I was on a boat in the ocean exactly once in life. We were far enough out that we could not see land. I was told it was a rather calm sea that day. I still puked over the side. I caught an amber-jack, that apparently was not good eating because of a potential parasite? I am deathly allergic to shellfish, and I am not a fan of the beach. I have probably only had rum a handful of times and it was always mixed with Coke or Dr. Pepper. Still though, who doesn’t love the romance & adventure of pirate imagery, and pirate songs?
This collection of thoughts, reflection, & feelings is delivered not unlike catching a glimpse of a ghost ship in the mist on the barely discernable horizon. Sometimes it’s just hinted at on the whispers of the wind or waves of the open sea. Then, all of a sudden you’re in the crow’s nest surveying the chaos of the poop deck in a storm or in the captain’s quarters as he sips rum and recounts tales of anarchy, punk rock, rebellion, & love by candlelight. Maybe it’s the brig? Or a deserted island. It’s left to the reader to fill in the gaps as they dream of their own adventures, shenanigans, & longing. Who can’t relate to a journey, physical or metaphorical? What is the line really? Get lost in this book, & create your own treasure map to get out or to get further lost. 🏴☠️
Curses, Cutlasses, and Cauldrons by Joel Fatal, Local Troublemaker
After you read Joel’s book, you’ll probably want to listen to my “Let’s Get Scurvy 🏴☠️🦜“ playlist, and maybe even try my treasure map maze (from my book, You Can See Yourself Out). Tell me what you like from the playlist & make suggestions for more songs in the comments!
It took me forever to get into podcasts. Some I have been enjoying lately are Chris DeMakes a Podcast, One Hit Thunder, & more recently A Band Called Punchline. (The former two break-down & deep-dive into songs in totally different yet incredible ways… I highly recommend them to musicians and fans!)
You can listen to all of these anywhere you find podcasts, but I do mostly all of my listening on Amazon Music.
I have absolutely no idea why I didn’t get big into Punchline in the very late 90’s or early 00’s. We all frequented the same places. I had to have seen them. I was active in AiXeLsyD then Gasoline Dion at the time. Their music is in my wheelhouse. I have heard a lot of Chris Fafalios because he produces on Chris DeMakes a Podcast & co-hosts One Hit Thunder. Chis is a great co-host with Matt Kelly & producer with involvement in 2 quality shows. This came up, and I was like… I have no excuse to not check this out as I love music, music documentaries, stories about songs, stories about playing & touring. It’s a no-brainer, right?
Well, I’m 3½ episodes in and the name-dropping alone is mind-blowing. Laga, Logic, AMC, Berlin Project, Mr. Smalls, Soundscape Studios, Garfield Artworks, Josh Bakaitus, Drusky, Joker Productions, mp3.com, practicing in McKees Rocks, and more I am surely forgetting. It puts me back into the days when I worked on the assembly line at Sony with Alf from Circle of Dead Children, or when me & An-Die ran into the Zao guitarist at Westmoreland Mall. Everyone was in a band. Ha ha. I remember Dirtbag Rob saying he had an AiXeLsyD T-shirt or patch before he was in the band.
I was at so many shows at Laga. That’s where I got to see Doyle play the Misfits intro in their green room one time. I remember Logic from that killer Take Me To Your Leader compilation CD. Man I miss punk comps. AiXeLsyD was practically the house band at AMC for a bit. We played every open stage we could. Berlin Project always worked the crowd well. I remember playing Mr. Small’s at least once with Gasoline Dion, not sure if Ernie and the Berts ever played there or not. I also remember being in the back for some reason. Maybe hanging out with Dethlehem? Me & Jason were hanging out with Next Stop Detox when they recorded at Soundscape in McKeesport. I was in Detox for like 30 seconds and recorded a single at Studiophonix in Mt. Pleasant. I think Gasoline Dion played Garfield Artworks… Maybe EaTB too? I know I saw a bunch of shows there. Ernie and the Berts recorded drums there once, I think? (It’s oddly not on my places I have played map.) We practiced at the shady ABC Storage in McKees Rocks and up in Allentown for a bit.
It makes me think of all the cool bands & all the fun times we had back then!
But, the cool part is hearing Berlin Project’s story, from the guys themselves. They seem like genuine nice people who set out to make some music, make a living doing it, and accomplished that! It’s presented documentary style and sort of gives me NPR vibes.
