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  • The Legendary Poptones: A Record Store Like No Other

    The Legendary Poptones: A Record Store Like No Other

    Located at 4559 Queen Street in Niagara Falls, Poptones was more than a record store, much more. It existed for a decade, the 19’80s and ’90s, and  was the coolest store I ever visited. That includes the giant record stores of lore on Yonge Street in Toronto, the fantastic ones in Detroit, and even Amoeba Music in Berkeley, California. Poptones was definitely a destination, but unlike most Niagara Falls attractions, it had nothing to do with the Falls, cheesy Clifton Hill, or honeymoons.

    Poptones was owned by the uber-cool, yet mysterious Frank, a person who remains in the minds and hearts of all of us who remember Poptones so fondly.

    4559 Queen Street, Niagara Falls, ON. Formerly the home of Poptones. The multi-appendaged logo was where TA2 YOU is now.

    I grew up in St. Catharines, about a half-hour drive from Niagara Falls. As a high school “student” in the late 80s, a bunch of us would drive down to Poptones on Friday nights and hang out until it closed at midnight.

    I still have 6 plastic bags with the Poptones logo and contact information printed proudly, which just proves that being a packrat isn’t entirely a bad thing. Some of the bags have yellow scotch tape stains around the handle because Frank would tape bags shut to prevent shoplifting. Below, I will discuss some of the records that I remember those bags holding.

    What set Poptones apart was its owner, Frank.

    While other record stores had better prices and more convenient locations, Poptones had Frank. While other stores had discount bins that allowed cheapskates and broke people to discover interesting music on the cheap, so long as you didn’t mind bible verses printed on the inner sleeves of the records, Poptones had Frank.

    And sure, there was that record store on Bloor Street across from Lee’s Palace that was part thong shop and had an entire wall dedicated to displaying the risque underwear that was going to destroy western civilization, but Poptones had Frank!

    Part Dude Lebowski, part Serpico, and part Tommy Chong, Frank was the guy at the party that everyone wanted to talk to. He had an intense charisma, familiar yet mysterious. For most people, it was “friends at first sight” with Frank.

    Now that I think about it, Frank had some similarities to Harvey Keitel, too, specifically Keitel’s character, Augustus “Auggie” Wren, in the 1995 movie Smoke.

    Eclectic records were de rigueur at Poptones.

    While it was the 80s, people didn’t go to Poptones to pick up Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper, or Billy Idol records. Buying a mainstream record at Poptones would be the musical equivalent of buying a red MAGA hat at the Lincoln Memorial.

    Molly RIngwald

    Looking towards the back of Poptones, there were bongs and t-shirts on the rightside wall, and on the left were the record bins. Back in those days, people wore t-shirts with giant faces of famous people printed on them. You’ve seen them, you’ve hated/had them: Charles Manson and Marilyn Monroe were common.

    I once asked Frank if he had any with Molly Ringwald on them, and he got a laugh out of that: “Nobody has asked for that one before!”

    I was recently reminded by a Facebook post that there was a table at the front of the store with business cards and flyers for raves. There were likely political flyers as well.

    I can’t remember if there was a cat that would sleep on top of the records, but I don’t think there was.

    Records I bought at Poptones.

    The records that a record store sells probably say the most about the store, so let’s talk about them. Some of the records I remember buying at Poptones include:  

    Kill Ugly Pop – Leatherface Gets Religion (The Story So Far…)

    I bought this on the strength of the jacket. The band’s name is intriguing (a band of Iggy Pop haters?, and the concept of Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre finding religion is wonderfully perverse. The album is actually pretty good, and has some songs that had my friend Roger and me singing along with “Gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta get a gun tonight.” (Full disclosure: the most lethal gun I have fired is a leaky water pistol.)

    The band is from the UK, but to my ears, the music sounds like something from the backwoods of the US South. Imagine Jon Spencer Blues Explosion meets the feeling of Deliverance, the classic Burt Reynolds movie.

    Tim Yohannan namedropped The Cramps, Birthday Party, and Naked Raygun in a brief 1984 review in MaximumRockandRoll.

    Kill Ugly Pop remains pretty much a mystery, with not even the mighty KEXP able to shine much light on them: “And we may never know much more about KUP (unless Reverend U’Tang finds this post and decides to comment).”

    Live Skull – Don’t Get Any on You

    On my first trip to New York City, I lucked out and got to see Flipper at Irving Plaza. Also on the bill were Die Kreuzen and Live Skull. Part of the NY noise band scene, Live Skull were closer to Swans than they were Sonic Youth. They kind of have a wall of sound, and I really liked the “feel” of the music.


    When I saw this album at Poptones, I had to have it. I wanted to relive seeing them live. It’s not bad, but one has to be in the mood for Live Skull. They do a great cover of the Curtis Mayfield classic “Pusherman,” which Ice-T also sampled/covered to great effect around the same time on I’m Your Pusher.

