Dada Drummer Almanach

A lavish book of over 300 photographs of The Velvet Underground at the Boston Tea Party in 1968 and 1969 was recently published in a limited edition by Phil Milstein, founder of the Velvet Underground Appreciation Society. The photos are credited only to a mysterious “Modern Printer.” I am lucky to have a copy of this rarity, but it brings to mind a more widely available account of the Velvets’ relationship to Boston, Ryan H. Walsh’s Astral Weeks.

With fanfare last week (or was it sad trombones), the “IFPI, RIAA, A2IM, WIN, IMPALA, The Grammys, SAG-AFTRA & Human Artistry Campaign, representing a broad spectrum of recorded music creators and companies around the world,” introduced labels for AI music. The announcement was amplified by headlines throughout the US media, from People magazine to the Wall Street Journal. Is this really all we get, a sticker?

A Walk with Dorothy Wordsworth We read the landscape left to right; and then, as in the East, from right to left. We did not speak. One cannot speak and read. At the cottage in the heat of day, we talked over what we had observed. I could see composing in her eyes. We walked again in the evening. Two hundred years later, when I read her journal, the landscape was finally legible to me. Palaver I am the guardian of a word, it was given me at birth. I have not yet discovered it.

United Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) is launching a new campaign, Raise the Bar, to uplift venues who do right by artists and urge more to follow suit by honoring four minimal requirements: Venues can sign on to honor these terms, artists and organizations can sign on in support of the effort, and everyone is encouraged to contact their local venues using an email template provided. The idea is to build a database of venues that treat artists well.

Polaroid by Andrei Tarkovsky Exclusion Zone In astronomical dawn, there is activity but none of it from humans. It is an exclusion zone. People remain hidden, plotting emergence into the din. Danger in astronomical dawn is not actual but potential. Should people never emerge, the exclusion zone will stretch to the fullness of day. Three Half Moons Half moon brightens on a summer solstice, songbirds frantic in surround sound. The dark conductor signals silence. Night lengthens faster for some.

Last week streaming platform Tidal announced an AI music policy to go into effect July 15. Its tenets are simple: Tidal will identify and tag AI-generated music in our app. Listeners will see an “AI” badge next to music we detect as wholly AI-generated. Tidal will not tolerate AI-generated music that impersonates an artist or group, or that facilitates fraudulent activity. We’re implementing automatic tools to remove these releases immediately and on an ongoing basis.

In 2018 and 2019, I wrote a couple pieces for the New Yorker about sound and music. Chatting with my editor, I mentioned that I’d just been to small claims court with Apple Computer, and won. He enjoyed the story and asked me to write it up; accepted it, copyedited it, and then I guess sent it up the ladder to legal or some other office at Condé Nast and… it was killed.

There have been a slew of AI music headlines of late, although to a working musician it can feel like Kremlin-watching: we might look to business articles and corporate press releases for hints, clues, suggestions of what is going on, but we can’t really know what is being decided by whom, and we may never know even as the results take shape in our material lives.

Jūnisō (pond and teahouse), Nishi-Shinjuku, Tokyo c. 1860s The Invention of the Novel There were two hundred of us, we needed a language. Not spoken – there was chatter from every direction like birds. We needed a written language, and it developed like photos: we immersed paper in our chatter until letters revealed themselves. The characters were casual, loopy, linked together in chains. We exchanged them for necklaces. Pillow Shot We are walking on a bridge over a wide river.

“Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss. But it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terrifying silence, through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech. It went through. It gave me no words for what was happening, but went through it.