I am rooting for them every step of the way while I listen, When they talk about literally losing a tire off their van, using calling cards & pay phones, running up cell phone bills in the Nokia brick & flip phone days, purposely putting music on Napster just to get it out there, paying way too much for recording, sleeping on floors & booking tours, meeting other great and not-so-great bands… it all just hits. I am not and never was a pro touring musician, but I get it. I respect the hustle, and I appreciate the insight & shared experiences.
If you were around the southwestern PA scene in the late 90’s or early 00’s, ever picked up a guitar (or bass or drums or keys or horns), or are a fan of punk, indie, & DIY… you gotta check this out.
It’s on a bunch of platforms, so find it how you find yours… or start here:
I’m starting to dive into their stuff. I really dig the old stuff on their bandcamp that they sort of don’t recognize as much any more. Check out their website. I also want to see their music special on Amazon Prime. Punchline fans, what are your favorites? Can you make me a top 20 playlist in the comments? What are your memories of seeing them play or hearing their songs for the first time? What about if you played your own shows in & around that time?
So, I guess I had no idea that AI music was as advanced as it is. I assumed the stuff I saw on social medial was from paid or sophisticated programs. I have been monkeying casually with text prompts at ChatGPT or Meta AI, and image generators at DALL-E 2, Craiyon, & in the PicsArt app for a while. Luma AI even animates photos in the creepiest way possible. I have recently started messing with Google’s Gemini, too.
While the first two AI song generators that popped up when I googled did not require me to download an app or pay any money, I was able to have them bang out a song in less than a minute. The second one even let me insert lyrics, so I used ChatGPT & Gemini to write lyrics. Of course I chose punk rock, and the subject matter was just me poorly describing the blog. This stuff is wild.
The prompt was: “World (and Lunar) Domination” a punk rock song about drawing mazes and writing goofy letters.
For some reason, I can’t seem to embed these ones. 🤷
AI Music Factory automatically spits out 2 songs from the same prompts.
All of the songs are generic pop punk, street punk, and a weird attempt at some uncanny valley-ish horns. They are formulaic pop punk, of which I could certainly be accused of doing when I was actively playing in bands. The weird part is that is not all that dissimilar from my actual creative output. The lyrics have some interesting ideas & hooks too, if I’m being honest. Does that mean I am a terrible and generic songwriter? Perhaps my lack of commercial success in that area speaks to that. 😆
Self-depreciating humor aside, I feel like I have been involved in the creation of some fun, silly, & kick-ass music, and I was never really doing it for financial gain or recognition. It was an itch that I needed to scratch. I needed to make art via punk rock.
The above songs are derivative of a thousand different punk bands, but the one vocalist sounds oddly like Bad Religion. All of it is stealing from something though. Is it scouring the whole internet? Is it using Spotify, YouTube, Pandora, Apple Music, or Amazon Music? Is it creeping on hard drives in home studios or at record companies?
I feel like this is really close to having the ability to be passed off as a real band. It even reminds me of Crotchduster,
Is it theft, or inspiration? I would not have picked up a guitar and tried to write punk rock songs if I had not heard the Ramones & the Misfits doing what they did. Led Zeppelin’s entire catalog is arguably not entirely derivative of everything that passed through Jimmy Page’s earholes. (I mean, George Lucas did the same thing with Star Wars – it was just Flash Gordon, The Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, & Dune.)
It can be argued that the music is soulless. I get that. I need music to move me in some way, in order to feel that connection. There are already lots of human generated songs out there that don’t really hit me that way. It’s terrible when a song evokes no emotion. I feel that way about Nickelback, even though it’s unironically cool to like them now. Ha ha.
In keeping with the theme of this post, I also used a bunch of AI image generators with various prompts about my blog, and got some weird weird wild stuff. None of them seem to accurately display text whatsoever at all… but the compositions, colors, & design choices are interesting. Is is stolen work though?
It was said that Robin Williams was notorious for stealing bits, but I have read/heard that he was always “on,” and just pulling in ideas and churning out jokes at a constant speed… he may not have realized that his thoughts weren’t entirely his own. But then again, were they? Everything we think, say, & do is a response to our own audio & visual input. (And, all the other senses.)
If AI is putting something out, and the way it “senses” is browsing the internet, what’s wrong with that? Is it stealing because it is not alive? Is it just a tool like a paintbrush or a calculator? Is AI song generation different than loops or sampling or guitar pedals that drastically change a tone?
