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Monday, Jan 21 2019, 6AM
6:06 AM
16th spin
The documentary of Aretha Franklin's 1972 "Amazing Grace" concerts was just released last year after Ms. Franklin's death. The New York Times says that you "must see" this movie: www.nytimes.com
"I Feel a Change,” released posthumously, was recorded during Charles Bradley's "Victim of Love"sessions. The video features black-and-white footage of Bradley as he visits a church, travels, gets ready backstage, performs on various stages and records in the studio all soundtracked to the passionate, heartfelt song.: www.youtube.com
"Linnette" by Seattle band Hotels was selected as a KEXP song of the Day. Download it for yourself here:blog.kexp.org
Nicola Cruz was born in Limoges, France, to Ecuadorian parents. "His creative process involves an attentive, careful search for the living roots and rituals that are part of South American identity—its Andean and African origins in particular—valuing its rhythms, its oral traditions, its instruments and the energy they transmit." You can pre-order "Siku" on his Bandcamp page.:nicolacruz.bandcamp.com
Cigarettes After Sex is an ambient pop group based out of Brooklyn, NY led by songwriter Greg Gonzalez. Morgan hosted them in the KEXP studio in 2017 for a great live performance: www.youtube.com
Steve Kilbey, The Church's frontman, co-wrote this haunting song with bassist and then-girlfriend Karin Jansson. The pair was visiting Kilbey's mother in New South Wales when an after-dinner smoke (a "special musicians' jazz cigarette") under a blanket of stars inspired the ethereal tune.
As for the song's meaning, "It's not about anything," Kilbey said. "Like all my songs, it's a portal into your own mind where I give you a guided meditation. It's a blank, abstract canvas for people to lose themselves in."
In the band's 2005 autobiography, "U2 by U2," Bono wrote: "In the scriptures they talk about the blood crying from the ground. And with 'MLK' you have just that, the blood crying from the ground - but not for revenge, for understanding. I had a conversation with Bob Dylan at that time. He said, 'We associate three kings with Memphis. Elvis, the King, of course. The great B.B. King. But then there's Martin Luther King. Where's his Graceland, where's his monument? The city had plans to tear down the motel outside of which he was murdered. That struck a chord with me."
The song was written during the sessions for the White Album, at a time when Paul McCartney felt isolated as the only member of The Beatles still keen to keep the group together. Although his public persona remained upbeat, privately McCartney was feeling insecure and wounded.During this period, his mother Mary – who had passed away in 1956 when McCartney was 14 – appeared to him in a dream. He said that the song was based on that dream.
Next month, Mercury Rev is releasing a full-length covers tribute album to the country star Bobbie Gentry. They’ve recruited some amazing artists to cover the now-reclusive musician’s 1968 album "The Delta Sweete" in full, including Lucinda Williams, Norah Jones, Beth Orton, Rachel Goswell, Vashti Bunyan, Marissa Nadler, Susanne Sundfør, and Phoebe Bridgers. This is Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval on vocals for "Big Boss Man."
This tribute to Martin Luther King was written by Livin' on a High Note producer M. Ward. The recording of it was an emotional experience for Mavis Staples. She recalled: "I got so wrapped up in that I almost didn't finish it. The first time I choked up and started to cry, as I could see Dr. Martin Luther King as I was singing. It just hit me and I almost broke down. But I held it together and I finished, and then I broke down: you have to take your heart into the studio."
James Blake will be at The Moore Theatre on Sunday, March 10th, 2019. In this song, he samples The Manhattan's 1977 song,"It Feels So Good to Be Loved So Bad."
Watch these talented sisters in a live in-studio performance that included "Deathless":www.youtube.com
Go to The Tractor Tavern on Sunday, February 10th, 2019 to hear Y La Bamba perform live. Before you go, watch a live performance of "Mujeres" on KEXP: www.youtube.com
"The video, created and directed by Daniel Swan, features Django Django singer and guitarist Vinnie Neff pushing a giant ball (the Hale-Bopp comet?) up an endless flight of stairs like Sisyphus, only the swirling, psychedelic landscape is a computer-generated maze of snaking tubes and floating rooms, not the underworld as ancient Greeks probably imagined it.": www.youtube.com
Frontman James Graham describes the lyrics as "about my ongoing battle with not liking myself, trying to be a good person but constantly feeling like I’m failing myself and everyone I care about." Get this song, selected by KEXP as a Song of the Day, for free here.: www.kexp.org
Recognize that voice? Last week, Radiohead released "Ill Wind" to streaming services. This song originally appeared on a CD single with Radiohead's rejected James Bond song “Spectre." consequenceofsound.net
Although we really don't know about a new album, SZA is featured in this article on the "ten most anticipated hip-hop albums of 2019": djbooth.net
Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx) of "Sanford & Son" gave ATCQ the "El Segundo" theme.:www.youtube.com
This is Austin, Texas funk powerhouse Brownout's cover of the great Public Enemy song. In its original form (1991), producer Gary G-Wiz used a fuzzed-out guitar riff from Mandrill’s deep funk classic “Two Sisters Of Mystery” and a scream-laced Jackson 5 organ break to build a sweat-dripping march against Arizona Governor Evan Mecham’s unwillingness to officially recognize Martin Luther King Day." There was a voter referendum that reinstated the holiday in 1993.
They'll bring this energy to The Showbox on Friday, March 22nd, 2019.