    Michelle, my late wife was a big fan of Ice-T and got to say hello to him at the first Lollapalooza. She also had a lot of fun with the line “Out here on the street and don’t know what time it is!“

    Frank was impressed when I paid for it: “I didn’t know you guys were into Live Skull!”

    The Foetus All-Nude Revue – Bedrock (EP)

    Foetus is the work of one man, Australian J. G. Thirlwell. The name gets a lot of attention, and a lot of revulsion. Thirlwell uses the name Foetus in various forms, going for maximum shock early on with  You’ve Got Foetus on Your Breath, Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel, etc. Some of Thirlwell’s Foetus work is highly acclaimed, with the album Nail receiving 5-star ratings and reaching #1 in the UK indie chart.  
    While “just” an EP, this offering from Thirlwell clocks in at over 25 minutes. It more than held my interest then, and it stands the test of time. “I ought to scatter your brains from here to White Plains” alone was worth whatever I paid for this record.

    The Feederz – Teachers in Space

    I first learned of The Feederz from reading that stalwart of excellent journalism, Weekly World News. The World’s Only Reliable News ran a story about The Feeders that I will forever remember. It was below the fold, but on page 3, bottom right. The article described the band’s frontman, Frank Discussion, and how he would put two-sided tape on his forehead, then place live insects on the tape before going on stage.

    The Feederz were anarchists, and their first album, Ever Feel Like Killing Your Boss?, was covered with sandpaper, the idea being that it would destroy the jackets of any records the Feederz came into contact with. I thought that was hilarious and unique, but later learned that other bands did it first, including UK band The Durutti Column in 1980. The band takes their name from a 6,000-member anarchist military column active during the Spanish Civil War, 1936-37. I later also learned that D. H. Peligro of Dead Kennedys, my favourite band, was the on-again/off-again drummer for The Feederz.

    Teachers in Space features a famous image of the space shuttle exploding on the cover. It was the first shuttle mission to have a teacher on board. When I saw it at Poptones, I had to have it.

    Frank wasn’t working the counter when I paid for this album. The young student who was writing the receipt was unfamiliar with the record. He refused to say the band’s name or the album’s name, instead asking, “Which one is the band?” as he motioned to both Feederz and Teachers in Space. Mission accomplished, Mr. Discussion.

    Public Image Limited – Happy?

    I can’t remember why I bought this record. Probably because I loved PiL’s previous offering,  album (also known as Compact Disc, Cassette, or mp3, depending on the format). Oh well, at least my “mainstream” purchase was from the band that created the song for which Poptones is named.

    Seattle was the single, and it is a pretty good song. Check it out.

    Buffalo Bills fans take note: The Bruce Smith who plays drums on this album is NOT the NFL Hall of Famer.

    Whatever happened to Frank, owner of Poptones?

    After Poptones closed, there were a few fun rumours about the whereabouts of Frank. It was still the pre-Internet age, so rumours abounded. They were fun rumours, and because of Frank’s persona, they were believable rumours!

    Here are the ones I heard/remember:

    • Frank relocated to somewhere in the Southwest US, joining a cult led by Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell.
    • Something to do with Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY), the Genesis P-Orridge fellowship and chaos magic network (cult/fan group)
    • Frank moved to Washington DC to work with PETA.
    • I also read that Frank got busted for selling bootlegs in the early days of Poptones and was fined $25,000. That sounds probably considering how things work in Canada, but I would also think that a $25K fine would have been the end of Poptones.

    Poptones research in the AI era

    Poptones was not a global behemoth like Tower Records or HMV. Even in the part of Ontario known as Niagara, one had to be part of the “in crowd” to know about Poptones. Everyone in Canada would know Sam the Record Man, but Poptones?

    Still, though, I “knew” that research using Google would reveal a lot, and if not, then ChatGPT/Gemini would reveal all. I knew WRONG.

    Gemini even gave me disturbing information that, fortunately, turned out to be a hallucination:

    “To those who frequented his shops, the man behind the counter was Frank Manley. Frank Manley passed away in August 2012.”

    AI may have been confusing “Poptones Frank” with Frank Manley, an author who documented the Yorkville Music Scene in the 60s. Yorkville is now an extremely upscale shopping enclave in Toronto, but apparently it was an oasis for folk singers, hippies, uber hippy Neil Young, and, oddly, Rick James back in the “dope is a panacea, and bathing is an enemy” days.

    Persistence pays off: Frank is found. Sort of.

    I finally stumbled across a February 10, 2014, article in the Fort Erie Times that revealed that Frank’s actual last name is Florio. He also opened a small shop named after a Captain Beefheart song (Apes Ma) after Poptones (named after a PiL song) closed.

    Apes Ma the store was tiny (5-feet wide), and Apes Ma the song is just 40 seconds long, so I guess Frank put 2 and 2 together and got the name.  

    I reached out to the author of the article, but did not receive a response, and a Google search on “Frank Florio” revealed nothing related to Poptones Frank.

    Frank Florio, former owner of Poptones and Apres Ma in Niagara falls, Ontario.

    PLEASE comment if you have memories of Frank or Poptones, and PLEASE let me know if I have made any mistakes in this post.

