So, while I lean into punk & metal on a regular basis, I enjoy a wide variety of Christmas music. A lot of it I can find on Amazon Music (I refuse to pay for Spotify when we have all kinds of other Amazon stuff). Some I can’t. I’ll have to make a YouTube or free crappy free commercial-filled Spotify playlist.
What are some of your favorites? Here are a few of mine.
I also really dig the Bad Religion, Vandals, & Twisted Sister Christmas albums, and so many punk rock comps, and the Willie Nelson & Johnny Cash ones… and the Billy Idol one.
I have blogged about the song from Airheads before, just wondering about the recording of the Reagan Youth cover song, and never really uncovered much about the specific process or the whole change of lyrics & the arrangement, but I did get some replies from various social media from Paul Cripple, Rich Wilkes, & Sean Yseult. (Rich made a really informative comment on my post here. You should check out all of his work!)
There is, however, an incredible article from The Hard Noise about how the song came to be used in the film, & how the band eventually got paid a bit for it… Which is great to know.
So, who is with me? Social media seems to be on board if you read my comments/replies. Can we get a petition or something? Or the comments here going? Or a social media campaign? Let’s get Rich Wilkes the resources he needs to do a 2nd script and get it in front of the actors! Nostalgia waves are at an all time high.
Perhaps a stupid blog post can get the ball rolling?
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
I was going to share some mazes for Thanksgiving, and I realized I have a bunch of them. I did some quick dirty coloring of some old ones. I am sharing new ones that will be in my second book, some from the first book, and I have some that are loosely related to fall or Thanksgiving dinner.
Please, use them to have some fun this holiday season! They could be placemats, an activity for those that aren’t cooking while they’re waiting for dinner or for company to arrive, or used as a game to see who finishes first. You could use them to make place cards too if you wanna get creative!
If you complete the mazes by printing them out & solving, or on your phone/tablet/PC with a drawing app, share it on you preferred social media platform & tag me! I’m @AiXeLsyD13 on pretty much all of ’em. (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, BlueSky, TikTok, Tumblr, YouTube, etc.) I’d love to see a video of a race to complete the smaller easier ones… and I love to see solutions! I like to draw mazes, not so much solving them.
Mmm, Thanksgiving dinner. Stuffing is my favorite. I need to figure out how to do a stuffing maze.
You can solve these while listening to one of my Thanksgiving playlists on Amazon or Spotify, or while talking about what you’re thankful for! I love the reflection this time of year.
This year’s turkey maze:
2023 Turkey Maze
Thanksgiving-ish themed mazes from the upcoming book:
Turkey Giblets Maze & Corn Maze …Maze – from my upcoming second book.
Newly (& quickly) colorized old Thanksgiving themed mazes:
Fresh takes on old Thanksgiving Mazes
Random older related mazes:
<shameless plug> The turkey from this year and the “giblets” maze are also available on some cool merchandise from my RedBubble and TeePublic shops too. Why not get a turkey maze T-shirt or an apron with the giblets maze? You can get both designs on hoodies, pet bandanas, stickers, magnets, coffee mugs, and even a damn shower curtain if so inclined. </shameless plug>
🦃 UPDATE! 🦃
After posting this, I found an OLD turkey maze of mine on Pinterest, so I downloaded & edited it a bit. So, here’s one more:
I’ve never made potato soup before. I read a few recipes, and decided to make my own style. It wasn’t bad for the first time! I wanted to save it for later for myself, so I thought I’d share while I was at it.
I wanted something that would pair well with Reubens, and I think this hit the spot. I have been on a corned beef kick lately.
Ingredients:
2 sticks butter
½ sweet onion
4 cloves garlic
Handful of shredded carrots
lil’ bag of “bacon pieces.”
Cup of flour
½ of a 5 lb. bag of gold potatoes
Box chicken broth
Box vegetable broth
2 cups milk
½-ish cup heavy cream
Dollop sour cream
Shredded Cheese: sharp cheddar, Gouda, extra sharp white cheddar – maybe a cup combined.
Pepper, salt, white pepper, paprika, season-all, garlic powder, onion powder, dried parsley. Use your own best judgement.
