So Long, Blogger

You served me well for many years, but I finally moved to WordPress for a more robust writing and reading experience. I'll leave this blog up, but I'm not planning on adding any new posts to it.

I hope you'll join me over at my new site. My first entry is about the best concert I ever attended and how it helped me feel a deeper connection with the world around me. 

Thanks for reading my writing through the years. I'm honored that anyone cares what I have to say.

Does Pearl Jam Still Matter in 2024?: One of the great grunge-era bands, 30 years later

“I don’t get the big deal about Pearl Jam and their mumblecore, do you?”

That text was random, I thought. But also, mumblecore, hahahaha!

I could picture Eddie running all the words to "Yellow Ledbetter" together as I happily hum along, unaware that it’s a serious song about our government’s mistreatment of veterans because I don’t understand a word he’s saying.

The author of the text bomb is a good friend—witty, funny, insightful, and unconditionally supportive. She made a solid point with the mumblecore thing, and I wanted to commiserate. 

Hell no, I don’t get it! They suck! He sounds like he’s trying to sing while stuffing his face with a peanut butter sandwich!

But I love them and couldn’t bring myself to do it. They came along when I was in college in the early 1990s and made my penchant for wearing clothes that looked like I’d slept in them—maybe I had—popular. Suddenly glam was gone, and haggard was hip.

For someone with pessimistic leanings like me, they confirmed what I thought I already knew about the world. If I couldn’t understand what Eddie was saying, I figured it was only because he was singing through his tears, and I liked them even more. CD jackets—remember those?—were for reading the lyrics.

To this day, I detest showiness and somehow find depressing music uplifting. It didn’t matter who I was talking with, friend or foe, I couldn’t deny my nostalgic admiration for PJ.

I'm not much for long text exchanges, so I called her to explain. 

“I still prefer the radio when I’m driving, and I stop scanning through stations when any of 15 or 20 of their songs come on, even though I’ve heard them all a hundred times. There’s also one of my all-time favorites, ‘Hunger Strike’ by Temple of the Dog—everybody from PJ shortly before they existed plus Chris Cornell, so close enough. Yeah, I guess it’s safe to say I get the hype.”

“Huh. I don’t think I know 15 Pearl Jam songs. ‘Hunger Strike’ is great, though.”

Oh dear, this was going to be an uphill battle. She’s firmly entrenched in Gen X like me, so I know she knows staples like “Jeremy,” “Alive,” and “Evenflow.” If those hadn’t swayed her, maybe a few less familiar tracks might.

I didn’t dig deep into their catalog. I just tried to think of a few she might not have heard in a while to see if they would elicit some happy memory of rocking to PJ at a college party or tailgate.

“How about ‘Why Go,’ ‘Dissident,’ ‘Nothingman,’ ‘Corduroy,’ or maybe ‘Hail, Hail,’” I offered. “Those are some great rockers!”

“Never heard of ‘em.”

I could see this was a lost cause. Descending into my own version of mumblecore I weakly offered, “Oh, well, maybe check those out sometime,” and changed the subject.

Over the next week, I thought sporadically about our conversation. As one of the “big four” bands representing the Seattle sound, Pearl Jam was a big deal in their day.

But what about now? I’m not dumb enough to think of them as the “it” sound all these years later. Heck, my teenage nephews don’t even know who they are. Taylor Swift, herself probably well into the back nine of her heyday of pop culture influence, released a new album on the same day Pearl Jam released Dark Matter. I’ve no doubt hers will outsell theirs “Ten”-fold (weak pun intended).

Unless we’re talking about Planet of the Apes that’s set for a new blockbuster opening in a few weeks and has outlasted both Charlton Heston and Moses, nobody remains on top of the mountain for long. What I was wondering about is their place in Rock history.

Are they legendary like The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin? If not, are they at least enduring like Aerosmith and AC/DC?

Or will they fade completely into obscurity like so many others? Unless I missed something, Coldplay couldn’t have picked a more appropriate name, and I’d swear Maroon 5 was actually marooned on some deserted island if their lead singer hadn’t washed ashore as a gameshow host.

To be fair to PJ, having their own SiriusXM channel says something about their staying power. In asking these questions, however, what I realized about my relationship with them—a band I claim to adore—is that my admiration is stuck firmly in the 1990s.

They’ve released twelve studio albums. I only know the first four well. Those are the ones any casual fan is likely to have some familiarity with—Ten, Vs., Vitalogy, and No Code. Not having bothered to listen to several of them even “Once” (I can keep going with these), I realized I’m hardly an authority on their legacy.

