Category Archives: The Source WMNF HD3

A Conversation With Rudy Tambala

Posted on by

Rudy Tambala is a smart guy, he’s well-read, he’s articulate and he enjoys a spirited conversation. He’s sincere when he states, “Rock ’n’ roll is fucking sex! It’s the rhythm of your blood. It’s the most vital force. Without it, there isn’t any existence on this planet!” The irony of his words adds to the fascination of listening to a man whose creative talent has been on display for over three decades. Rudy Tambala first came to critical acclaim as one half of the influential duo, A. R. Kane. Released thirty years ago Lollita, their mesmerizing 12” EP for the enterprising 4AD label, remains as fresh and innovative now as it did way back then. During Norman B’s exclusive interview with Rudy, the forthright musician reveals how he and his bandmate, Alex Ayuli created their extraordinary and frequently emulated sound. He talks enthusiastically of the beginnings of A. R. Kane, detailing the creation of the noted Lollita artwork. Rudy shares his thoughts on current music, design and why style is important, “It’s not what you play it’s the way you hold your guitar. It not what you wear it’s how your hair looks…it’s a youth thing.” He says wryly. The legacy of A. R. Kane continues with his new band, Jübl and Rudy gives us an insider’s take on the demands of his new project. This is an interview full of warmth and candor. The conversation flows seamlessly from previously unheard details about recording techniques to spot-on observations about the business of life. 

Life Elsewhere is now available at NPR One & iTunes

Sundays 12 noon ET at The Source WMNF HD3
Sundays 10.00am ET at WNRM The Root
Mondays 5.00pm PT & Wednesdays 2.00pm PT at NWCZ Radio
Thursdays 6.00pm ET at Internet Radio Network
Fridays at 9.00pm GMT on Cornucopia Radio

If you miss any editions of Life Elsewhere, go here then go to the Listen On-Demand panel, choose the date of a show and click play.

Life Elsewhere Music airs:
Sundays 11.00am ET at WNRM The Root
Mondays at 6.00pm & Wednesdays at 3.00pm Pacific Time on NWCZ Radio
Fridays at 10.00am Eastern Time on IRN
Cornucopia Radio airs Life Elsewhere Music throughout each week
You can hear all the volumes over at Mixcloud
Make a Donation Button

 

Extraordinary Music

Posted on by

          

Thirty years ago when I first caught sight of the cover I knew this was going to be a record I would like. Little did I know then it would be a release that I would instantly adore and over the years I would herald it as groundbreaking. At any given opportunity I would reference it as having a lasting profound impact on me. I would consistently include it in my “Best of Lists”. Sometimes, for no other reason than I thought it was perfectly brilliant, I’d slip it into a set if I was doing live radio or if I was deejaying in a club, I’d take the crowd to a pulsing rhythmic high and then hold them in a state of near climax as blended in its open bars, knowing only full well the crashing, thunderous crescendo of guitars would send everyone into ecstasy. Yes, the sleeve did catch my attention, back then Vaughan Oliver’s graphic’s for the 4AD label were the must-haves for every record snob on the planet. This one was all the more exceptional perhaps because of Juergen Teller’s alluring, erotic photos on the front and back. But for me, I didn’t get giddy with excitement over the cool 4AD covers, no, for me the music had to be as good, if not better than the precious covers. Lollita, the 3 track 12” EP by A. R. Kane was a landmark. The duo of Alex Ayuli and Rudy Tambala made music that came along just at the right time. It was like nothing else. Which probably explains why not everyone, not even die-hard 4AD aficionados treated it with the same reverence as I. There was another titillating facet to Lollita that fascinated me – the lyrics. Was he saying, “Winkie girl” or could it be, “Wicked girl”? Did he really say, “Love to go on down and kiss your curls”? It really didn’t matter, the more I played it the bigger the mystery. And, did I play it! My copy is still if not in pristine condition, it sounds fine, the cover is a little grubby around the corners though. What an absolute thrill then when I opened up my inbox the other day to discover a new track, Thinking About You, from an outfit named, Jübl. The name was intriguing, but it was the sound…that sound. Could it be a close relation of A. R. Kane? With a little closer inspection, I discovered that Jübl is Rudy Tambala, (one half of A. R. Kane) who has been performing and recording with Maggie Tambala and Andy Taylor since 2015. Their debut EP is titled, Thinking Sweet has just been released. In the next edition of Life Elsewhere I’ll play Thinking About You from Jübl and follow that up with, Lollita. I promise, not only are you in for a treat, you’ll learn why I have been raving on about A. R. Kane for so long and why I’m now excited to hear the new music from Rudy as he move forward with Jübl.
Also in the show, my interview with Australian author, Elizabeth Tan about her beautifully complex debut novel, Rubik. A new release arrived just as this show was being edited that sounded just right to almost work as a soundtrack to Elizabeth’s extraordinary work. From London, it’s a new female talent who goes by the moniker, Grand Pax. The song is titled, Destroyer and it’s available on the Blue Flowers imprint. Enjoy!