Images generated by various AI image generators, with prompts pretty much just describing my blog.
🤘🐈⬛🎸
Because every single one of my thoughts also has an incomprehensibly tangential aside, I just did this as the idea came to me while blogging:
𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖉𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖍 𝖒𝖊𝖙𝖆𝖑 𝖐𝖎𝖙𝖙𝖊𝖓 𝖘𝖔𝖓𝖌 – I had ChatGPT write those lyrics a long time ago to be silly. It deleted the chat from the history as it found the content to perhaps be “inappropriate.” Luckily I grabbed a screenshot. I just used my last freebie at AI Music Factory to make this, and unlike with the other songs, I actually downloaded the mp3’s because I find it wildly amusing. AI plays guitar better than Kerry King.
“FEED THE KITTEN” album art by Meta AI“Feed The Kitten” by ChatGPT
So, did I just write a song? No. But… I had the idea for one. It, much like my own artistic output, was a silly idea. (I was always sad that Gasoline Dion never completed songs that we were working on, including but not limited to “667, Across the Street From the Beast” and the ever poetic line “Let me put my meat hook in your beef curtains.”)
I just let my 10yo daughter hear the metal kitten song. She laughed and said it sounds like everything else I listen to (she’s a Taylor Swift fan). When I told her it was AI generated in under a damn minute & that ChatGPT wrote the lyrics, her eyes got wide and was all “That’s not good…”
She immediately understood the implications. Anyone could make a hit album. We could all be Milli Vanilli. Even better, you could probably create a video avatar of an artist or band. I haven’t delved into AI generated video past the tiny Luma AI clips.
Would using AI as a muse, or to flesh out partial lyric ideas be “wrong?” Are we in an era like the early days of sampling where soon someone will figure out how to give artists royalties for music or artwork being fed into AI? I know there are already cases out there. I also know you can’t copyright AI images. Not sure about music, though? I know Mötley Crüe was accused of using AI to write songs.
Will commercials, social media, radio, TV, & movies forgo traditional composers and just make their own jingles, scores, & soundtracks?
It was fun to play with, but do I like it enough that I will pay for it? I doubt it. I can’t think of a practical use for myself other than making a fictional band or something… and who would want AI generated crap content right now? If I paid to put it on streaming services (if you can even copyright it), how would that generate income or even be sustainable? Live shows would be (for now) out of the question. I don’t think it would “feel good” to put that out, like it does to release actual music you created. Maybe kids will dig AI music in the future… or our eventual robot overlords might.
Because I can’t stop, Luma AI animations of AI generated images:
OK, I went back & messed with Udio again. I found where you could pop in the kitten lyrics from Chat GPT. I do not like the output nearly as much, but it’s still pretty wild:
So, what are your thoughts on AI generated stories, art, music, & video? Are we in the wild west? Do you use any of it? If you do use it, what sites/apps, and to what end? Please, hit up the comments!
Oh yeah, those sites automatically generated videos I could download too.
So, I recently got my 9yo a guitar for his birthday. We’re belaying lessons until after his current soccer and lacrosse seasons, but I will be showing him a bit. He seems to like all kinds of rock, but I was telling him how easy it is to play most punk rock. He has heard a lot of Ramones, Misfits, etc. from me… But I got the idea of putting together a punk rock playlist for him.
Well, I tend to over-do things. I started a playlist on Amazon (yeah, already have a ton of Amazon stuff and I refuse to pay for Spotify) called Punk Rock 101. It grew quickly to over 300 songs, and that was without thinking much about it. I thought that was unwieldy, and no 9yo is going to sit still even that long.
I thought it would be fun to challenge myself to come up with a 30 song punk rock playlist… that jumps subgenres and provides a CliffsNotes version of the history of punk rock.
I made up an apparently divisive graphic of only 25 punk rock band logos. Apparently this was a bad list and not at all comprehensive… even though it was not even a playlist. Punk rockers on the internet have strong opinions. I reached out on a few social media platforms and groups, mostly to no avail, save for one private FB group and r/punk on Reddit. I was told my list was junk before I even made a list! Are these hipsters masquerading as punks?
There are not many rules.
1 playlist.
30 songs.
Punk rock.
