The news came in, literally moments after we had made the final edits to the latest edition of Life Elsewhere…Prince was dead. Immediately we searched through all of our many music-biz contacts to come up with someone qualified to pay tribute to the music legend. As the minutes then hours passed, tributes to Prince were pouring in from every media outlet. Brian Williams was rushed onto MSNBC to wrangle a litany of talking heads who all shared their sad remembrances of the untimely death of the iconic musician. Over on CNN, Wolf Blitzer, seemingly out of his comfort zone, referred to Prince’s Purple Haze! Within hours, the color purple was everywhere and had taken over so many profile photos on FaceBook. We decided to wait to reappraise how we should mention Prince. By the next morning, two important events had happened. One, a lot of people in the music business, were keen to show their love of Prince’s music…we were inundated with Prince covers and remixes. Two, the non-stop outpouring of grief was everywhere. Comments were running rampant on Twitter and FaceBook. Social media had gone bonkers! Then, we spied this comment on Facebook: “I’d like to log off of FB until the Parade of Prince misery passes by…” That comment, in turn, caused a stream of obviously offended Prince fans. We delved into the source of the comment and discovered it was from someone Norman B remembered as a fledgling punk kid, many years ago in Seattle. We were intrigued. That young punk wannabe, Daniel Barre, is now a film producer and director, we invited Daniel onto the program to explain his FaceBook comment that caused so much outrage to Prince fans.
From the many Prince covers and remixes, we selected a unique, moving version of I Would Die 4 U by Aaron Krause and Liza Anne. Also in the program, two authors on two very different subjects. Ken Ilgunas says his new book is about coming to terms with climate change and figuring out what our role as individuals should be in confronting something so big and so out of our hands. It’s about taking a few months of your life to look at the country from a new perspective. Trespassing Across America is the title, it’s also about Ken’s journey, fleeing from cows, taking cover from gunfire, and keeping warm on a very wintry and questionably-timed hike. Author Lyndsay Faye likes Jane Eyre so much, she has written a novel, Jane Steele where she turns Jane into a serial killer. It’s the unlikely premise for a book that conjures up a world with a spiteful aunt, a predatory cousin, a grim school, a strange doctor and his man servant…and Lyndsay’s sardonic take on feminism.
Make sure you don’t miss this bumper-packed edition of Life Elsewhere!
Life Elsewhere Show #166 airs:
Sundays 12 noon ET at The Source WMNF HD3