    Thanks!

  • Wildlife Encounters in Las Vegas: Wild Burrows

    Wildlife Encounters in Las Vegas: Wild Burrows

    This is a picture of a wild burrow taken many years ago at Red Rock Canyon, just outside of Las Vegas. Yes, there are still wild animals in the wilds of America!

    I converted to grayscale because the scan messed up the colours, making it look like a donkey from the Repo Man set or something.

    My wife and I took a bus tour out there because I don’t drive, and she HATED to.

    Before getting off the bus, the driver said, “Do NOT feed the burrows!“

    Michelle pretty much ran over to the wild burrows and fed them potato chips or whatever we were snacking on.

    That was her SOP. Oh, there is a PetSmart beside where we are running an errand? Guess I will take a nap while Michelle makes friends with the kitties who are up for adoption.

  • Isla Mujeres – Shark Wrestling

    Isla Mujeres – Shark Wrestling

    Isla Mujeres is a small island just off the coast of Cancun, Mexico. It is long and thin, measuring about 7 km (4.3 miles) long and 650 m (2,130 ft) wide. Most people take a ferry from Cancun to get there, which takes 20 minutes or half an hour.

    My wife and I made the trip over a few times and always enjoyed it. Friends of ours took the boat over from Cancun as well, and they had a blast doing different things. They drove a golf cart around the island. We went snorkelling and checked out a water park. Diversity, amigos!

    At the north end of Isla is a beach. Michelle and I never bothered with the beach on Isla, because beaches are a dime a dozen. We’d just gone out of our way to get to Isla, and the patch of sand we left is a damn fine one, so our palette was craving something different. Perhaps “a more authentic Mexican experience,” perhaps “whatever. ” How could we know what we didn’t know?

    Kensington Market, Mexico

    Steps away from where the ferry docks is what I would call a shantytown. It is a collection of shacks, somewhat interesting at first glance, but then what you see becomes a loop. It is the same five stores over and over and over again. The prices are garbage, there’s likely a big company running the whole thing, and it is total ICK unless you have never left your suburban home ever.

    If you have ever been to Kensington Market in Toronto, imagine that doubled, tripled or multiplied by ten. Some people say Kensington is great, the real Toronto, but 99% of anyone with a clue recognizes it as total rubbish.

    I walked through a street fair in New York City once. It was on the west side of Manhattan, 7th Avenue or something. It was massive, like the shantytown in Isla, and had the same shops repeating over and over. Both those street fairs and the market in Isla are sad and depressing, but at least the ones in Manhattan pack up and leave on Monday.

    As a longtime Torontonian, I just wish Kensington Market had packed up and left about 40 years ago.

    But back to Isla Mujeres

    You gotta go looking for the good stuff. The Man is never going to offer it up easily, nor is el Gringo.

    Michelle and I headed south every time we visited Isla. On one trip, we strapped on life preservers, or, as my friends’ daughter would call them, BOAT COATS, and slowly drifted northward along the western coast, pretending to know how to snorkel while looking at the fishy fishies. Or was it the vicious fishes? It was great, whatever it was. Just floating with the current, peeking in on another world. Peeking in on a couple of different worlds, actually, the Mexican one and the underwater one.

    One couple who went over to Isla on another trip went snorkelling and saw a barracuda. They’d brought down their own karaoke equipment and sang Heart’s song “Barracuda” that night. I mean, like the world needs another reason to hate Heart!

    Museo Subacuático de Arte (MUSA) was installed after chelle and I floated in the waters off Isla, which is bittersweet. They installed an underwater art gallery off the coast of Isla Mujeres, which also serves as a coral reef, making it ever-changing and ever-evolving and preserving nature in a highly creative way. It must be amazing to see a concrete, sunken VW underwater turning into a reef with fish floating by.

    So this is what I said about Isla Mujeres, on Facebook, sorta.

    We enjoyed snorkelling over there. It was on the opposite end of the island from where you took your pics.

    They had a nurse shark in a pen, maybe 100 square feet, 30 metres by 30 metres or so.  Some dude wrestled the shark, then held it for a while, then people who had  paid to have their picture taken with it got their chance.

    Yes, it was sad and like watching the aftermath of a car crash.

    A big fat guy with a Texan accent said to me, as we watched on the sidelines, on the dock.

    “I tell ya what, they got that shark doped up or something, cuz she should be kicking that little Mexican’s ass.”

    All kinds of things went through my mind.

    Instead of engaging the shark-wrestling insider, which would have been more fun, I just laughed out loud.

    His words had all sorts of things running through my head.

    • Was he one of those people who go to pro wrestling and think they are the only ones in on it all being fixed?
    • Was he part of some secret shark wrestling subculture, similar to underground cockfighting or dogfighting rings that we hear about in the news from time to time? YES, I am looking at YOU, Michael Vick and Marcus Stroman.
    • Was his big belly concealing a 1975 Cadillac Eldorado, or 300 pounds of pharmaceutical-grade cocaine?

