Kevin Cole

“When I decided to make Acid Rap a free mixtape and went away from the deals I was being offered, it was to throw out a beacon and let people see what could come from a free artist. I wanted people to see an independent artist. It’s all about demonstrating the abilities of a person with a good team around him an idea of where they want to go.” At the same time, "Most people are signed; say you make a project and there’s 12 Universal artists on it, and they find out you’ve recorded with these artists and plan to make videos with this artists, and they find out you plan to release it for free. And that’s when you get phone calls from people saying they own your friends and you can’t release it without their input." bit.ly

Celebrating Jack White's 40th Birthday tomorrow! On youthful aspirations about becoming a musician: "I was all about music, 24 hours a day when I was younger. I don’t know how many hours a day I am now, maybe I’m down to 19 or something, but as a kid, that’s all I thought about. But I never had any illusions that it was possible to make a record. I just didn’t grow up in that scenario. I think maybe if you grew up in a band in LA or somewhere like that, maybe you’d think, 'of course you could make a record, half the people on this block made a record.' But growing up in Detroit, no one I’d ever heard of had a made a record. It was like a pipe dream. I never had any illusions about that. But I still don’t feel it to this day. I don’t feel like what I’m doing is any kind of thing that’s a bigger deal than anything else." More from White's fascinating exclusive interview with Greg Vandy on our blog: blog.kexp.org

A cover of Robert Johnson's "Stop Breakin' Down Blues," recorded during his last session in 1937 in Dallas, Texas. "The song is a solo piece with Johnson providing guitar accompaniment to his vocals. Several songs have been identified as 'melodic precedents': 'Caught Me Wrong Again' (Memphis Minnie, 1936), 'Stop Hanging Around' (Buddy Moss, 1935), and 'You Got to Move' (Memphis Minnie and Joe McCoy, 1934)." http://bit.ly/29ngXSN Explore the original here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnAB_cea5jU

Page Hamilton on Helmet's working process: "We go in and do bass drums and my guitar together. John (Stanier, drums), Henry and I never recorded separately. We always recorded with the three of us in the room at the same time live. Until we got a take we liked, there was no editing. It was all done to tape, so there was no click track or editing until I decided after we recorded 'Like I Care', I heard this one chord change that I had to put in there in the second chorus, so we went in and we tried to get the tempo right and we just recorded that one chord change. We spliced it in on tape like Pink Floyd style. So it was super non-technical, like as far as Pro-Tools weren’t available. We approach everything like that, like we’re gonna have to play it live." bit.ly Watch Helmet perform a blisteringly sweet set in our space: bit.ly

A tantalizing teaser of hopefully what will be a new album from Miguel, produced by Salaam Remi, known for his work in producing albums for Amy Winehouse and Nas. bit.ly

Born in Versailles, France, Alex Gopher is a DJ who also composes electronic dance and house music and had his musical start in the band Orange, with future Air members Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin. This track appears in the film "Amélie."

A self-taught musician who first started writing music at age 12, Chicago's Joe Smooth is "credited as essential to the creation of house music as a genre and became an influence by major groups like Daft Punk, who often remixed Smooth's music during early live shows. Joe has earned gold and platinum record awards for his work. In 2015 he started his own record label Indie Art Music, a label focusing on producing pop in all genres and all areas of the music industry, and has worked with Destiny's Child, Ludacris, New Order, Whitney Houston, and many others across genres." bit.ly

Active from 2005-2009, Seattle's Common Market was made up of DJ Sabzi (Saba Mohajerjasbi) and MC RA Scion (Ryan Abeo), and dealt with questions "about religion, politics and the state of mainstream hip-hop. At the core of Common Market’s music is a critical, unapologetic world view that change is not only necessary, it is inevitable, and can only come about through having love for and serving the people. Shortly after the release of their debut album, Common Market gathered praise as Seattle Weekly’s 2006 Best New Artist. Their debut album was also the first official new release of Mass Line, a co-op indie record label run by Common Market, Blue Scholars and Gabriel Teodros.[7] The now-defunct label's mission statement included the goal of using hip hop as a means of grassroots community organizing and youth outreach." bit.ly

