Letters from Radio Quotidia the Blues 5

Welcome to Radio Quotidia, episode 5 of The Blues, 12 minutes of music and musings. Quentin Bega here at the helm. I’m broadcasting from our studio located somewhere in the depths of Quotidia inside a digital onion. My aim to keep you entertained for a while. As I say, the theme this month is the Blues.

Six months ago, I wrote this in a previous post: are you old enough to remember the first Terminator movie? Released in 1984 (and does that year ring any bells for you?) It tells of the point, in the year 2029, when the Artificial Intelligence systems of the time interconnect, become prescient, decide that we- as a species- are superfluous to requirements and, now merged as Skynet, immediately inflicts nuclear Armageddon on the human race. Just shy of forty years later, this is not a distant sci-fi dystopian tale but a pressing possibility for our near future.

ChatGPT and similar programs are presently shaking up the zeitgeist as workers, artists, writers, and the administrative and managerial classes wonder if they will still have meaningful jobs in the near future. Even in Quotidia, the tremors have been felt. I asked Bing’s AI bot the following question: Me: Can you put together a short article… about St James Infirmary...

Bing  AI: Sure! Here’s a short article about St James Infirmary, …St. James Infirmary Blues is an American jazz song of uncertain origin. It has been suggested that it is based on an eighteenth-century traditional folk song called “The Unfortunate Rake” (also known as “The Unfortunate Lad” or “The Young Man Cut Down in His Prime”) about a soldier who uses his money on prostitutes and then dies of venereal disease. The American version of St James’ Infirmary is along the same theme but puts the song into third person…I hope that helps. Me: Thank you, I will credit you for this when I publish it on my podcast. Bing AI: You’re welcome! I’m glad I could help. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. Good luck with your podcast! 😊

It took Bing just seconds to churn this out whereas I would have spent the guts of an hour on the same task.  It’s amazing how far we have come in a short six months. And it’s not good news at all. I find YouTube almost unwatchable because of the plethora of AI produced programs complete with artificial spoken commentary! I wonder what the digital landscape will look like six months from now. So, before the bots take over everything, here’s my rendition of St James Infirmary, a suitably doleful yet defiant blues lament in the face of fate. [insert song]

Daddy was a jazz singer in the rain, Mama got wet was the first line that just popped into my head one day as I was noodling on my guitar in 1981. Was this an unconscious referencing of duBose Heyward’s with mammy and daddy standing by which finishes his classic lyric to Summertime featured in episode 2 earlier in the week? Maybe. I carry a lot of stuff around in my head: snippets of poetry, lines of songs, quotations from the Bible, a lifetime’s perusal of books and paintings- all the detritus of a liberal arts education (which, of course, includes a lot of science stuff, too).

But it’s sort of strange, considering my decades-long love of the Blues, that I’ve written only one Blues song! Perhaps a reticence to appropriate from a culture so different to my Irish one? I don’t know. In my search of a way to conclude this brief essay in the blues, I was asked by Bing AI if I wanted it to generate a blues poem. Curious, I said yes, and Bing AI responded,

Okay, here is a blues poem that I generated for you. I hope you like it. I got the lockdown blues, baby I got the lockdown blues /I can’t go out and see my friends/ Or buy myself some new shoes/I’m stuck inside this tiny room/ I’m stuck inside this room/ The only thing that keeps me sane Is listening to some tunes/But music can’t replace your touch/ But music can’t replace your touch/ I miss you more than words can say/ Oh baby, I love you so much//

Yeah, Nah! Look, anyone out there wishing to set AI’s words to music- be my guest! Cynics among you may conclude that I prefaced my own Blues composition with AI’s feeble effort so that Still On The Move will not suffer too much in comparison to the truly great songs covered elsewhere in this Blues month from Quotidia.[insert song]

In November, commencing in two days’ time, I will present a series of programs about Last Things.

Credits: All written text, song lyrics andmusic (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone- Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 9 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.