    I did feel equal parts fear and sadness about the man as well, thinking he was some combination of stupid and evil.

    After I laughed, he mumbled something with much less bravado, and I think he wandered off, enjoying his cigar, judging the doped up nurse shark as he walked the dock.

  • Mummies, Monuments, Mork, and Muppet Rhymes

    Mummies, Monuments, Mork, and Muppet Rhymes

    I have a good friend who visits Egypt from time to time. When he does, he shares outstanding videos of Pharaoh Land that are on par with any travel doc Michael Palin has ever done.

    He’s over there now, and yesterday I watched an Instagram video he shared of a mummy he was enamoured with at a museum. He called it a mummy and used Glenn Danzig’s song “Mother,” which I found highly appropriate and highly amusing.

    The fact of the matter, though, was that my friend’s video was of a mummy inside a sarcophagus.

    Unable to resist my inner class clown, I made a crack about sarcophagus kind of rhyming with Snuffleupagus.

    I slept on it, and this morning I strung a few similar “rhymes” into a “poem”. The subject matter is Ancient Egypt, Sesame Street, and serious medical conditions. Here it is, submitted for your (dis)approval.

    Big Bird’s friend is Snuffleupagus, and King Tut sleeps in a sarcophagus.
    After high school, I went to college. At football games, I eat a sausage.
    Minarets call Muslims to prayer, cigarettes call Bowie to cancer.
    Oscar is a great big grouch. Most folks watch sports on the couch.

    Hi-ho, muppet reporter Kermit brought the news. When the temperature falls, people eat stews.
    Beans come in cans, and so does Oscar. Area 51 has a flying saucer.
    Big Bird’s feathers are yellow, and my cardiologist is a fine fellow.
    Some young kids have a tickle me Elmo, some sick folks hafta have chemo.

    The Count taught me 123s, hot dogs clog my arteries.
    Some people layer their clothing, and some people like bowling.
    Outside of Cairo is a great big sphinx,Muhammed Ali once lost to Leon Spinks.
    Mickey and Minnie are meeces, and stinky brown stuff is feces.

  • Your Children Already Have Cancer

    Your Children Already Have Cancer

    I took the picture above while walking around New Orleans in 2010. It was my first trip to Nawlins, and it really jumped out at me. So many things about it continue to haunt me.

    The words themself – what could be more unsettling? A cancer diagnosis for oneself is absolutely crushing, but for your children to have cancer? There is no future. The future was stolen from the ones you love the most. My gosh!

    And then there is the way the words were written. In script, deliberate, and on a piece of plywood that looks like it was diagnosed with cancer about three hurricanes ago. I mean the storms, not the famous cocktails!

    The “door” also has a padlock on it, so maybe tenants were kicked out for not paying rent or something sinister. Could the message be from the evicted people? Or maybe even a message from the landlord for the people they kicked out!

    I remember telling our friends who we were in The Big Easy with us about the graffiti, not even showing them the image, and the words alone flattened them.

    I’ve had cancer for 15 years!

    Well, no, I haven’t, but this image and sentence have been haunting me for a decade and a half. And now I am a recovering AI-aholic, so I decided to have a conversation with Google Gemini to unravel the mystery a little, or at least to practice a little self-diagnosis of the psychiatric variety and understand why the image and words have haunted me for so long.

    I didn’t gain any insights into my own psyche, but I did learn a few really interesting things about New Orleans. Interesting enough to share, hence this article!

    What a conversation with AI about cancer revealed about “Your children already have cancer”:

    I copied the picture into Google Gemini along with the following prompt:

    this is a picture i took while walking around in New Orleans in 2010 with my late wife Michelle. It was our first and only visit to that fantastic city. We went with another couple. Michelle and i were walking around, just taking in everything we could see.

    The door reads “Your children already have cancer.”

    I have no idea what that means. Just graffiti? A message from a voodoo queen to a person who followed her instructions, and the queen delivered her diagnosis for a client like a medical doctor delivers a diagnosis? Was it a political statement? Maybe it was a message for a spy? Perhaps it was even the password for a speakeasy! The name of a bad Vincent Price horror movie? It could be something else altogether!

    Please examine all of these options and any more you can think of and put together a fun and intriguing article. i want it to be fun to read with some legitimate facts thrown in.

    That image is a remarkable piece of New Orleans history. Seeing it with Michelle in 2010—a year of immense tension and transition for the city—likely felt like stumbling upon a glitch in the matrix.

    Based on the timing and the specific geography of that era, here is an “investigative report” into that mysterious door.

    One of a couple hundred pictures i took while visiting St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Nicholas Cage’s pyramid was under construction at the time. I would share pictures but I can’t currently locate them!

    Here’s some of what AI offered.

    • The Deepwater Horizon oil spill happened in April, 2010, and we were there in February, 2010, so the graffiti couldn’t have been related to that tragedy. However, “Your Children already have cancer” relating to Cancer Alley, and trying to bring that to the attention of rich tourists certainly makes sense. (Cancer Alley is an 85-mile expanse of petrochemical plants that, you know, causes cancer.)
    • I had no previous knowledge of Fred Radtke, AKA “The Grey Ghost”. Radtke, an ex-Marine often described as a vigilante, made it his mission to paint of graffiti throughout New Orleans, and claims to have painted over 10,000 tags with gray paint.