It can be a comprehensive history of punk, it can lean into one era. What would the 30 “greatest hits” of punk rock be? Does any band get more than one slot? Which songs from which bands merit entry? I kind of started with “Blitzkrieg Bop”, “Knowledge”, & “Last Caress” because I feel like those are the most covered punk rock songs that I noticed throughout the years playing shows. Do you include crust, street, oi, hardcore, proto-punk, post-punk, emo, 3rd wave ska, japunk, skate punk, pop punk, “pop punk™”, Celtic, folk punk, rockabilly/pshychobilly, cowpunk, or bands like Devo and/or the Cure? Do the Decendents and ALL or Operation Ivy and Rancid both make the cut? You may hate Blink 182 or Green Day, but they inarguably introduced many to the genre. Do the Beastie Boys make the cut with their OLD stuff? Do Motörhead or GWAR make the cut? What about Me First and the Gimme Gimmes?
Hit me up with your list and/or arguments for or against certain songs or bands here in the comments or on social media. Just try not to slag my list that I haven’t even created yet. Type it out or link me to your list. Is the list too short? Too long? Let me know.
If you had to make a #punkrock playlist to explain the sound of #punk from the beginning to now, but had to cap it at 30 songs… What would you put on it?
If you had to make a #punkrock playlist to explain the sound of #punk from the beginning to now, but had to cap it at 30 songs… what would you put on it? Who am I missing here? What songs would you put on it? #Punk101#PunkHistory#PunkTop30
Most people are apparently dimwitted, and when you post “bank” or “mattress store” as a reply to the inevitable “What is being built by the old ____?” posts on local Facebook groups or Nextdoor, they have no idea you are joking.
Let’s, as a society, start providing real information. Usually, it is easy to obtain through a search of township meeting minutes or real estate development sites.
There is no need to speculate that it is Target.
There is no need to tell everyone it is a Dollar General or strip club when it is not.
There is no need to pine for Hills, Kmart, Zayre, Woolworth, Murphy’s Mart, or some other long-gone department store.
If you don’t know, keep scrolling.
If you do know, please post evidence (in the form of a link to concrete proof) to back up the claim.
Also, as an addendum…
Starbucks and Chick-fil-A do not promote unwarranted amounts of traffic. Chick-fil-A is more efficient at directing traffic than the national, state, and local government.
No one cares about township lines. In southwestern Pennsylvania, a building can reside in a township, but have a physical address with a zip code in another town. Any reasonable person will know which one you are talking about by referencing either of these locales. There is no need to point out the difference.
Did we all get that? Am I missing anything? Hit me up in the comments.
So, Amazon has October Prime days now on the 11th, & 12th, and the behemoth has cleared the path for other online retailers to trudge along on their wake.
I don’t think my book will be on sale, but if you haven’t bought it yet… let a few brothers hold $5.99 and add it to your cart with all your other stuff! Jeff Bezos and I need your financial support. He needs to build space ships, and I need to pay medical bills and buy LEGO sets.
In slightly cooler news, TeePublic and RedBubble are offering site-wide sales:
TeePublic touts “up to 35%” on October 12th-15th & October 26th-29th.
RedBubble touts 20% on October 9th-14th & 30% off on October 23rd-27th.
If you have thought about grabbing some stuff from either one of my shops, now would be a great time. The T-shirts, stickers, and magnets are cool. I hope to order mores tuff to check out the quality. You can get wall art to clocks, to tote bags, to mugs, to shower curtains!
If you have not thought about it, now would be a great time to think about it.
They’re good gifts for people that have everything.
I recently published my first maze book (via Amazon KDP), have sold a few copies, and thought some people here may want to support a local artist. I’m already working on book № 2!
The first book is packed with easy-to-solve mazes, and I think it would be enjoyable for kids as well as adults.
I had my youngest drop a copy in one of those free little library boxes nearby over last weekend. Hopefully someone out there locally picked it up & is enjoying it already!
I also put together some designs to be printed on merchandise, and I’m trying two different shops online right now. I’ll be uploading more themed designs as soon as I complete work on my 2nd maze book.
I have sold a few T-shirts, and bought some stickers and a magnet for myself. Between the two shops you can get everything from coffee mugs and pillows to shower curtains or clocks featuring my designs.
Check out my first #maze book! this was a test run, I plan to do more. can you spare $6 to help fund some art? If not, it’s cool… maybe just share the link? https://wp.me/pwqzc-3ba I am super excited to get this out there. How do you share a damn link on here?
