Text by Bruce Gallanter (Downtown Music Gallery, August 22, 2024)
“The Hook” by Free Design . From their reunion album, Cosmic Peekaboo (released in 2001)
All the pretty young singers with their popular songs
Kind of short on meaning but the beat goes on
You really have to love them – but not for very long
They’d like to thank their managers
And fans, and friends and yawn…
Text by Dawoud Kringle
John Mayall was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, UK on 29 November 1933, and grew up in Cheadle Hulme. His father, Murray Mayall, was a guitarist. He taught himself to play the piano, guitars, and harmonica after immersing himself in the music of American blues players such as Lead Belly, Albert Ammons, Eddie Lang, and Pinetop Smith.
Text by Dawoud Kringle
Saxophonist, bandleader of The Contortions and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and No Wave pioneer James Chance passed away.
Born James Alan Siegfried in Milwaukee, Chance began studying piano in elementary school and in his teens began playing the alto saxophone. He attended Michigan State University and Wisconsin Conservatory of Music in Milwaukee where he formed the James Siegfried Quintet and Death, a Stooges-influenced group. He would later study with jazz saxophonist David Murray.
He moved to New York in 1975 and began using the stage name James Chance. A year later he formed Teenage Jesus and the Jerks with singer Lydia Lunch. In 1977 he formed the first version of the Contortions.
(Note: this is Jerome Harris’ submission for Local 802’s A.I. series who has been a member of Local 802 since 1979. Sohrab who’s also a member of Local 802 read this article in ALLEGRO – the Local 802 digital publication of news, articles, and discussions about issues that are important for organized musicians – and got permission from Jerome to share it with the MFM community.)
When thinking about artificial intelligence from the perspective of those for whom music making is a livelihood, it’s useful to note a distinction. There are various forms of AI; the one that is most concerning for workers in creative fields is generative AI. This technology can assemble (“generate”) new material based on the patterns it finds in old material. This involves feeding vast amounts of digitized data — including recorded music — into powerful computer systems designed to analyze and isolate patterns. This is called “training” these AI systems. The systems can then be ordered to fabricate recordings based on those patterns, as specified by commands such as text-based prompts. Note that the underlying compositions and their recordings that are being used for AI training were created by humans and are owned by them or by business entities unless they are in the public domain.
Text by Dawoud Kringle
Iranian rapper/poet Toomaj Salehi has been sentenced to death!
Salehi was born in Iran on December 3rd, 1990. He is a laborer in a metalworks factory. He began recording hip-hop as a means of protest against the social injustices of the Iranian regime.
