My first time hearing the "Covid lockdown" Dylan concert that was put on...something...Apple?  Whatever.  Unlike people like Van Morrison and Eric Clapton, Dylan is respectful of the situation, with his band all wearing masks, but the audio of the show has now been released as Shadow Kingdom.  Good show, it shows him, in my opinion, leaning into Tom Waits territory, not merely imitation but just the overall sawdust and tinsel vibe, with accordian and guitar prominent.  I don't quite understand all of these complaints about Dylan's "new voice".  Is it supposed to be worse?  I dunno.  I like that it kinda falls into a 'happy mortician' type of thing.



 

Jinnistan wrote:

 

Asia is one of those bands that I've always seen in dollar bins and that I know absolutely nothing about. Just assumed they were some lameo New Romantic act

Martha Quinn?!? Who dat?!? Do you think we had access to MTV in Canada or something.

It's weird how huge a known cultural force that station was in the 80s, and because of where I live, I basically don't know anything about it.

I had the shitty Canadian version (which, if I'm being honest, I bet was probably better.....and it's total shittiness yet another formative influence on my garbage aesthetic)

Last edited by crumbsroom (6/18/2023 5:18 pm)

I can see a similarity.  They could almost be sisters.  Both have a cute-girl-next-door energy.  Martha Quinn would get a bit more glam in further years as MTV gained in popularity.

I mentioned elsewhere about the inevitable confusion over different forms of A.I.  And even then, I referred to at least a more understandable confusion from a quick misreading - mixing up 'artificial general intelligence' with 'artificial generative intelligence'.  It's easier to see such confusion among laypeople even though the difference between the two is profound, and one can suspect that in some cases the confusion could be beneificial to those companies looking to profitize the latter by making it seem as if a generative A.I. (a chatbot, for example) is actually sentient consciousness (it is not).

This confusion has exploded on the masses over some rather misleading headlines concerning The Beatles releasing a "new song" using A.I. in the next few months.  These headlines are technically true, but it is not a generative A.I., in that the A.I. will not be generating creative contributions to the song.  The A.I. program in question is the same one that was developed by Peter Jackson's team for the Get Back documentary, which is used to isolate and enhance elements of the source tape, and allowed Jackson to work miracles from the mono, poorly mixed Nagra audio tapes from the sessions.  Jackson then loaned this tech out for the recent remix of Revolver, which allowed Giles Martin to create a more dynamic stereo mix from the limited four-track tapes.  The A.I. did not "create" any new sounds, only separating the existing sounds to allow more creative versatility for Martin.  My understanding with this "new song", the A.I. is being used to cleanly extract Lennon's vocal from a poorly recorded demo tape.

This slight hysterical reaction is another handy example that people generally don't understand what they're talking about with this new technology, but, more importantly, it doesn't appear as if either the tech companies or the news media is capable or willing to provide clarity.  That clarity and understanding seems like a necessary prerequisite to the implementation of A.I., but too many people are invested in the mythology of the tech than the reality of it.