This Tweet Scared Me
My high school garage band got me thinking more about AI
In 1997, my High School Junior-aged self was attending a field trip at the Denver Art Museum as part of an art class. Halfway through the day the entire class congregated outside for lunch. As we ripped into our homemade brown bag lunches I noticed a casual acquaintance of mine eating his lunch on a bench beside an odd sculpture. His name was Jon White and I sat next to him during a school assembly a few weeks prior where we discovered we had a very similar sense of oddball humor. This would be a good opportunity to bring some much needed laughter into what had been an otherwise pretty uneventful and boring morning.
We ate our lunches and began to philosophize about how intentionally deep some of the art descriptions in the museum were. We laughed at how serious the descriptors were for a painting that seemed to only be a simple blotch of red paint on a black canvas. The conversation shifted to music and I admitted that I was beginning to learn more on the electric guitar. He proclaimed himself a “budding rythmassist”(basically somebody who could create sweet beats on any surface but didn’t own, or has ever even played, an actual drum kit). Instantly we were swept up in dreams of forming a band.
We bragged that between the two of us we could likely write a song right then and there that had simple sounding lyrics but could be “overanalyzed” by others as to what could be behind its deeper meaning. We ended up skipping the rest of the art museum tour and cranked out the lyrics to what would become our first major hit; Vegetable Woman.
It was a tale of a man who falls in love with a woman who is really a pea. Was she actually a pea or was it just metaphor? That’s for the listener to decide. He tells her that vegetables are the best and that fruits are stupid. Yet in the second verse he meets a strawberry woman and proceeds to tell her that vegetables are dumb and fruits are the best. Our 16 year old brains were pretty proud of our food driven story about the multiple masks we wear in all of our different relationships. But the real work still lay ahead. It was time to form a band and make this song a reality.
Within a matter of weeks we found ourselves in my basement with an old cassette tape recorder, a new set of drums, a guitar distortion pedal, and two new band members. Lincoln Hale was a snowboarder/rugby player/prom king with a rumored secret love of singing. We approached him with our idea to form a band and he quickly snatched up the chance to be our lead singer. Sarah Lucey was another superstar athlete and we overheard some people say she played guitar as well. She leapt at the opportunity to join me as we worked on rhythm and lead guitar duties. Our band, The Fuzzy Felt Builders, was now complete. We strategically placed the tape recorder in the center of the room and laid down this gem in a single take.
It’s super goofy for sure and the audio quality is horrendous, but this silly song is a core memory of mine and a defining moment in my life. Ultimately we weren’t creating the song to be liked or even heard by a ton of people. We were just having a blast with the process of pulling everything together to create some unique thing. It truly kickstarted my passion for performing and a desire to be part of something creative.
That's why stumbling onto this recent tweet both made me laugh and shudder at the same time.
There is far too much truth in this.
Many people are terrified about the thought of AI gaining some form of sentience and taking over the world. The fear is that AI will take over as an intelligent leader or super power and essentially eliminate the need for human intervention in many industries. Jon Stewart delivers a masterful explanation of this possibility.
Yet, I fear that when it comes to the arts, we’ve already given way too much power to AI. That threat of AI taking over as a creativity-generator is an even more terrifying possibility to me. Even TikTok often feels AI-like as we allow an algorithm to tell us what we should be interested in, how to dance, or which filter to use. We then do everything we can to mimic the original post, repost it, and then watch as it gets remixed and reposted over and over again by others. It may seem harmless because it’s only photos, drawings, videos, or music right? But the more we like, share, and generate AI created or algorithm driven content, the more we fuel the very system that is expertly designed to replace human effort. Essentially we’re creating the copy of a copy of a copy of a copy version of Michael Keaton in Multiplicity. Spoiler alert; that last copy was a complete wreck.
I decided to do a little AI musical experiment to compare an AI-generated version of Vegetable Woman to the idea we wrote as Fuzzy Felt Builders. Using AI and the simple prompt “create a quirky 90’s song about a vegetable woman”, I was able to “create” this song in only 10 seconds. It even graciously titled it for me. I present to you Veggie Love.
This song has lyrics that flow well, a snappy tempo, and an audio quality that is superior to our tape recorded attempt. I could post this song pretty easily and pass it off as my own creation and maybe even generate some likes. I’m sure it’s already happening all around us with not only music, but graphic design, storytelling, poetry, headlines, photography. and every other form of art.
Veggie Love took me 10 seconds to create and in return I got a good laugh, was genuinely impressed with the result, and could pretty easily crank out 20 different versions of the tune until I found one that REALLY slaps.
Vegetable Woman took us two full days to write the lyrics and record our initial version and in return I gained 3 new friends. Jon spent his saved money to buy a drum kit and learned how to play it. I got a job with the motivation to be able to afford new guitar pedals. We spent days reading manuals to a new Zip drive powered recording studio my dad bought so we could record new songs in the future. I used our band as inspiration to create a CD album cover for my graphic arts class for which I won an award. We learned and wrote new songs and ended up winning our school’s Battle Of The Bands competition which gave us the opportunity to perform in our prom the following year as Seniors (No, we did not perform Vegetable Woman). One moment of creation turned into a domino effect of even more creative opportunities.
As Fuzzy Felt Builders we ultimately recorded 13 songs as a little garage band in suburban Denver. This experience opened up parts of my creative mind and social life that I am eternally grateful for. Veggie Love may have changed my boredom for a moment and provided a few laughs, but Vegetable Woman changed my life (cheesiest line I’ve written all week).
I strongly believe that one of the greatest traits that makes us human is our ability to create art in its many and varied forms. In a world where we’re increasingly surrounding ourselves with 10 second AI creations, 2 second social interactions, and 1 second snap judgments, will we dare push the robots aside for a moment and give ourselves the space to truly create? The creative process is emotional, sloppy, imperfect, and sometimes completely goofy. But, it can be truly life changing for the creator. Let’s not give AI all the satisfaction.