"One of the most thrilling moments was waiting backstage at Barrowlands in Glasgow ready to perform and hearing the packed audience stamping their feet on the old wooden dance floor singing the into to Connected, it was a feeling I can’t express, the biggest high I ever had, electricity making my arm hairs prickle and my whole body feel light and charged – pure warrior charge bizniz! As a musician I tend to not look back at what we’ve done, I concentrate on the present works and how I feel about them. I guess at the time I was pretty dismissive about the awards and stuff but now I kinda think it’s quite cool that we did something that a lot of people were into and what was most moving was when someone approached you in person and say how your music helped through troubled times, or even in the conception of their first child! Anyhow, my kids kinda dig it..." ~ Rob Birch bit.ly

To the wondrous Shawn Stewart we owe the pleasure of this lovely performance; despite being performed in concerts and covered famously (such as by Elvis Costello, and separately by Curtis Stigers as featured on The Bodyguard Motion Picture Soundtrack), Nick Lowe himself has yet to produce a studio recording of this song.

This song "was inspired by a book that was just calling me from the shelf, and when I read it I was very moved by the magic of it. It's about a special relationship between a young son and his father. The book was written from a child's point of view. His father is everything to him; he is the magic in his life, and he teaches him everything, teaching him to be open-minded and not to build up barriers. His father has built a machine that can make it rain, a 'cloudbuster'; and the son and his father go out together cloudbusting. They point big pipes up into the sky, and they make it rain. The song is very much taking a comparison with a yo-yo that glowed in the dark and which was given to the boy by a best friend. It was really special to him; he loved it. But his father believed in things having positive and negative energy, and that fluorescent light was a very negative energy - as was the material they used to make glow-in-the-dark toys then..." bit.ly

"Inspired by the sight of Bowie's manager Tony Visconti embracing his girlfriend by the Berlin Wall, the song tells the story of two lovers, one from East and one from West Berlin. Bowie's performance of 'Heroes' on June 6, 1987 at the German Reichstag in West Berlin was considered a catalyst to the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall, similar to that of Bruce Springsteen's concert at Radrennbahn Weissensee a year later. Following Bowie's death in January 2016, the German government thanked Bowie for 'helping to bring down the Wall,' adding, 'You are now among Heroes.'" bit.ly

"The song's hook is performed by Jamaican artist Assassin, notable for performing on Kanye West's Yeezus, whose lyrics similarly address racial inequality, specifically against African Americans. The song... contains a deeper meaning of the dangers of hypocrisy. Every verse in the song begins with 'I'm the biggest hypocrite of 2015,' followed by Lamar stating issues of racism in society. The final lyric — 'So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street?/When gang banging make me kill a nigga blacker than me?/Hypocrite!' — reframes the meaning of the piece and demonstrates an internal struggle within Lamar and the African-American community about issues of racism and events such as the death of Trayvon Martin. Lamar notes the hypocrisy of black men mourning Martin's death while also themselves committing violent acts against black men, forcing the listener to consider the complexity and perhaps inevitability of the hypocrisy discussed throughout the song." bit.ly

Over the years, we've been blessed to host Shabazz Palaces in our various homes. Check out archived live video produced from their performances here: blog.kexp.org and blog.kexp.org

"The Grammy wasn’t a big deal in terms of why we split up; it sort of symbolized a lot of what was going on. We got into the rap business and music business at a time when it still had to be, like, original; it was more about the music. Then it started to be more economic, more material, and that disillusioned us. Being young and everything like that, we just sort of copped out. Because we weren’t really the industry types; it wasn’t really like that for us, so we didn’t feel like we were losing out on things. A lot of people are like, 'How could y’all give up on all that?' But it’s more about being content and happy than just making money. That’s how we looked at it." ~ Butterfly www.avclub.com/article/digable-planets-butterfly-on-the-iconic-hip-hop-gr-37431

A beautiful cover originally written and performed by Barry and Robin Gibb, perhaps better known as the BeeGees. This song has also been covered by Michael Bolton.

