March 24ths (21/8 Dream)

Antipode: September 24ths

3/24/1998
 
Interesting approach: Make CD cover art, choose band name and album title, song titles, and then write the songs.

[3/2026: You can do this now with AI]
 
Worked on compilations. Songs to redo: Blood River, Mr PC, Tube Voyeur

3/24/2001

Film: 15 Minutes. Great film. Good depiction of the world post OJ and post-Clinton, i.e., you can get away with anything in America. Liked the line, “Perception is everything, not truth”, the camera as a gun,the camera the third eye.

Drum Grooves/Riffs:

 

3/24/2021

The 21/8 Dream—a nocturnal earworm. All music in dreams seems to run on a loop. 

In music, musicians will approach it in non-musical ways: they won’t think of it as scales or chords or won’t use music theory. Similarly in art, artists will approach it the same way: they will use the materials however they want or they’ll just use found objects. That’s the essence of DIY.

***

In the Mirror Sound book, the author was in some country and he saw a harp player on the street and he wanted to capture that sound to use it on one of his tracks. I had a similar experience in the subway when there was this guy playing a thumb piano going through a distortion pedal into a small amp. I loved the sound of that. It was like the Hendrix of the kalimba.  

***

I just read an article about Paul Anka, who is now fairly old. What was remarkable to me was that in terms of the 4 Levels, he's very Level 1 because if you look at his piano, he's got these red and blue dots on the keys. Apparently, he doesn't know the names of the keys. But it's also very Level 3 because it's got a pathos to it, both because of his age and because of its ability to be appropriated to Level 4 which is what makes them interesting. Otherwise Level 1 isn’t particularly interesting. It’s like listening to someone first learning an instrument, but sometimes there’s Level 4 genius in it. 

3/24/2025

Ultimately, the real difference between real music made by humans and AI-generated music is the life of the writers and composers. Because they’re mortal–and when they die, we’ll miss them. But we won’t miss the anonymous artist who generated music with artificial intelligence, which might have been very popular. We don’t know who the “entity” is because there’s no person there. It’s an immortal nobody. We might prefer those things that were less well done, less polished, things that were mediocre rather than soulless robots.
 
***
 
Watched an interview with Alex Lifeson talking about his new band and album. He’s always very excited about guitar, to this day in his 70s. I can really resonate with this. What you feel absolutely joyful about is what you’re supposed to be doing (or should have done) in your life.