If you're only aware of one Daniel Johnston album, Hi, How Are You is probably that one album - whether you've heard it, heard of it, or seen its cover image on a t-shirt worn by Kurt Cobain. As far as I can tell this was the first of his cassettes to receive wide release as an LP (five years after…
I honestly don't know how I do it. A few times a year, I collect a whole bunch of these album covers - enough to last me for months - and then at some point I grab one and write about it. And yet I often end up with some extraordinary timely coincidences. For instance, did you know that KEXP/KCMU f…
Where would we be without Wikipedia? And by we I mean both the human race and people who write blog posts as quickly as possible about esoteric subjects. If I were trying to write this series without Wikipedia, most of my information would come from the comments written by the DJs themselves, some …
This is the third album by The Jazz Butcher I've covered in this blog series (see also here and here), and I'm embarrassed to admit I have yet to properly spend time getting acquainted with this long-running English band's deep discography. Something tells me that the next several years will be a g…
I had never heard of the idiosyncratic Los Angeles guitar player/singer/songwriter Sylvia Juncosa before pulling this record off the KEXP shelf, but I'm glad to have made her musical acquaintance, however late I am to the party. And it seems my timing is pretty good, as just last year she released …
I can't think of many one-hit wonders who have careers with the length and breadth of Chris Isaak. If you were alive in the late '80s, the song (and video!) "Wicked Game" is probably what comes to mind when you hear Isaak's name. That song was on his third album, though (a testament to Warner Broth…
In the Nursery must be one of the longest running and most prolific projects I've covered in this series, having released albums almost annually since 1983 (they've slowed down a bit in recent years, with only six full-length releases since 2005).
Another week, another band the Internet knows almost nothing about. If the KCMU DJs circa 1987 are to be believed, Leatherface Gets Religion is not the first release by this mysterious band. Discogs seems to back that up, reporting that most of these tracks come from a pair of 12"s, 1984's 'Gator B…
In 2018, KEXP celebrated the 30th anniversary of local record label Sub Pop with a four-month retrospective, "counting up" every catalog number in their vast discography of over 1,200 releases. Dig into the archives of our catalog coverage, featuring in-depth coverage on the history of their releases.