Life Elsewhere is now available at NPR One & iTunes

Sundays 12 noon ET at The Source WMNF HD3
Sundays 10.00am ET at WNRM The Root
Mondays 5.00pm PT & Wednesdays 2.00pm PT at NWCZ Radio
Thursdays 6.00pm ET at Internet Radio Network
Fridays at 9.00pm GMT on Cornucopia Radio

If you miss any editions of Life Elsewhere, go here then go to the Listen On-Demand panel, choose the date of a show and click play.

Life Elsewhere Music airs:
Sundays 11.00am ET at WNRM The Root
Mondays at 6.00pm & Wednesdays at 3.00pm Pacific Time on NWCZ Radio
Fridays at 10.00am Eastern Time on IRN
Cornucopia Radio airs Life Elsewhere Music throughout each week
You can hear all the volumes over at Mixcloud
Make a Donation Button

Funny, With A Message

Posted on by

                           

When Katie Met Cassidy and Blown are two new, clever-funny novels. Both are very much set in the present, each book reels off timely iconic observations and pop-culture references without a hint of self-consciousness. Their fast-pasted comedic well-constructed narratives with believable characters draw the reader in, while almost slyly revealing a deeper, thought-provoking message. In When Katie Met Cassidy, Camille Perri proudly writes about, as she says, “her queerness” without preaching, pontificating or even pandering. She knows the LGBTQ community inside out and she takes the reader into what is most likely for many, a mysterious scary world. Perri devises a simple love story for the plot. There’s Katie, born and raised in Kentucky, now an aspiring, late- twenties lawyer in New York. She’s a good girl, a people pleaser and a rule follower.  Katie finds herself sitting in a disoriented haze across a boardroom table from another a lawyer in a sharply tailored man’s suit, who on first look Katie mistakes for a man. This is native New Yorker, Cassidy, a confident, beautiful woman who seems to break all the rules Katie has tried so hard to follow. A hot passionate love story unfolds between two women, yet Camille Perri skillfully avoids cliches and stylized caricatures. Instead, her message is, no matter what your gender or sexual preference, when you’re in love you share the same emotions as anyone else in love. It’s a straightforward notion, but even in this modern age, there are still too many amongst us who would rather call it a love that dare not speak its name.

With five comic novels, all with one-word titles: Raw, Baked, Moist, Delicious and Salty (recently adapted into a major motion picture, titled Gun Shy, starring Antonio Banderas), Mark Haskell Smith excels at cooking up a supremely weird atmosphere and spicing it up with equally weird sex and violence. With Blown, his latest novel, Mark Haskell Smith goes all out with a wildly entertaining satire of corporate greed, sexual desire, and crime in the global financial services industry. Exceptionally funny, ribald and sharp-eyed, Blown starts as a simple case of embezzlement and explodes into a fatal high-stakes gamble for money and the pursuit of happiness. With his trade-mark knack of creating a cast of believable if not eccentric characters, in realistic but extraordinary circumstances, Smith gives his quizzical take on greed and human frailty. All the while the reader cannot stop laughing.

Make sure not to miss Norman B’s spirited interviews with two keenly talented and engaging authors on the next edition of Life Elsewhere.

Life Elsewhere is now available at NPR One & iTunes

Sundays 12 noon ET at The Source WMNF HD3  
Mondays 5.00pm PT & Wednesdays 2.00pm PT at NWCZ Radio
Thursdays 6.00pm ET at Internet Radio Network
Fridays at 9.00pm GMT on Cornucopia Radio

If you miss any editions of Life Elsewhere, go here then go to the Listen On-Demand panel, choose the date of a show and click play.

Life Elsewhere Music airs:
Mondays at 6.00pm & Wednesdays at 3.00pm Pacific Time on NWCZ Radio
Fridays at 10.00am Eastern Time on IRN
Cornucopia Radio airs Life Elsewhere Music throughout each week
You can hear all the volumes over at Mixcloud
Make a Donation Button

The Brain + Math + Natasha Tells All!