Method:
I sort-of peeled about half a bag of gold potatoes, & diced them up… cubes smaller than an inch, maybe ½” to ¾”.
Chopped up half of a sweet onion, and a hanful of shredded carrots. Maybe 2 handsful. Hadfuls?
Minced 4 cloves of garlic. Probably could have used more.
Put the soup pot on the stove… melted butter over medium, sautéed the onions & carrots for a bit, before adding the garlic… then the bacon pieces and the 2nd chopped up stick o’ butter. I hit it with some spices.
Mixed some spices in the flour, and whisked that into the overly buttered sautéed bits, then let it brown a lil’ bit.
Added the boxes of stock, milk, cream, & sour cream.
Plopped in the potatoes.
Brought it to a boil, still over medium. Stirred it a lot. A lot.
Let it boil for like 15 minutes… then added the shredded cheese. I eyeballed it so my “measurement” could be way off.
Stirred it again. A lot.
Used an immersion blender to blend about half the potatoes to thicken the soup.
Let it sit while I made Reubens.
Served with a smaller dollop of sour cream, bacon bits, & mix of shredded cheese on top.
Notes:
I bought a pack of instant mashed potatoes in case I needed to cheat and thicken up the soup. I didn’t need to, but I bet that would wok if I wanted more potato chunks & to skip the blending?
Ham or pork bullion/broth would probably reinforce the bacon flavor?
I wonder if roasting the potoates before adding to the soup would add some more flavor?
Parmesan cheese may have been good too?
Could have upped the spice with some cayenne or more white pepper, or maybe put tobaso/red hot in the serving bowl?
Could have used real bacon, fried it in the bottom 1st & used that grease to mix with the flour… but I didn’t feel like opening a pack of back only to use 4 or so strips.
Chives would be good if that’s your thing.
Any suggestions? Like I said, I wanted to pair it with Reubens. I have been on a corned beef kick. You don’t need a recipe for that, do you? Let me know if you do.
Like I said, I have been on a corned beef kick lately…
Despite Halloween and Thanksgiving being more my favorite… I do enjoy Christmas & Christmas music, both traditional and decidedly not-so.
I resisted streaming for a long time, in favor of just popping mp3’s on to a thumb drive & listening in the car/truck. I’m still in a lot of remote areas, and I think I clung to a desktop setup for a while longer than the rest of the world.
Someday, someday, I will rip all my CD’s, corral all of my purchased mp3’s or FLAC files, & pop the stuff on some kind of server so I can call it up at will.
I use Spotify occasionally. I would use it more, but I refuse to pay for a premium account, and sometimes I swear songs vs. commercials are 1:1 if not 1:3. I refuse to pay for Spotify premium account because we have whatever all-encompassing Amazon plan gives you Prime and Amazon Music.
I’m still building my Amazon playlists… I may pay for one to move to Spotify lists over. Maybe. I’d rather just by records, CD’s, & downloads directly from artists.
I haven’t dipped into YouTube Music yet. I think I have 2 or 3 Pandora accounts, but they’re just frustrating these days when you can actively pick a song with other services.
I just reached out on a couple of FB forums asking for suggestions, and I’m still pouring through, but these are my playlists across different platforms…
I ‘m still adding/shuffling on the Amazon lists and they’re good for all-day playing. I might have to make one narrowed-down with my absolute favorites.
So, what’s on your Christmas playlist? Any glaring omissions? Any you love or hate with a passion? Tell me about your holiday music in the comments. Am I missing any good Festivus or Hanukkah songs?
Halloween has the coolest music. I have made some playlists on various platforms over the years, Amazon & Spotify being the most recent. I thought I’d not only put them all in once place, but also share. I’m always adding to them and changing. I’m listening to the 1st list now.
This stated as a Twitter post/thread, and is ending up here.
Streaming services like @spotify and @amazonmusic need a feature that adds in related bands. I can tell @alexa99 to play Rancid, but I also wouldn't mind Lars Frederikson and the Bastards being in there, or Transplants, or Tim's solo stuff. Or even Rancid covers.
