Hello friends,
One of my favorite parts of writing this newsletter each week is sharing behind-the-scenes secrets, or slices of life, whatever you might call it, from the studios and halls of KCRW.
On Monday, I filled in for Novena on Morning Becomes Eclectic, and we welcomed a Guest DJ set from Dutch DJ duo Weval. Their album, CHOROPHOBIA, was a big one for us last year, and their song “Free” ended up at number two on our Top 10 songs of the year!
There is a whole story about the title of that album — it means “fear of dancing” — which I'll get to. But first, to the DJ set: they played newly created edits of tracks from Billie Eilish, Madonna, and mk.gee, in addition to some of their own tracks. When the show was over, we started talking about the inspiration behind the Billie edit. Here it is.
A week ago, they were driving down the 1 from San Francisco, musing about the fact that it had been 10 years since their first US tour. According to Harm and Merijn, the tour was a bit of a mess — no crew, no $$, no credit cards — and they were exhausted by the effort of making it work. A last-minute opportunity came up for a headlining show at a little club called… School Night. The boys were a bit hesitant to take on something new at the tail end, but heard the lore… that a lot of-up-and-coming acts that later achieved great success had a show at School Night early on. So they committed and played the show.
At this point in the story, they then showed us the poster from that show in 2016 in large font: “WEVAL.” And in tiny font below: “Billie Eilish.” Merijn said he saw about five minutes of her set, while Harm napped in the back room that night. Anyway, we all know where she ended up.
So to rewind to last week’s drive down the California coast, Weval decided that, in honor of their 10th anniversary visit to LA, and Billie and Finneas’ success, to do a special edit of Billie’s song, “Birds Of A Feather,” And they premiered it for us during their MBE Guest DJ set on Monday! It is smoking hot, and I’ll be playing it again for you on Saturday. So come hang with me this weekend for Weval.
PS. They will have you dancing. On the cheeky album title, they had this to say about the magic of being in a tightly packed space playing electronic dance music… “It’s surprising how a crowd can go from zero to 200. At the beginning, people are afraid to dance, and then suddenly you’re all doing it together. By the end, everyone is jumping around and having tons of fun.”
So… tons of fun, Saturday 12-3!
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