Kevin Cole

Welcome to Drive Time! #24 on KEXP's Summer Jams countdown is the reggae fusion hit Wayne Wonder!

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 23: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown Aka the theme from "Portlandia"! Watch the live performance at KEXP here: www.youtube.com

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 22: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown "Ini­tially, [Andrew] VanWyn­gar­den had its cho­rus as “me and my girl”. “Then I was like, ‘That’s so bor­ing and cheesy, let’s make it ‘me and Michael’,’ which de­vel­oped into this am­bigu­ous story, and we re­ally liked that" bit.ly Watch the video for "Me and Michael" here: youtu.be

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 21: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown Tom Tom Club is the side project of Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, the drummer and bass player of the Talking Heads. They married in 1977 and released the first Tom Tom Club album in 1981. The group was a family affair: Tina's sisters Laura and Lani were backup singers, and their brother Loric wrote a song called "Booming And Zooming" for them. How did David Byrne react to the success of this song? According to Chris Frantz, he basically ignored it. Frantz told Songfacts that the only time Byrne mentioned the song was when they went to the popular New York dance club Studio 54 after watching the premiere of The Catherine Wheel, which Bryne worked on. When they entered the club, "Genius Of Love" was playing, and the crowd was going nuts. At this point, Byrne made his one and only comment about the song: "How did you get that hand clap sound?" bit.ly

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 20: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown At the time, Blind Melon bassist and songwriter Brad Smith had been dating a girl who was going through depression (she would sleep through sunny days and complain when it didn't rain), and for a while he told himself that he was writing the song from her perspective, though Smith later realized that he was also writing about it himself. Don't miss "that little bumblebee" dancing around in the video for "No Rain": www.youtube.com

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 19: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown “Water No Get Enemy” contains mixed vocal lingo of Yoruba language and pidgin English originating in West Africa. It sees Fela emphasize the power of water literally and metaphorically, suggesting its importance to opposing ideology such as life and death. genius.com

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 18: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown Her guy is the best but the singer fears losing him - "Kiss me hard before you go," she sings. The song's scenario is typical of Lana's debut album, which she describes as "Hollywood Sadcore."

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 17: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown Janelle Monáe's song “Turntables" appears in All In: The Fight for Democracy, a documentary on voter suppression that features Stacey Abrams. bit.ly

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 14: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown Go-Go's bass player Kathy Valentine wrote this song in 1980 when she was a member of a Los Angeles band called The Textones. Kathy grew up in Austin, Texas, and on a trip back to the city, met a dreamy boy named Billy who sang in a band called Boy Problems. On the flight back to LA, she wrote these lines on a napkin: Now that I'm away, I wish I'd stayed Tomorrow's a day of mine you won't be in "The short romance had softened me, and the words, written from true-life longing, resonated forever," she wrote in her memoir, All I Ever Wanted.

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 13: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown At a live show in 1986, Jane’s Addiction front man Perry Farrell cryptically introduced “Summertime Rolls” as “This song’s about getting laid on a waterbed…no…it’s about laying in a park…no, it’s not…yes, it is.”

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 12: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown Two years after its release, this was used during a quiet scene in "Rocky," where Sylvester Stallone feeds his fish - but it was enough to get Kool & the Gang jumping out of their seats in the theater. "Nobody had told us," Gang staff member Cleveland Brown remembered to Billboard. "We were watching this movie about a white boxer. When it came to the scene where Stallone dropped the needle on the record, and 'Summer Madness' started playing, I can tell you we got pretty loud in the theater." www.songfacts.com

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 11: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown Bob Marley apparently performed this popular song only twice live, once spontaneously in Lenox, Massachusetts, after a rainstorm stopped, and a second time in Santa Barbara, CA on Haile Selassie's birthday.

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 10: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown Rockaway Beach in Queens, NY, became the favoured hangout for young Doug Colvin (later aka Dee Dee Ramone) after he escaped with his mother from an alcoholic father in Germany and moved to New York City when he was 15. He saw the beach and its enormous amusement park as his private escape. "Rockaway Beach"" was one of 14 songs the Ramones took into New York’s Mediasound studio in August 1977 for their third album, later titled Rocket To Russia. bit.ly

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 9: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown Not only is this one of 1977's best songs, but, according to science, "Mr. Blue Sky" is the happiest song on earth! SCIENCE! groovyhistory.com

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 8: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown A frequent seasonal request by KEXP listeners, "Hot Fun in the Summertime" was originally released in 1969 right after the band's highly acclaimed appearance at Woodstock.

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 7: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown Sara Dallin of Bananarama said the song "played on the darker side: it looked at the oppressive heat, the misery of wanting to be with someone as the summer ticked by. We've all been there!" Watch the band throw banana peels (They're Bananarama!) at the sheriff, then end up dancing with the law: www.youtube.com

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 6: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown DeVaughn began the writing process by penning down "A Cadillac Don't Come Easy", which eventually was re-written to become "Be Thankful for What You Got" in 1972

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 5: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown "I was at the top of the rap game. It was the summer of '92 and I was in a hotel room, really in a state of euphoria. I had all the money I had dreamed of. I was in a good frame of mind. And I remember thinking, 'Okay, there's been [the 1992 LA riots], people know I will deal with that. That's a given. But I rap all this gangsta stuff—what about all the good days I had?'"

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 4: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown Childish Cambino sings of dangerous warming temperatures on top of an upbeat track.

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 3: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince sample Kool & the Gang's "Summer Madness" (#12 on today's countdown!) on "Summertime" the lead single from their 1991 release 'Homebase'.

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 2: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown Toward the end of the song Withers holds a note for 18 seconds, the longest of any Top 40 hit in the United States.

KEXP's One Day Summer Drive 1: KEXP DJs Top Summer Jams Countdown Read about the making of this song, which has been widely sampled, from Dr. Dre to Pharrell Williams to Mary J. Blige: www.theguardian.com

KEXP's Friday Night Dance Party! With a birthday feature on influential blues artist Howlin' Wolf. Have a suggestion or want to say hi? Send to: dj@kexp.org, 206-903-5397 or Twitter and Instagram. @djmichelemyers