With a long drive ahead of me on Dark Matter’s release day and their channel devoting the entire day to promoting it, I decided it was high time I started bringing myself up to speed. I settled in and immersed myself, listening to every track at least three times while I drove.

In discovering this awesome album, I rediscovered this incredible band!

I can’t read music. I don’t even play an instrument. Hell, I’m tone-deaf. But I know what I like and can tell you why in plain English, without any fancy critic-speak about vocal technique, musical arrangements, or any other technical jargon that probably goes right over most people’s heads and certainly leaves mine spinning.

The highest praise I can give Dark Matter is that the songs I like best aren’t among the two I think they’ll promote hardest—the title track and “Setting Sun.” Those are both solid, but my picks will likely be considered deeper cuts, or at least not as heavily played singles.

That could have two very different meanings. Either the songs they thought would be the album’s anchors aren’t as good as they hoped, or there are some other excellent tracks on it.

I know what I heard and I’m trying harder to be a glass-half-full type of person, so I’m going with the latter interpretation. If I’m right, Dark Matter has legs to stick around longer than just a couple of singles would give it.

My favorite track is “Won’t Tell.” That song’s melody hooked me from the beginning and wouldn’t let go. Possible mumbling accusations aside—and I don’t think Eddie does that on this one—interesting lyrics like “As she smiled and played a minor chord in a key I’d never heard before” kept me engaged throughout.

When he sings “I’ll be the last one standing” on “Got To Give,” he’s speaking an obvious and unfortunate truth about his era. He may not have intended that reference, but it adds depth to a fine song about a tumultuous relationship.

I might break a hip moshing these days (I didn’t say who’s), but “Running” reminds me of some of their earlier punk-influenced tracks. What little self-restraint I’ve developed in my decrepitude may prevent me from jumping into a pit, but I’m not promising I won’t go rogue and throw a few couch pillows around the living room rocking out to it.

“Wreckage” hearkens back to the gloomy themes that have been Pearl Jam hallmarks and should resonate with anyone who’s tasted the bitterness of regret. They’ve always conveyed earnest emotion, and their approach to this song made me believe they have experience with their chosen subject. Having survived into their late fifties and early sixties now, they almost certainly do.

As a young man, I related to the youthful angst I heard in their music. Now well into middle age, my concerns are different. Science tells us Neanderthals evolved, and I’m living proof.

To expect a band to remain creatively the same for thirty-plus years is as unfair as expecting an individual to halt their development. Would you even want that?

I’m a huge Tool fan, but they’re not still making songs like “Sober” and “Stinkfist.” These days, they sing on “Invincible” about their current reality of “struggling to remain consequential.”

Speaking as a fellow fifty-something, maintaining some semblance of relevance becomes a much bigger concern at this age than youthful struggles like trying to satisfy ever-more-depraved cravings. I wish being bored with regular sex was my biggest problem, and I bet Maynard wishes it was his biggest, too!

The point I’m trying to make is that if you haven’t listened to anything new from Pearl Jam in several decades, don’t pick up Dark Matter hoping for Ten. That wouldn’t be fair to you or them.

They’re still a powerful band with much to say about what it means to live on this rock, but they’re singing about what that’s like in 2024, not 1994. Dark Matter has me looking forward to going back and listening to the other seven albums I missed while growing up and living my life (i.e., paying bills).

I don’t see a “Setting Sun” on the horizon for Pearl Jam for quite some time. Glancing in the “Rearviewmirror” twenty years from now, I suspect “Immortality” is their most likely epitaph.

Okay, I’ll stop now!

Photo credit: Alive87, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

AI: The Biggest Existential Threat to Medium and Other Content-Driven Platforms

Whenever someone claps for one of my stories, comments, or follows me, I check out their profile and consider following them. It used to be that almost all of them passed my lenient screening.

I was pleased to be noticed in the sea of stories and didn’t set a high bar. You basically had to have a pulse and be attempting to write something. It didn’t have to be very good for me to support you as you’d just done for me. You never know what might lead to an interesting connection, I reasoned.

Nowadays, less than half make the cut. So what’s changed?

It’s simply that after reading their profiles, I’m not buying that many of them are real. Or maybe they’re real, but their beyond-bad writing surely couldn’t be.

I’m no expert at spotting AI-generated content, but a lot of what I read sounds strangely detached to me. I also find it odd that some of these profiles are only a few days old, yet they’re publishing prolifically.

