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Friday, Feb 23 2018, 6AM
Good morning and happy Friday. "Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup...." Neil Finn explained in an interview: "I wrote that on my brother's piano. I'm not sure if I remember what the context was, exactly, but it was just about on the one hand feeling kind of lost, and on the other hand sort of urging myself on: Don't dream it's over. That one actually fell out literally, without me thinking about it too much."
Marley wrote this, but gave a composer credit to Vincent "Tartar" Ford, one of his friends from Jamaica who helped him out when he was very poor and ran a soup kitchen in Kingston. By giving Ford the credit, Marley was helping out an old friend by trying to divert royalty checks his way. This was common practice on Marley's later output, as he listed friends and band members as composers. Ford is also listed as the songwriter of "Rastman Vibration."
Kate Bush said, "It seems that the more you get to know a person, the greater the scope there is for misunderstanding. Sometimes you can hurt somebody purely accidentally or be afraid to tell them something because you think they might be hurt when really they'll understand. So what that song is about is making a deal with God to let two people swap place so they'll be able to see things from one another's perspective."
John selected this beautiful song as a KEXP Song of the Day. You can download it for free here: blog.kexp.org
"..why are we stuck on a little melody about a woman, her drug habit and an abusive boyfriend named Sergio?..." Read a 2001 essay about this song: www.washingtonpost.com
6:33 AM
1st spin?!
"One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple,
by the relief office I saw my people.
As they stood hungry,
I stood there wondering if God blessed America for me." This powerful
song was originally written in February 1940, when Woody Guthrie first arrived in New York City from Oklahoma. Guthrie had a keen ear for the recordings of Virginia's Carter Family, and he was not afraid to borrow. A 1930 gospel recording, "When the World's on Fire," sung by the Carters, must have provided the tune for what would become "This Land Is Your Land."
Seeing George Michael rehearsing "Somebody to Love" (with David Bowie watching in the background) will break your heart. Just a year prior, George Michael had come to the realization that he was gay when he met his first love, Anselmo Feleppa. “He was the first person I had ever loved, and I discovered he loved me too,” Michael said of Feleppa, who was HIV positive and died in 1993. Here's both the rehearsal and the live performance: www.vulture.com
You can see the lamented Dreamworld theme park in the video for this song: www.metrolyrics.com
"The clocks will all run backwards...
All the sheep will have two heads...
And Thursday night and Friday...
Will be on Tuesday night instead...": songmeanings.com Did you hear a homage to "Sympathy for the Devil?": www.youtube.com
The Guardian calls "Don't Change" their "first undeniable classic": www.theguardian.com
Wolf Alice performed live in the KEXP studio last fall.: www.youtube.com
The Breeders will play the Showbox SoDo on Friday, April 13th, 2018.
The New York Times had this article about The Breeders yesterday.: www.nytimes.com
This is the lead single from Belly's first new album in 23 years. They'll be here in Seattle at The Neptune Theatre on August 12th, 2018.: www.stereogum.com
The Catherine Wheel was one of the most commonly used torture devices during the medieval times and was also known as the Breaking Wheel. It was used to crush the limbs and bones of the condemned and often caused prolonged torture spanning multiple days. Rob Dickinson is the paternal cousin of Iron Maiden (another torture device) frontman Bruce Dickinson.
See the official (and somewhat bizarre) video for this song which features Tanya Donelly (of the previously played Breeders and Belly): www.youtube.com
This track is featured in a trailer for "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty": www.tribecafilm.com
Commenting on working with the crowd-sourced singing group Choir! Choir! Choir!, Byrne said in a press release,
“There is a transcendent feeling in being subsumed and surrendering to a group. This applies to sports, military drills, dancing… and group singing. One becomes a part of something larger than oneself, and something in our makeup rewards us when that happens. We cling to our individuality, but we experience true ecstasy when we give it up. So, the reward experience is part of the show.”: consequenceofsound.net
Here's how they did it: davidbyrne.com
"No one will ever say that Arcade Fire never dealt with the themes of childhood and childhood's relation to places. "Rebellion (Lies)" takes those concepts to a literal place with the band walking around Mt. Desert Island in Maine at the height of fall. Everyone is sleeping, and the band goes through and wakes the children up, playing the role of pied piper as they travel to a graveyard.": imvdb.com
"The instrumental introduction and verses contain polymeter, creating a cross-rhythmic feel throughout. The drumset and bass play in 5/4 and the vocal line, guitar, and keyboards are heard in 4/4 (particularly notable as the keyboards play a steady eighth note pulse and change chords in a 4/4 time pattern)." Let a music educator teach you about "Touch and Go": www.rebelmusicteacher.com
Ahhh....the Friday song. KEXP's Spring Drive is Friday, March 9th through Friday, March 16th. You can volunteer to help with that effort: www.shiftboard.com
Buffalo Tom will be LIVE on The Morning Show on Thursday, March 1st, 2018 at 9:00 a.m. This performance is open to the public. This Boston band will play Neumos that night. Buffalo Tom has invited Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America to set up tables at all their upcoming shows.: www.buffalotom.com
Lead singer Mike Scott wrote the song; he composed about 20 different verse lyrics, choosing the best five for the final product.