      Legendary graffiti artist Banksy got wind of The Grey Ghost, and went to New Orleans, where he painted several murals. It is said that having a Banksy mural on one’s house in Nawlins could add anywhere in value from $75K to well over $200,000.

      The Gray Ghost and Banksy took turns painting over each other’s work for a while, until The Gray Ghost pleaded “no contest” to trespassing and promising to only paint over graffiti where he had permission to.
    Banksy vs Gray Ghost vs Banksy vs Gray Ghost vs…

    AI portion:

    The Plywood Prophecy: The Mystery of the New Orleans “Cancer Door”

    If you walked the streets of the Marigny or Bywater in 2010, the city didn’t just speak to you—it yelled. Five years after the federal levees failed during Katrina, the city was a collage of “X-codes” on houses and raw graffiti. But the message you found, “Your children already have cancer,” stands apart. It wasn’t just a tag; it was an omen.

    Here is the “case file” on what that door might have truly been.

    1. The Environmental Manifesto (The “Cancer Alley” Theory)

    The most “factual” explanation is also the most chilling. New Orleans sits at the southern tip of an 85-mile industrial corridor known globally as “Cancer Alley.” * The Context: In 2010, the city was hyper-aware of environmental toxicity following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill just months earlier.

    • The Verdict: This graffiti was likely a piece of “Agitprop” (agitational propaganda). The artist wasn’t talking to you specifically; they were accusing the petrochemical industry of already having sealed the fate of the next generation. It’s a classic New Orleans protest: blunt, terrifying, and impossible to ignore.

    2. The Voodoo “Reading”

    In New Orleans, a door isn’t just an entrance; it’s a boundary between worlds.

    • The Theory: In traditional Hoodoo and Voodoo, “fixed” items or messages left on doorsteps are meant to influence those who live inside.
    • The Vibe: Imagine a local “Traiteur” (a folk healer) or a disgruntled practitioner. If a specific landlord or resident was seen as “toxic” to the neighborhood, this message might have been a spiritual “hex” or a public diagnosis of a family’s “spiritual rot.” In the Crescent City, sometimes a doctor gives you a prescription, and sometimes a neighbor writes your destiny in chalk on your door.

    AI changed it’s tone after I told it that the image was from the French Quarter, not the wards.

    That is an incredible detail. The fact that this was in the French Quarter completely changes the “flavor” of the message. While the Wards were a site of tragic physical destruction, the Quarter is the historic, preserved soul of the city—a place where every brick is protected by the Vieux Carré Commission and the ghosts of 300 years.

    Finding a message like that on a pristine street in the Quarter makes it feel less like post-disaster debris and more like a targeted strike on the conscience. —

    The Quarter’s Hidden Prophet: A Refined Investigation

    1. The “Silver Spoon” Critique

    In the French Quarter, the “children” being referred to weren’t necessarily the ones in the neighborhood, but the ones visiting it.

    • The Theory: The Quarter is the “Crown Jewel” of tourism. Graffiti in the Quarter often takes a sharper, more anti-establishment tone because it knows it has an audience of wealthy travelers. This wasn’t a medical diagnosis; it was a class-based curse. The artist may have been saying that the “cancer” of greed, consumerism, or indifference had already infected the future of those who come to the Quarter to party while the rest of the city struggled.

    2. The Battle Against “The Grey Ghost”

    Around 2010, there was a famous war in the Quarter between street artists and a man named Fred Radtke, known as “The Grey Ghost.” He was a vigilante who would immediately paint over any graffiti with a flat, dull grey paint.

    • The Theory: This message might have been a “trap” for the Grey Ghost. Artists would often write something so shocking or profound that it would make the public (or even the Ghost) pause before covering it up. It was a test of the city’s “immune system”—how long could a message this jarring survive before it was “greyed out”?

    So who knows? Nawlins has countless mysteries and riddles, some of them nothing more than ways to lure tourists and mess with them. The “Cancer Door” has stuck in my mind for a long time now, and likely always will. Playing with AI and researching what it might actually mean was fun and informative, so thanks go to New Orleans. I’d love to see you in person again someday.

    The only Banksy in Nawlins that wasn’t Gray Ghosted.

  • How Song-Poems Paved the Way for Modern AI Artistry

    How Song-Poems Paved the Way for Modern AI Artistry

    In the 50s and 60s, people would blindly send their poetry or lyrics, $50, and receive a 7” single of their work turned into a finished song. A professional singer would “sing” the words as best he could in one take, and session musicians would play along, template-style. The genre was mostly country and western, but studios turned out pop records.

    These mail-order song shops turned out tunes quicker than Berry Gordy did at Motown, but they did it with none of the passion or commitment to creating a work of art.