Posted on by

           

Norman Doidge, M.D., is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, researcher, author, essayist, and poet, he joins Life Elsewhere to discuss his latest book The Brain’s Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity. “They thought that the brain was too sophisticated for its own good. That during evolution, it became so complex that it lost the ability to repair itself and to restore lost functions or to preserve itself. They were wrong. Because it turns out that its very sophistication can be the source of a unique kind of healing… The brain’s way of healing.” Says Doidge. The subject of his book could be daunting if it were not for Norman Doidge’s enthusiasm and easy to understand explanations

“I believe you have Dyscalculia”, mathematics Professor, Jordan Ellenberg tells Norman B, who admits to having difficulty with numbers and being daunted by interviewing the author of How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking. The professor’s book, now out in paperback is all about math, but not the math we learn in school which can seem like a dull set of rules, laid down by the ancients and not to be questioned. Instead, Jordan Ellenberg explains to us how terribly limiting this view is. “Math isn’t confined to abstract incidents that never occur in real life, but rather touches everything we do—the whole world is shot through with it, the math.” the professor says.

She was the last person to be hired at Andy Warhol’s Factory and she wants to talk about it. Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni wants to talk about all of her experiences including an affair with Mick Jagger when she was a seventeen-year-old school girl. Ms. Fraser-Cavassoni isn’t one to hold back, in her new book, After Andy – Adventures In Warhol Land, she tells all. It’s a glitzy, fast-paced, juicy, gossipy, name-dropping chronicle. She saw firsthand the end of an era and the establishment of a global phenomenon. From behind the scenes disagreements and the assessment of his estate, which included Interview magazine and his art inventory, to the record-breaking auction of his belongings and the publication of his diaries. Natasha examines the immediate aftermath of Warhol’s death and his ever-growing impact. In the next edition of Life Elsewhere, Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni chats with Norman B about her riveting eyewitness memoir.

Life Elsewhere is now available at NPR One & iTunes

Sundays 12 noon ET at The Source WMNF HD3  
Mondays 5.00pm PT & Wednesdays 2.00pm PT at NWCZ Radio
Thursdays 6.00pm ET at Internet Radio Network
Fridays at 9.00pm GMT on Cornucopia Radio

If you miss any editions of Life Elsewhere, go here then go to the Listen On-Demand panel, choose the date of a show and click play.

Life Elsewhere Music airs:
Mondays at 6.00pm & Wednesdays at 3.00pm Pacific Time on NWCZ Radio
Fridays at 10.00am Eastern Time on IRN
Cornucopia Radio airs Life Elsewhere Music throughout each week
You can hear all the volumes over at Mixcloud
Make a Donation Button

The Misunderstood Affliction + Two Songs You May Have Missed

Posted on by

Julie Rehmeyer was so sick she sometimes couldn’t turn over in bed. The top specialists in the world were powerless to help, and scientific research on her disease was at a near standstill. She was running out of money. And she was all alone, with no one to care for her. This is the beginning of her powerful and emotive memoir, Through The Shadowlands – A Science Writer’s Odyssey Into An Illness Science Doesn’t Understand. As an MIT-trained mathematician, Julie was determined to find a solution to her illness. She had exhausted all reasonable ideas, so she turned to an unreasonable one. Leaving behind everything she owned, Rehmeyer drove to the desert, testing the theory that mold in her home and belongings were making her sick. Julie Rehmeyer felt as though she were going to the desert to die. What was her affliction and why is it so misunderstood? Julie Rehmeyer talks candidly with Norman B about her inspiring memoir, next on Life Elsewhere.

Sunken
Chloé Leone

Plus, in this edition, we bring you two deliciously cool songs you may have missed. Two acts out of London, Sunken and Chloé Leone we enthusiastically played on the show one year ago. Twelve months later we are still raving and believe both songs stand up to the test of time and sound as fresh now as they did when first released. Take a listen, then do yourself a favor and check out their latest releases.

Life Elsewhere is now available at NPR One & iTunes

Sundays 12 noon ET at The Source WMNF HD3  
Mondays 5.00pm PT & Wednesdays 2.00pm PT at NWCZ Radio
Thursdays 6.00pm ET at Internet Radio Network
Fridays at 9.00pm GMT on Cornucopia Radio

If you miss any editions of Life Elsewhere, go here then go to the Listen On-Demand panel, choose the date of a show and click play.

Life Elsewhere Music airs:
Mondays at 6.00pm & Wednesdays at 3.00pm Pacific Time on NWCZ Radio
Fridays at 10.00am Eastern Time on IRN
Cornucopia Radio airs Life Elsewhere Music throughout each week
You can hear all the volumes over at Mixcloud
Make a Donation Button

« Older Entries Recent Entries »