Am I to believe someone saved up thirty of these painful-to-wade-through articles and dumped them on the platform all at once? I almost admire someone who’s that awful at something yet persists with it.

But that’s not what’s going on here.

I’m talking multiple stories a day on all kinds of topics. Whether they can write a lick or not, no one is an expert on Bitcoin, relationships, vegetable gardening, stuffed animal restoration, cigar box guitars, Texas Hold ’em, and content marketing.

It’s not just on Medium that I’ve been noticing this, either. Something’s off about a lot of the content in my Google newsfeed, too.

Several online stories published by Sports Illustrated that showed up in my 2024 feed have been a mess. They ended abruptly in the middle of half-baked thoughts, included obvious run-on and incomplete sentences, and flowed like blood through clogged arteries.

Was an editor even glancing at this stuff? It was as un-SI-like as Amazon’s horrid The Rings of Power was un-Tolkein-like.

This was a few weeks before news broke that SI had been deceiving us all by running AI-generated content and attributing it to real authors. With that little transgression, a reputation built on decades of impeccable writing and reporting was ruined overnight.

To think this is the same publication that legendary writers of my youth like Paul Zimmerman called home. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

“Motivated by the preachings of a noble mama and propelled by his mighty legs, Earl Campbell has left plank-shack poverty far behind.”

Dr. Z didn’t write that. A fellow named Bruce Newman did.

Either way, AI had no hand in that magical lead sentence from the cover story on my favorite football player from the September 3, 1979, issue of SI. How about the alliteration of the “p” sound to punctuate (see what I did there?) the sentence’s impact?

As a ten-year-old boy from a middle-class white family, I had only a vague idea of what “plank-shack poverty” was, but the one-of-a-kind phrasing made me admire Earl even more than I already did. I’ve remembered it all these years and strive to pen something so succinctly descriptive every time I sit down to write. You might provide a quick dopamine hit, AI, but your tired rehashings will never create that kind of lasting impression.

Whether SI’s AI misconduct was willful or a careless oversight matters little. The damage is done, and given the widespread layoffs that followed, it’s no exaggeration to say it may never recover its esteemed position in the sports writing world.

Take heed of this cautionary tale, Medium, or any other platform that depends on high-quality written content. Identifying and eliminating AI-generated garbage is the biggest existential challenge you face over the next few years.

Otherwise, the Discouraged and Displaced humans may Disappear, relegated to Dark Ages tools like pen and paper that can’t be stolen for AI butchering. Not bad, right?

Maybe that’s the destiny of the entire AI-era Internet — a wasteland of parasitic chatbots drowning in their own drivel.

Is it wrong of me to hope so?

Photo credit: Alenoach, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Progress: An illustrated poem about human nature

Illustrations by Willem van der Merwe

A long time ago, the forest extended everywhere, in all directions, a dense canopy of trees.

A majestic sight, it was truly the land of the free.

Then along came a group of settlers who cut a path inland from the sea.

Progress

More boats arrived bringing throngs of people.

We should worship inside a church with a steeple.

Let’s harvest some wood from this wild place and build something regal.

Progress

The colonists multiplied and hungry villagers needed a bigger farm.

But man was so smart it was no cause for alarm.

We’ll clear another plot for planting right over here. What could be the harm?

Progress

Soon the village became a town, and then the town grew rapidly into a concrete-filled city.

Our wilderness is disappearing, they lamented. The beautiful landscape has turned gritty.

On one thing they all could agree. This state of affairs was indeed a pity.

Progress

Let’s set aside a wooded sanctuary where all God’s creatures can roam as they please.

We’ve bulldozed enough in search of opportunity.

Now we must live in harmony.

Progress

For a time, birds chirped, deer frolicked, and wolves howled.

Until one day a thick, black liquid bubbled up from the park's ground.

It was a discovery so profound.

Progress

Such a stroke of good fortune to power our machines.

Our consumption borders on obscene.

But man is the rightful king of beasts and should reign supreme.

Progress

We’ll chop a few more to capitalize on our good luck.

Letting our unbridled greed run amuck.

So what if we break our promise as long as we make a buck?

Progress

With this feeble logic, our actions were justified.

Willingly, we carried out a campaign of genocide.

Ignorant to the fact it was actually suicide.

Progress

And so the pattern repeated.

Soon, every last tree had been defeated.

In this barren wasteland, our home overheated.

Progress

The end should come as no great surprise.

Upending nature’s delicate balance, how did we think we would survive?

In this universe of infinite connections, we caused our own demise.

Progress, finally