    There was no one name for these records, but they were sometimes called personalized records, custom singles, your own record, or even vanity records. There’s a documentary movie called Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story, which claims ‘it’s estimated that over 200,000 song-poems have been recorded since 1900’, so let’s go with Song-Poem.

    Song-Poem Records: An Early Iteration of AI!

    I was recently reminded of Song-Poem records when a friend shared a video of Mark E. Smith’s record collection. Mr. Smith had a notorious Song-Poem record in his collection, and that sparked an epiphany-ah.

    Song-Poem records and large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT operate the same way – people provide half-baked or even loony ideas, feed the machine (be it human or digital), and in return they get results ranging from dreadful to meh. Neither Song-Poem records nor AI require real talent, yet both can make anyone an artist, an expert, or just about anything one could dream of. In theory, anyway.

    Naturally, I turned to AI to research this lost phenomenon of trading fifty bucks of hard-earned cash for a vinyl copy of your words put to music. My adventure was fun, so I created this blog.

    I had AI write the story of Song-Poems in the style of an Alan Cross radio show/article.

    If you live outside of Canada, chances are you have never heard of Alan Cross. But he’s been on Toronto radio for as long, or longer, than Mark E. Smith fronted The Fall1, and he’s syndicated across Canada, including one show called The Ongoing History of New Music. Cross kind of takes an AI approach to his radio programs, gathering research and then reading his findings in a hokey yet ever-so-earnest voice.

    Check out Alan Cross’ website, A Journal of Musical Things, if you want to get a better understanding of what his work is all about.

    (And the bot did a pretty good job of emulating Mr. Cross, too!)

    DISCLOSURE: The rest of this post is AI-Generated.

    Everything Old Is New Again: The Secret History of Analog AI

    Think about this for a second.

    We’re told that we are living through a “revolution.” That Artificial Intelligence—the LLMs, the deepfakes, the algorithmic pop stars—is a brand-new, world-shaking disruption. We’re told that for the first time in history, you can type a few lines into a box, pay a small fee, and a “machine” will spit out a polished, professional piece of art.

    But what if I told you we’ve been doing this since the Eisenhower administration?

    The fact is, the “prompt-to-product” pipeline wasn’t invented in Silicon Valley. It was perfected in wood-paneled “bedroom studios” in the 1960s. And back then, the “black box” wasn’t a cluster of GPUs—it was a group of cigarette-smoking session musicians in Nashville.

    Here is the story of the Song-Poem.

    The 45 RPM “Large Language Model”

    In the 50s and 60s, you’d see these ads in the back of Popular Mechanics or comic books. “SEND US YOUR LYRICS!” they’d scream. “EARN ROYALTIES! BE A SONGWRITER!”

    All you had to do was mail in your poem—about your cat, your heartbreak, or your weird theory about the government—along with about fifty bucks (around $500 in today’s money).

    A few weeks later, a 45 RPM record would arrive at your door. It sounded… well, it sounded like a real record. It had the correct tempo, the correct chords, and a professional-sounding singer.

    But here’s the thing: The musicians didn’t care about your lyrics. They didn’t even know you. They were essentially a biological algorithm.

    Processing the Prompt

    And the Song-Poem workflow was a lot like modern AI. You sent in a prompt (your lyrics), then a pre-trained model (the session musicians’ with knowledge of 12-bar blues and pop structures) then performed inference (mapping your weird words onto a standard melody) and gives you an output ( the record).

    The “stars” of this world—guys like Rodd Keith or Gene Merlino—were the human equivalent of a high-end processor. Merlino claimed to have sung on over 10,000 of these songs. He’d walk into the booth, see lyrics he’d never read before, and sing them perfectly on the first take.

    He wasn’t “creating” in the traditional sense; he was generating.

    The Hallucination Effect

    Just like ChatGPT can “hallucinate” and give you weird, confidently wrong information, these song-poem records were full of musical “glitches.” Because the musicians were working at such high speeds—sometimes recording 50 songs in a single afternoon—they didn’t fix mistakes. If your lyrics were clunky or didn’t rhyme, the singer would just “force” the rhythm, creating a bizarre, uncanny-valley version of a pop song. It sounded almost right, but just “off” enough to be eerie.

    So Why Does This Matter?

    IIt matters because it proves that humans have always loved the shortcut. Let’s be honest: we are wired to take the easy way out. Historically, if you wanted to be a recording artist, you had to put in the “10,000 hours.” You had to learn an instrument, find a band that didn’t hate each other, and practice until your fingers bled.

    The Song-Poem industry changed the gatekeeping. It allowed people without a lick of musical talent, people who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, to bypass the hard work and jump straight to the “Artist” phase. For fifty bucks, you weren’t just a guy with a notepad; you were a “Recording Artist.”

    Does that sound familiar?

    It’s exactly what AI is doing right now. It is the ultimate democratization—or, depending on how cynical you’re feeling today, the ultimate dilution. AI lets us do things we aren’t actually qualified to do. You don’t need to understand color theory to “paint” a masterpiece, and you don’t need to know a C-major from a G-seventh to “compose” a symphony.