Looking back on the song in 2017, Mike Scott isn't impressed. "Melodically, I think it's a very limiting song," he told Songfacts. "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."
What is splashed on the floor at the beginning of this video?: www.youtube.com
The video stars Dina, a spunky tortoiseshell kitten rescued from downtown LA, and a puppet-ized version of the west coast rapper (real name: Ian Matthias Bavitz). It's three-minutes of adorable, directed by Toben Seymour.: www.youtube.com
What would it be like to see the trailer for "The Solo: A Star Wars Story" to the tune of "Sabotage": www.cinemablend.com
These pumpkins will be at KeyArena on Friday, August 24th, 2018.
"I caught a young band called Fontaines D.C. They were perfect for that setting, a tiny rock club on the first floor of an old building in the middle of Dublin. It was a set of snarling, swaggering post-punk filtered through the retro-rock bands of the early ’00s; their frontman Grian Chatten, in particular, had the kind of DGAF aloofness we associate with bands in the latter category." Check out the single: www.stereogum.com
Here's the video for "Boys in the Better Land": www.youtube.com
"Yah, yah, yah, ....yah,yah, ya!" That's The Band's Garth Hudson playing keyboards on this wonderful song: www.youtube.com
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club played live at KEXP on Tuesday, February 20th, 2018, at noon. You can find that performance on KEXP's streaming archive: www.kexp.org
Watch Bob Mould perform this song live during KEXP's New Home Grand Opening in April, 2016: www.youtube.com
See the toilet paper roll and other videos at Fidlar's official website: fidlarmusic.com
From the liner notes: “In small towns, there are few forms of amusement. two prominent ones are easy sex and arson. When the more simple exercises lose their bang, new combinations develop.
Any similarity between the rhythm patterns used and Led Zeppelin drumbeats is entirely appropriate."
Hüsker Dü was named after a '50s Danish board game (the name means "do you remember"). Read a complete biography of this influential band: www.allmusic.com
Here's what they looked like in 1993 as they played "Bury Me" live: www.youtube.com You can see a later iteration at Key Arena on Friday, August 24th, 2018.
Someone commented on the video of this song, "As someone said years ago, this song is upliting or depressing depending on your mood. In my 20s it was a song of hope in my thirties a song of despair and this morning in my forties is a happy sing a long as I prepare to tick things off my to do list because I did go to bed last night and did not stay up watching my eyes turn red.": www.youtube.com
Stone Roses biographer John Robb discusses the future of the band in this article from last fall:www.nme.com
Del wrote this song in response to a mostly spoken-word bit by The Monkees titled "Zilch," which began with Peter Tork repeating the name "Mr. Bob Dobalina." "I just kind of conceptualized who Mr. Dobalina would be," Del said, "which is basically somebody who thinks he know what hip, he think he cool, but he's really right off. Like he ain't right on -- he right off."
Interesting images in the video for "Wake 'n' Bake": www.youtube.com
Buy Ugly Duckling music and merch at their Bandcamp page: uglyduckling.bandcamp.com
They're going to have an album release show at The Crocodile with DoNormaal on Thursday, March 22nd, 2018.
Read a KEXP tribute to Sharon Jones: www.kexp.org
"Hey yo Chuck, I don't understand this man!
Yo, we got to slow down man, we losing them!" Don't be lost. Memorize these lyrics: genius.com
David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel" single first charted in the UK on this date in 1974. The song was the last single in the glam rock style that had been his trademark. It was also his first hit since 1969 not to feature Mick Ronson. Bowie himself played guitar on this track.
In this 2010 NY Times opinion piece, Bono remembers the real "Bloody Sunday": www.nytimes.com