Streaming services like Spotify and Amazon Music need a feature that adds in related bands. I can tell Alexa to play Rancid, but I also wouldn’t mind Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards being in there, or Transplants, or Tim’s solo stuff. Or even Rancid covers.
Streaming needs to get smarter already. The Spotify “super grouper” feature picks the absolute worst songs from each selected artist.
Of course, I could just make a playlist. But, with a band like Blink-182 in the news, I wanted to dig into Angels & Airwaves, Boxcar Racer, & +44. I don’t know which songs to add to a playlist.
Also, if I want to listen to ALL, I could want to listen to the Descendents too. What about Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver, Izzy Stradlin and the Ju Ju Hounds, Loaded, Neurotic Boy Outsiders, Slash, Slash’s Snakepit, Miles Kennedy & The Conspirators, all of it.
Snuff, Duncan Redmonds, Dogpiss, Guns ‘n’ Wankers would be another example. As would Misfits, Danzig, Samhain, Son of Sam, etc.
Saying one phrase or typing one into a searchboith to be able to bring them all up.
Is that bandtoband.com still a thing? That could be a reference for connected bands.
Teenage Bottlerocket & the Lillingtons. Screeching Weasel & The Riverdales. Ann Beretta, Foundation, Rob Huddleston, & Sixer. Metallica & Megadeth. Green Day, Foxboro Hot Tubs, The Network, & 300 other bands.
Even unrelated bands. Can I just say “Alexa play songs by Flogging Molly and The Dropkick Murphys” and not confuse the shit out of it?
I have an Ozzy/Black Sabbath playlist on Spotify with a ton of great stuff, including a plethora of killer covers. It took time to curate. I have similar ones for Metallica, Misfits, Guns N’ Roses, & Rancid. I need to transition them all to Amazon Music… we have the family account there since we’re using the firestick. I like Spotify’s suggestions better… but I can listen to Amazon sans commercials. I refuse to subscribe to another service, sorry Spotify. Oddly, most of those transfer services have a paywall once you surpass an unreasonably low amount of songs. I don’t even my remember my Pandora logins.
I would think AI could have probably pretty quickly picked up what I was putting down & fleshed it out.
I wouldn’t expect it to go this deep, but it could link Flogging Molly to Fastway.
With Hip Hop too… say all the solo projects of the members of N.W.A.? All that in one would be awesome.
Does something like this exist and I’m just not aware of it? I miss WinAmp.
I need to rip all kinds of older, local, & obscure stuff and put it on my own damn streaming server. I understand Google Music would let you do that before it collapsed? There is really a lot of stuff out there that you can’t stream, and some of my favorites don’t have their entire catalogs available to stream.
Help me out, audiofiles, music nerds, and techno geeks!
If you don’t know about Pat Finnerty, you should. He has a YouTube channel and he does a series of videos titled What Makes This Song Stink? among others (Now there’s a podcast too!). He has some witty observations, harsh truths, and is just lampooning guitar guy videos on YouTube. The pedal mobile is a thing of genius and pure hilarious delight. He says what a lot of us are thinking. He catches some wild connections or callbacks. He takes a joke way too far, which has always been something I am a fan of. It’s defiant. It’s hilarious.
As someone who has made art for it to mostly serve as a creative outlet that happens to have a very small circle of people who may have enjoyed it to varying degrees… It’s nice to see this guy get traction.
Writing, recording, and performing your own stuff lends itself to a certain level of judgement of others’ art. There’s probably some narcissism in there, but not at an unhealthy level. It’s not necessarily mean spirited, but it can be. I remain humble and understand that my creative output is not for the masses. I cater to a very small crowd with very similar tastes and no hang-ups about production quality. You have to wonder though… on some stuff… Why is this objectively certifiable crap popular? It’s hard to pin. It’s hard to point out.
I have played with some awesome musicians that “get it.” I have encountered many who do not. We are not on the same page. You’re not wrong in your opinions, but then again… you are. Pat gets it. Pat & I would probably disagree on a lot of things…. but we’d both have arguments to back it up. I appreciate his overall music nerdiness.
World (and Lunar) Domination 