    We’ve traded the craft for the result. The interface has changed from a postage stamp to a chat window, but the ghost in the machine—that deep-seated desire to be “creative” without doing the heavy lifting—is exactly the same.

    What do you think? Is AI just the high-tech version of a $50 mail-order record? Are we losing the soul of the craft, or is this just the next logical step in musical evolution?

    Leave a comment. Let’s talk.

    The Playlist: Artifacts of Analog AI

    If you want to hear what this “Analog AI” sounded like, you need to dig into the archives. Some of it is genuinely catchy; most of it is a fever dream of mid-century clichés.

    1. A total of 66 different musicians played in the English post-punk band The Fall during its 40-year existence from 1976 until the death of frontman Mark E. Smith in 2018.
       
      Mark E. Smith was the only constant member throughout the band’s history. The lineup was famous for its frequent changes, leading Smith to once quip, “If it’s me and your granny on bongos, it’s The Fall”. About one-third of the members who joined the band played for less than a year.  ↩︎

  • Overwhelmed by good ideas generated by AI? Here’s how to cope

    Overwhelmed by good ideas generated by AI? Here’s how to cope

    AI has dramatically transformed a lot of things. One of them is brainstorming.

    In terms of generating ideas, we’ve gone from staring at an empty pantry for days on end to having a French bakery at our fingertips in the blink of an eye.

    Here’s how I imagine that AI bakery: One shelf has “famine to feast” éclairs. Next is “too much of a good thing” croissants. Then there is “an embarrassment of riches” macarons, and next to those treats are “a good problem to have” baguettes.  You name the cliché, and AI’s French Bakery of Ideas has it!

    The problem now is not generating good ideas but managing the overgrown garden of goodness. (I’m mixing my metaphors here – I better have AI clean up this copy – oh wait…)

    How we can navigate our way through the patisserie of AI-generated ideas?

    It takes discipline to choose the ideas to start working on when they all look so good. Wanting them all almost always means losing them all. Humans only have so much time and energy, so it kind of comes down to Sophie’s Choice – which of your children do you save, which ones do you sacrifice?

    I asked Google Gemini how to deal with an overabundance of good ideas, and I think the bot’s response is a good one. As anyone who uses AI knows, that isn’t always the case.

    So, refresh your coffee, grab another French pastry, and then take in this advice for dealing with too much of a good thing. Maybe grab a serviette too (serviette is French for napkin, Nadwuar fan), because this gameplan is so tasty it will make you salivate.

    I now give the floor to Monsieur Gemini.

    How to turn the AI deluge into actual output

    If you don’t have a systematic way to kill off ideas, you aren’t a creator; you’re an archivist. To turn the AI deluge into actual output, you need a cold-blooded filtering process. Here is the protocol I use to maintain velocity:

    • The 60-Second Execution Test: Read the AI-generated prompt. If you can’t mentally outline the three main pillars of the piece within 60 seconds, discard it. If you have to “work” to find the angle, the idea isn’t sharp enough. Move on.
    • The “Human Alpha” Filter: Ask yourself: What can I add to this that the model can’t? If the idea is purely informational and lacks a perspective based on your specific experience or “boots-on-the-ground” data, it’s commodity content. Delete it.
    • Hard-Capped Ideation Sprints: Never leave an AI chat open while you write. Set a timer for 10 minutes to brainstorm. At the end of that 10 minutes, pick your lead and close the tab. Keeping the “Idea Engine” running while you are in “Execution Mode” is a recipe for a half-finished draft.
    • The Priority Matrix: Organize your selected ideas into a simple 2×2 grid. Prioritize High Impact / Low Effort first. If it doesn’t fit a specific strategic goal, it’s immediate trash.
    • Aggressive Backlog Purging: If an idea sits in your Notion or project board for more than 14 days without being touched, it’s dead. Purge it. If it were truly “killer,” it would have stayed at the front of your mind.

    Don’t let all your great ideas die on the vine. Pick the really good ones, make them great, and make 2026 a vintage year.

    *This post has been brought to you by the letter G, as in Gee, I am thankful for Google Gemini!

  • From APCs to Apple Bags Subtitle: Ziv’s New Mission on the Streets of Toronto

    From APCs to Apple Bags Subtitle: Ziv’s New Mission on the Streets of Toronto

    Instead of driving APCs, he now drives a red grocery delivery truck. Instead of being on a mission to kill the enemy, he is now on a mission to feed his new friends. Instead of smelling sweat, death, and diesel, he now inhales the scent of celery, bread, and what is on sale this week.

    He now lugs heavy bags of groceries for senior citizens, people with physical disabilities, those he can’t drive, and anyone who can’t do it for themselves. It is “the same but different” as lugging 120mm Mortar Shells.

    Lately, he’s been feeling down, wondering if he made the right decision by moving to Canada. This morning, he is very much questioning his decision, because while out delivering groceries and running his butt off to meet his quotas and avoid getting fired, he has to struggle through 8 inches of wet, heavy snow that fell overnight.