I like to make goofy Amazon reviews sometimes. You may have read my blog or review about that damned basketball hoop. (40 people found that helpful!) While I have been waiting for my own review of <shameless plug>my book</shameless plug> to get approved, I found some of my old reviews and I see this one was deemed helpful by 18 people.
I’d like to say I bought these because I dress in all black to be cool like Johnny Cash. My kids say I’m “emo” because I wear black all the time. They are unwilling to accept my explanation of the subtle nuances between emo, goth, punk, and metal heads… who each have their own unique affinity for the macabre.
My dad always said “Never trust a fart after forty” and truer words were never spoken. I work in remote areas and bathrooms aren’t always readily available. Sometimes I am 60 miles and one shart away from disgrace.
These black skivvies help conceal any skid marks. My wife doesn’t need any extra aggravation when doing the laundry.
The boxer-breif fit is nice too. It keeps the frank n’ beans snug. Also with age, Jimmy & the twins seem to bounce all over the place. This is a comforting fit without being restrictive.
OK, the creative bug has bit. I’ve opened two shops for maze merchandise, or at least tried to. I went to RedBubble and TeePublic. The TeePublic one seems to be live, but the RedBubble one is not (yet). [They’re saying to wait 5 business days.]
I’ll have a merch page here at the blog, but here are the links for now:
I appreciate your support of my artistic endeavors. I know money is tight for a lot of people right now. It’s cool if you can’t buy, or simply don’t want to. I can dig it’s not everyone’s style. Please, share the link if you’re so inclined, even directly to someone who you think may be interested.
If you do end up buying a T-shirt, book, or whatever. Please, give a review on the site… and post it on Social Media & tag me! I’m @AiXeLsyD13 on pretty much everything out there.
I had some time recently, and I wanted to see what the process was to publish a print-on-demand book from Amazon. I grabbed a bunch of my smaller easy mazes with no discernable theme that I had previously posted here & on Instagram, and assembled them into a book. All of them were scanned in & maybe fixed a bit with paint.NET, and I put the pages of the book together with OpenOffice, so my only cost came down to the pens & paper. (Not sure how to quantify time & sanity.)
Yup, I finally did it. After drawing mazes for decades.
It was very simple to publish with Amazon. This gave me the confidence to put together another book, perhaps with a bit more coherence, and definitely with a much better cover. I have already started drawing new mazes in a neat little box template so they’re a bit more consistent. What’s a good number? 30? 50?
Also, I need to get all of these older mazes scanned & into a book too. I have some pages that are bigger than my scanner bed though. Perhaps a trip to FedEx Office or Staples is in order.
I just kind of set the price arbitrarily to make a little bit off of publishing. I’m not looking to get rich, but it would be nice to finally make income of off artistic output after decades of ostensibly doodling. (I won’t delve into my musical endeavors which are break even at best but probably a negative sum game. 🤣)
Luckily the creative outlet for me is just that, an outlet. I think we all need to express ourselves artistically or through sports, gardening, or other hobbies.
It also suggested I make a Kindle version, so I did that too. I am not sure if the concept will work there. Can you draw on a Kindle screen with a stylus or your finger? Can you print from a Kindle? I must confess I don’t have one. I am still a fan of books in the traditional form.
If you have ever enjoyed my mazes, or have been one of the awesome people that has completed them and sent in the solution – I humbly ask you (if you’re so inclined) to purchase a paperback for around $6 or a Kindle book for around $3 and let me know what you think. Should I do more? Did you enjoy it? Is the quality any good?
Really, I ask you to try even if you have never solved one of my mazes. Now is a good time to start!
It might make a good gift for kids or adults. It’s a nice way to pass some time or zone out.
If you do buy, can you leave an honest rating/review? I feel like that goes a long way with Amazon.
If you can’t buy or are really not interested, that’s OK too! I would ask you to maybe share the link around.
My thoughts on the next one are that I probably need a table of contents, to maybe title the mazes, and… should I include the solutions in the back? That’s one of my issues. I like to draw the mazes, but don’t really solve them. I may need to reach out for help on that part & pay someone to complete them so I can include the solutions (and make sure they’re solvable).
I probably need help with a title, too.
Thanks for reading, tanks for considering, and please share this link on every social media platform known to humankind: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CH2FMH7W
World (and Lunar) Domination 