The glorious Grace Love has graced our New Home on a number of occasions, and you can relive the magic right here: blog.kexp.org Grace Love and the True Loves will be performing tomorrow evening, along with Pillar Point, Crater, and Hobosexual at the West Seattle Summer Fest. Full details here: blog.kexp.org

"Our goal is to create a trance for our listeners by the use of circular and oval shaped grooves. This technique allows the listener to relax and their bodies to latch on to the tempos and rhythmic cycles. It is very easy to find yourself dancing without even knowing it. Once the listener is in this state, the melodic content of our music can be digested, without breaking the trance so the dancing continues. Fela did this well, although he used the trance to get his audience in a state of readiness to hear his message, which was both political and humanitarian. It is also the foundation of EDM or Techno music. Our ultimate goal is to make recordings that allow this feeling to be conveyed at anytime to anyone. The shows are special times where we get to come together as humans and be joined by the feeling of togetherness in that when everyone is dancing, everyone has something in common. It’s pretty magical. We don’t take these experiences for granted." ~ Ben Bloom bit.ly

"Paul Westerberg was looking for a guitarist to replace Bob Stinson, who had been asked to leave in the mid-1980s because of his drug and alcohol problems, and approached Dunlap. Dunlap initially turned down the offer, but joined The Replacements in 1987 on account of 'his admiration for Westerberg's songwriting.' Dunlap's day job at the time was working as a janitor at First Avenue, a nightclub in Minneapolis, the same venue where The Replacements had launched their career in the early 1980s. Dunlap became the 'replacement Replacement,' and remained with the band until their breakup in 1991, featuring on their last two studio albums. In 1991 Dunlap toured with ex-Georgia Satellites lead vocalist Dan Baird to promote Baird's solo album, Love Songs for the Hearing Impaired. Towards the end of 1992 Dunlap started recording his own first solo album, The Old New Me, which was released in 1993. It was followed by his second solo album, Times Like This in 1996." bit.ly

Known better to his mother as Amir Elkhalifa, Oddisee was raised in Prince George's County, Maryland, the wealthiest majority black county in the U.S. "Kanye is from the suburbs, Pharrell is from the suburbs. These are the people who are dominating the music industry right now. These are the reason why jeans are tighter in the hood… these are reasons why kids are on skateboards in the hood now. The transformation has been under way for a long time now... When you grow up with opportunity, yet poverty [is so close in proximity], it directly affects the type of music you listen to and the type of music you make." n.pr

"I was working on another song – maybe ‘Dreams’ – when I had an idea for a flute beat. I picked up the mic and ‘Wow’ came out totally spontaneously. I put it away and forgot about it. Then ‘Wow’ was on in the studio one day and someone said, 'You should put this on the record.' I went, 'I don’t think anybody would like this.' Usually, I turn in a whole album to my record company when they want a single. But there were a lot of songs in progress, so I sent in a cache of them this time. Nothing happened for months, then suddenly the record company said, 'We’re putting ‘Wow’ out as a single.' I was, 'Really? 'Wow'?' Huh. Well, OK then.' 'Wow' was the last song on the cache I’d sent over." bit.ly Enjoy this exclusive interview with Beck with our own Jim Beckmann: blog.kexp.org

"In the late 1970s and early 1980s, disco music was undergoing a severe backlash. In spite of this, the band decided to revive the disco sound that was later included on their previous works and records. Musically, 'Let's Groove' is a post-disco, pop and funk song which includes instrumentation of synthesizers and keyboards along with live electric guitars. Originally, 'Let's Groove' received mixed reviews from music critics, where many praised its catchiness, while some felt it was generic within its timeline of the disco era. However, many contemporary reviews have been well-received, many citing it as memorable and a great disco influenced song. The song was a commercial success, with it being their highest-charting single in various territories. The song peaked inside the top twenty in countries including the United States, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Canada and other component charts in America." bit.ly