poison," their MC, Maxim, recorded the singing part. The founder of Prodigy Liam Howlett explained to Q magazine March 2008: "(Poison) was a turning point for us. Freestyling over the music. When we did that we thought, 'Why the fuck haven't we done this before?"
So many great songs on Ritual de lo habitual, out on this date in 1990. In this song, lead singer Perry Farrell takes on environmental destruction and cultural malaise, asking listeners to turn off both their smokestacks and radios. The "water will run" image seemed a little dramatic at the time, but history proved that Farrell was right, as climate change has led to floods and other natural disasters. Anyone seen the smoke outside?
Tuesday Morning was released in 1993 as a single from The Pogues' first post-Shane Macgowan album, Waiting for Herb. It is also their most successful single internationally and peaked at #11 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart
Looking back on the song in 2017, Mike Scott isn't impressed. "Melodically, I think it's a very limiting song. My abilities with melodies have improved a lot, have developed a lot since those days, and that song doesn't really make it for me."
In 2008, Bowie recalled writing this song to the Mail on Sunday:
"This song was so easy. Being young was easy. A really beautiful day in the park, sitting on the steps of the bandstand. 'Sailors bap-bap-bap-bap-baaa-bap.' An anomic (not a 'gnomic') heroine. Middle-class ecstasy. I took a walk to Beckenham High Street to catch a bus to Lewisham to buy shoes and shirts but couldn't get the riff out of my head. Jumped off two stops into the ride and more or less loped back to the house up on Southend Road. Workspace was a big empty room with a chaise lounge; a bargain-price art nouveau screen ('William Morris,' so I told anyone who asked); a huge overflowing freestanding ashtray and a grand piano. Little else. I started working it out on the piano and had the whole lyric and melody finished by late afternoon. Nice. Rick Wakeman [of prog band, Yes] came over a couple of weeks later and embellished the piano part and guitarist Mick Ronson created one of his first and best string parts for this song which now has become something of a fixture in my live shows."
"This song was so easy. Being young was easy. A really beautiful day in the park, sitting on the steps of the bandstand. 'Sailors bap-bap-bap-bap-baaa-bap.' An anomic (not a 'gnomic') heroine. Middle-class ecstasy. I took a walk to Beckenham High Street to catch a bus to Lewisham to buy shoes and shirts but couldn't get the riff out of my head. Jumped off two stops into the ride and more or less loped back to the house up on Southend Road. Workspace was a big empty room with a chaise lounge; a bargain-price art nouveau screen ('William Morris,' so I told anyone who asked); a huge overflowing freestanding ashtray and a grand piano. Little else. I started working it out on the piano and had the whole lyric and melody finished by late afternoon. Nice. Rick Wakeman [of prog band, Yes] came over a couple of weeks later and embellished the piano part and guitarist Mick Ronson created one of his first and best string parts for this song which now has become something of a fixture in my live shows."
Happy birthday to Joe Strummer, born in 1952.
Here's James performing Better Than That on Later… with Jools Holland on BBC Two (5 June 2018)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMKRTImbEvg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMKRTImbEvg
The song laments the loss of much of Queensland's built heritage — including the Cloudland Dance Hall, where Midnight Oil had frequently performed.
The Dreamworld theme park, which inspired the song's name, is briefly shown in the music video. See the video here.
Wild Nothings will be playing Neumos on Thursday, November 1st. Tickets & info here.
Plants and Animals performed this song in their 2012 live in-studio set with DJ El Toro! See it here.
This is a rare U2 song with someone other than Bono singing. The Edge sang the first two stanzas.
More of The Black Angels performing live on KEXP from The Triple Door in 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_bE3QII8qk
Grace Slick claimed to Q that the song was aimed not at the young but their parents. She said: "They'd read us all these stories where you'd take some kind of chemical and have a great adventure. Alice in Wonderland is blatant; she gets literally high, too big for the room, while the caterpillar sits on a psychedelic mushroom smoking opium. In the Wizard of Oz, they land in a field of opium poppies, wake up and see this Emerald City. Peter Pan? Sprinkle some white dust-cocaine-on your head and you can fly."
The video used an Alice In Wonderland theme, which was Dave Stewart's (of Eurythmics) idea - it reflected how he felt coming to Los Angeles. It was directed by Jeff Stein, who used a black-and-white tiled background and oversized, elaborate costumes starring Tom Petty as the Mad Hatter. Stewart appears in the beginning of the video playing the sitar on a giant mushroom. At the end, the girl becomes a cake and is eaten by the band, something that caused enough of a stir that they created a version where she doesn't get eaten. The video was a huge hit on MTV, helping introduce Petty to a younger audience and building anticipation for his next videos. See it here.