    The temperature is above freezing, so big chunks of snow are falling off trees and hitting him while he runs up to the doors with groceries. The Canadian snow bombs remind him of Russian “incoming”. Many walkways haven’t been cleared yet, and roadways are a sloppy mess.

    He’s feeling really down and worried when one customer calls him back to their house after he’s dropped off groceries. He thinks he is about to get yelled at.

    “Ziv!” the customer calls out. The crippled old man knows that the grocery guy is named Ziv because that’s the name he’s seen on the app every time he has ordered groceries over the last year.

    Ziv returns to the door meekly, expecting the worst.

    Instead, the hunched over geezer holds out his hand, a $20 about to move from it to Ziv’s.

    “I appreciate all your efforts.”

    Ziv smiles, and the two people shake hands. Suddenly he was happy to be in The Great White North, a place where palms are greased, not tank tracks.

    “Merry Christmas, Happy New Year.”

    Ziv – a man who knows the importance of transferable skills.

  • I think there ought to be “Grandma Lanes”.

    I think there ought to be “Grandma Lanes”.

    Every year I hear about another Grandma getting run over by a reindeer.

    If Grandmas had their own lanes, instances of them getting run over by a reindeer would fall dramatically.

  • From Springsteen’s Nebraska to North Carolina: Music, Murder, and a Chicken Plant Disaster

    From Springsteen’s Nebraska to North Carolina: Music, Murder, and a Chicken Plant Disaster

    After 40 years of hype, a movie, and a multi-disc reissue, I finally gave in and listened to Bruce Springsteen’s critically acclaimed and fan-revered album Nebraska.

    Nebraska is a pretty good album, but it didn’t blow me away or make me think, “This is the greatest thing ever.” My reaction is similar to how I feel about Amy Winehouse’s music: it is OK, but not earth-shattering. Both artists’ work feels more like a nod to earlier genres than a groundbreaking revolution.

    Jello and Mojo must have been Springsteen fans

    What DID strike me is that Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon used the tune of the title track from Nebraska for their song “Hamlet Chicken Plant Disaster,” which appears on the fine album Prairie Home Invasion.

    Nebraska isn’t Springsteen’s biggest album. It isn’t as massive as Born in the USA or Born to Run, albums you know whether you want to or not. Nebraska had no singles, Bruce didn’t tour or do promotion for it, and it doesn’t get airplay, so you have to be a fan and seek it out if you want to hear Nebraska. It surprises me that Jello and/or Mojo would do that on some levels, but then again, it doesn’t surprise me at all.

    I grabbed Prairie Home Invasion when it first came out in 1994. I loved it immediately and continue to give it a spin every once in a while. In other words, I already knew Hamlet Chicken Plant Disaster well.

    So when I was listening to the song Nebraska for the first time, I thought, “Is that that Prairie Home Invasion song?” I wondered if it was a traditional song that both Bruce and Jello/Mojo interpreted independently of each other. It isn’t, and it wasn’t, of course. All songs on Nebraska are Bruce originals.

    Jello and Mojo put different words on the Springsteen tune, giving the song a modern feel with an anti-corporate greed stance. I mean, we ARE talking Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon here!

    The origins of Springsteen’s song Nebraska

    Springsteen’s song is written from the perspective of Charles Starkweather, a person who killed 10 people between 1957 and 1958.  Starkweather showed no remorse, not even when strapped to the electric chair.

    Apparently, Bruce wrote the song Nebraska after watching the 1973 movie Badlands and reading the Ninette Beaver book Caril, a book about Caril Ann Fugate, Starkweather’s teenage girlfriend and accomplice. Fugate served 18 years after being tried and convicted of first-degree murder.

    The origins of the song Hamlet Chicken Plant Disaster

    Jello and Mojo’s lyrics, by contrast, recount the 1991 Hamlet, North Carolina, chicken processing plant fire, a tragedy where 25 workers died, 49 children were orphaned, and many more suffered lasting trauma.

    The Hamlet chicken processing plant, owned by Emmett Roe, had its emergency exits and other doors locked to prevent employee theft. When the fire broke out, workers were trapped inside, unable to escape the smoke and flames. Twenty-five lives were lost—all due to efforts to prevent the theft of dead chickens.

    Charles Starkweather (Nebraska) vs. Emmett Roe (North Carolina):

    • Charles Starkweather killed 10 people and was cooked like a chicken by the State.
    • Emmett Roe pretty much killed 25 people by protecting dead chickens from theft. He received 4 years free room and board courtesy of the State.

    Bruce Springsteen vs. Mojo Nixon and Jello Biafra:

    • Springsteen released Nebraska to critical acclaim in 1982. It has sold over 4 million copies and was recently turned into a movie starring the guy from The Bear.
    • Jello and Mojo released Prairie Home Invasion on Alternative Tentacles in 1994, and it currently sells for anywhere from five to twenty-five bucks.  

    Two men were judged. Now you can judge two songs:

    (Jello and Mojo get more real estate because they are a complete band, and Bruce is “just” Bruce.)