Saturday Morning with Jack Tame

Established more than 40 years ago, the Exponents are Kiwi rock legends.
They’re part of New Zealand’s sonic landscape – a guaranteed play at the pub, a party, or a summer barbeque.
The band initially parted ways in 1999, but have periodically reunited in the years since and will be doing the same for this year’s Synthony Festival.
Frontman Jordan Luck told Jack Tame they’re very excited about this one – they only do a handful of shows as the Exponents these days, so he’s really looking forward to it.
"It’s going to be an amazing event.”
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Amid all the nostalgia and reunion tours of late, Kevin Milne has been battling to keep his music taste fresh.
Instead of rushing to buy a ticket for Guns N’ Roses or Split Enz, he picked up a ticket to Kiwi band The Beths and went along last night.
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"It’s been three years since I was last in Tauranga and it’s so uplifting to see cranes in the sky, the glossy sheen of brand-new buildings, and the civic centre’s sure-footed makeover taking shape. Fresh and inviting public spaces are continuing to unfurl across the Te Papa peninsula and waterfront. After paying my regards to the delightful Hairy Maclary and friends sculptures adorning the fabulously enticing children’s playground on Tauranga’s waterfront in a story book setting, I checked out The Strand Reserve and waterfront boardwalk. It has immeasurably enhanced the city centre’s sense of connection with Tauranga Harbour. There’s a great new sense of art-filled vitality sprouting in the city centre. A starring specimen in Red Square is the stunning public sculpture called Rauhea."
Read Mike's full article.
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Hamilton is welcoming thousands of music fans for Homegrown festival today.
The festival has returned to the city it started in after almost two decades on Wellington's waterfront.
More than 25 thousand people are expected at Claudelands Oval, including Chris Schulz.
He joined Jack Tame from the festival to chat about this year’s offering.
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A Better Life by Lionel Shriver
Gloria Bonaventura, a divorced mother of three living with her 26-year-old son Nico in a sprawling house in Brooklyn, decides to participate in a new city programme - Big Apple, Big Heart - that would pay her to take in a migrant as a boarder. Gloria is thrilled when sweet, kind, helpful Martine arrives. But Nico is sceptical. A classic live-at-home, unemployed Gen Zer with no interest in adulthood, Nico resents the indignity of moving from his self-contained basement flat and back into his childhood bedroom.
As the months go by, Martine endears herself to both Nico's sisters, while finding her way into Gloria's heart. But as Martine's disturbingly dodgy compatriots begin to show up, Nico grows only more hostile to both his mother's altruism and the 'migrant crisis' in general - though turns out to be anything but a reliable narrator himself.

Rasputin by Antony Beevor
When Russia’s Dowager Empress was pregnant with the future Tsar, she dreamed that a peasant would one day kill her son. The idea terrified her, and for the rest of her days she ‘lived under the pressure of the prophecy’. Did the prophecy come true with the arrival at court of a mysterious, barely literate moujhik from Siberia, Grigori Rasputin?
In this extraordinary portrait of an enigmatic character, Antony Beevor brings readers closer than ever before to Rasputin’s scandalous life and death. Though he had no official position at court, Rasputin’s hold over the Romanovs became the stuff of legend. Exaggerated accounts of political and financial corruption swirled around him, to say nothing of the stories of his debauchery with the Empress and even her daughters. The consequences of the rumor and conspiracy theories were devastating—when the February revolution broke out in 1917, hardly a sword was raised in the Tsar’s defense.
Through extensive use of previously unpublished reports, interviews, and interrogations, Beevor shows the truth of Rasputin’s rampant lust and opportunism, victimization of poor and vulnerable women, and deep hypocrisy and corruption. Part political thriller, part gothic mystery, Rasputin is a fascinating story of human perversity.

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