Another music post? Fine. In searching for live Michael McDonald performances—as you do—and almost missed this. The band almost casually spins out an adept performance that is probably now my favorite version of the song:
Everything about it is great, from Michael nailing every melodic jump and twist to Jeff Baxter’s in-the-pocket guitar solo, which they change out from the original’s keyboard noodling on the outro.
For various weird reasons, I had a compulsion to listen to the ‘official’ 1980 playlists on Apple Music, specifically the Alternative Hits. But it was fun to careen through them and I punched up the Rock and Pop lists to get a sense of the rest of the year’s flavors. Despite Apple’s playlists being generally pretty mediocre—and odd inclusions like a spate of German hits NOT by Falco—I was still compelled to serve up the next one in the timeline.
I’m generally in the nostalgia = bad-for-you camp, but there were quite a few songs I either hadn’t heard or didn’t remember, so it felt somewhat new, and definitely fun. I spun through the next couple years in succession, rediscovering some forgotten treasures and skipping some well-worn 80s playlist staples. As 1983 came up, however, those shopworn standards started to become the norm.
Nostalgia, fake friend and secret foe, started to wear me down, and after skipping most of the tracks from ’84–’87 I was about to call it quits when this fabulous sonic jewel gleamed out of the speakers:
I’ve never bought a Cult album, and I have no idea why I didn’t buy Electric, even just for this song. I loved the album artwork, the type design, the band photo, and could’ve played “Wild Flower” on repeat a hundred times. I’ve taken a chance on plenty of other records without knowing anything about how the music sounded, just that the cover looked cool. Even so, nothing else I’ve heard by the band, then or now, comes close to it.
It’s a trope, a cliche, an idiom even, that expensive tools don’t make the work better by themselves, but in the hands of a pro—read: experienced, or ‘master’—they can work wonders. I can think of few groups where the argument over the worth or quality of the tools is fiercer and more divisive than among guitarists. Pricey gear doesn’t mean better music, but arguments rage over brands, year of manufacture, and even factory location.
In a great player’s hands, though, even a cheap or lower-grade instrument can produce good music. So it seemed to me while I watched Zakk Wylde glide through Black Sabbath’s “N.I.B.” on a Hello Kitty themed, mini acoustic guitar. And it’s more than just his playing skill, he’s bringing thoughtful musicianship to the task. The sotto voce delivery was the perfect complement to his careful, quiet strumming. Almost like he’s singing to himself. The original isn’t diminished by the smaller scale, it’s evoked, memorialized, honored.
This humbled me a little bit. Zakk (can I call him Zakk? He seems like the type to eschew formality), despite a well-documented penchant for goofballery, takes the task seriously. He doesn’t play it for laughs. Sure, the situation as a whole is silly, but by approaching it sincerely, he elevates both the music and the means of making it.
I’ve been obsessed with the new Geese album, 3D Country, this past week. It’s like this crazy stew of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Kings of Leon, the Doors, and X. But then again, not quite. They are their own thing, which we all should aspire to be. The friend who linked me to their record offered Steely Dan as a part of his musical genetics analysis. And there is some of that, truly. Early Steely Dan, at least, is a big part of the feel, but there’s a bunch of other stuff piled on, layered over, until all these comparisons are really just hints and handwaving because you have to hear it to get it. They have that NYC band confidence, but seemingly no superiority complex. It’s honestly thrilling to listen to music that sounds new, I mean really new.
3D Country
There’s something compelling about the self-indulgent production—at once everything-but-the-kitchen-sink and stripped down presence—juxtaposed with a punk-like carelessness toward arrangement. Geese are tight, and there’s plenty of craft on display. But it’s a bit like Jimmy Page in Led Zeppelin: a barely-controlled chaos of notes that feels like someone musically falling down the stairs at first, but somehow comes across as deliberate and skilled. Everything feels both cavalier and purposeful.
Cameron Winter’s vocals are thrilling throughout this consistently good album. He hardly delivers a line the same way twice. He goes from tender to shredded shouting to throaty affectation in a blur of abandon. It seemed to me as I was listening for the first time that an AI visualizer or audio generator would never have come up with anything so strange, singular, wonderful, and essentially human. Talk about your barbaric yawps.
I just read an article about AI in the music industry (apologies for the paywall; Reader version on Firefox worked for me), and it contains the customary hand-wringing alongside the usual open-ended questions: what does this mean for the future of music? Should musicians despair? But, honestly, my reaction is “meh.” It’s not that it doesn’t suck to assume that labels and the few remaining bloated corporate amoebas that have absorbed all the smaller ones will try to use “AI” to crank out more cheesy merchandise. But everything I’ve heard so far is bland or directionless. For lack of a better term, it’s generic. If people are worried that it sounds pretty good, my knee-jerk reaction is that it’s because—as in every era—there’s so much homogenized fluff that’s trying to sound like the other fluff.
But there are always the amazing gems out there. There are always the chocolate-covered strawberries amongst the piles of under-ripe and mushy decaying ones. It’s like generated art. It was amazing at first, but even as it’s become more polished, lots of it is starting to look more or less the same, and rather lifeless. Blandified. AI isn’t making anything NEW and COOL, just pretty versions of some styles that exist. I don’t want to be dismissive, but I followed several AI art subreddits to watch as it evolved, and I’m getting bored irritatingly soon. Maybe I’ll be surprised, but I’m losing confidence. This is the essential problem of AI, and of technology as a whole: it’s all a big maybe. It’s not an inevitable linear increase in ability and quality. New methods and processes can rise quickly but stall, for a long time, or indefinitely. Consider virtual reality, fusion power, and self-driving cars—or the ever-present fantasy of alt.cars.flying-real-soon-now (that’s right, USENET refugees, I see you).
It’s easy to be dazzled by the rapid rise in ability of AI art generators. It’s also very hard to know how capable it will get. One thing that nearly always holds about the future is that it’s impossible to predict with relative accuracy, and the further out one tries to see, the less likely it gets. History is littered with futurists who failed to divine the future. There’s just as much reason to speculate that this tech is following a logarithmic curve that rises quickly but soon levels off, and no one knows if we’ll actually reach the asymptote. At least with what’s been produced so far.
And so we have Geese! This band sounds like the future, that’s how fun and exciting it is to listen to. I feel vindicated again in my firm stance as a kids-are-alrighter. They are simultaneously unpretentious and ambitious. Both new and cool. The band casually spins out uncategorizable, crazy cool mashups of styles. Something humans can do best, and may always.
[Edit 7-23-23: Geese are Cameron Winter, Gus Green, Foster Hudson, Dominic DiGesu, Max Bassin]