She’s Swedish, discovered singing via X-Ray Spex, was in the Slits, and has overlapped with Portishead, Massive Attack, and Biggie among others. Watch her perform "Natural Skin Deep" live:www.youtube.com
“This Land” is a powerful, blues-soaked indictment of modern racism. Clark sings a true story about living on “50 acres with a Model A/Right in the middle of Trump country,” next to a neighbor who “can’t wait to call the police on me.” The chorus is something he’s heard before: "Go back where you come from.” Read more about the song, the video, and the album, due out on March 1st, here: www.rollingstone.com
This is a tribute to various revolutionary American leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.
The pioneering rap group Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force wrote this song and were the first to record it. They released it as a single in 1983.
The Danny Jelinek-directed video for this song stars Paul Reubens as an insane race car driver. The American comic actor is best known for his character Pee-Wee Herman.: www.youtube.com
This extraordinary musician was paralyzed in 1990 when high winds blew a lighting rig down on him during a sound check. He continued to perform until his death in 1999.: www.curtismayfield.com
“'Remind Me Tomorrow' isn’t a redemption narrative, exactly, but it’s the first of the songwriter’s records to linger more on contentedness than on pain." Read this week's very positive New Yorker article about this fine musician and her fifth album: www.newyorker.com
"Taking their name from an obscure song from fellow Scots Simple Minds, the Cocteaus were originally formed by guitarist Robin Guthrie and bassist Will Heggie and later rounded out by Guthrie's girlfriend Elizabeth Fraser, an utterly unique performer whose swooping, operatic vocals relied less on any recognizable language than on the subjective sounds and textures of verbalized emotions." Read an Allmusic biography of this fabulous band:www.allmusic.com
Tamaryn Brown is a singer and songwriter originally from New Zealand and now living in the States. Watch Tamaryn's live performance on KEXP several years ago: www.youtube.com
The band weren't pleased when their song 'No Cars Go' (originally on their self-titled 2003 EP and re-recorded for Neon Bible) was used by Fox for an NFL ad without their permission. They had a (completely understandable) change of heart about using their tunes in ads a few years later, happily licensing 'Wake Up' for use during the Super Bowl breaks in aid of Partners In Health's Stand With Haiti following the 2010 earthquake.
Local band Antonioni will play the Look Up Fest on Saturday, March 9th, 2019.: www.look-up-records.com
Stevie Wonder had a huge role in getting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day recognized as a national holiday in America. He helped organize a rally in Washington on January 15, 1981 (King's birthday), that was a key event in the movement. With the crowd chanting, "Martin Luther King Day, we took a holiday," black leaders and celebrities appeared, and when Wonder spoke, he said: "As an artist, my purpose is to communicate the message that can better improve the lives of all of us. I'd like to ask all of you just for one moment, if you will, to be silent and just to think and hear in your mind the voice of our Dr. Martin Luther King.": www.youtube.com
Steve Gunn will perform at The Tractor Tavern on Wednesday, February 13th, 2019, in support of his new album, "The Unseen in Between": www.theguardian.com
You can hear Montreal band Men I Trust at Barboza on Saturday, February 23rd, 2019.: menitrust.bandcamp.com
Giddyup, padnuh! See Troy Nelson as "The Cowboy" and Mitski as "The Talented Musician" in this live performance from the KEXP studio last year: www.youtube.com
This great song was released as a single on this date in 1986. Formerly titled "South African Song," "Rise" was written by John Lydon about the oppression of blacks in South Africa during its hideous apartheid era. He reported: "I read this manual on South African interrogation techniques, and 'Rise' is quotes from some of the victims. I put them together because I thought it fitted in aptly with my own feelings about daily existence."
The Chemical Brothers are expected to release their ninth studio album, "No Geography," this spring. "MAH," a new song from the album, takes its name from its livid hook, which goes, “I’m mad as hell, I ain’t gonna take it no more.” You can see the laser-filled performance video here: consequenceofsound.net
"I think there is a pound of flesh owed in terms of this country making sure all of its citizens enjoy the constitutional rights that are promised," Killer Mike says about this song. "And because we don't, we keep resetting to the same place of anger and fear and angst and explosions of that. The dead don't rest. The soul's gonna speak, based on the fact that this country is still not offering full justice." Read the lyrics to this powerful song:www.azlyrics.com
Toro Y Moi is "coloring outside the lines": www.complex.com
Snapped Ankles is part of the stellar lineup for KEXP's International Clash Day broadcast from London, February 4th-7th.:www.kexp.org
Explaining this song to Q magazine in 1992, lead singer Michael Stipe said: "The words come from everywhere. I'm extremely aware of everything around me, whether I am in a sleeping state, awake, dream-state or just in day to day life. There's a part in 'It's The End Of The World As We Know It' that came from a dream where I was at Lester Bangs' birthday party and I was the only person there whose initials weren't L.B. So there was Lenny Bruce, Leonid Brezhnev, Leonard Bernstein... So that ended up in the song along with a lot of stuff I'd seen when I was flipping TV channels. It's a collection of streams of consciousness."
The Breeders' reunion album, "All Nerve," came out last year, along with a tour in the fall. What lies ahead?: www.facebook.com
Originally written and recorded by the Sheffield synth-pop trio Heaven 17, the song made waves in the UK before eventually being banned by the BBC for libel. This LCD Soundsystem cover came out just before last year's midterm elections and urges listeners to get on their feet, “unlock that funky chaindance,” and drop those fascist habits once and for all.
As you hear this, perhaps you're saying, "More! More!" Well, Mormor will be live at Barboza on Wednesday, May 1st, 2019.
Watch a live performance of "Eric. B. Is President": www.youtube.com
Spirit Award is playing the Timbrrr! Music Festival in Leavenworth, Washington on Saturday, January 26th, 2019.
Here's a discussion of this song, the "crown jewel" of this great album:www.fender.com