IN THE PRESENCE OF A MASTER

Jimmy Webb played at the Freight & Salvage on Saturday, July 15 and I was there! It was a mesmerizing show with Jimmy at the piano singing his songs and telling their origin stories. I knew the lyrics to all of them because Jimmy Webb wrote the soundtrack of my early life — and probably yours, too! The Glen Campbell songs, the Linda Ronstadt songs, Nina Simone, Art Garfunkel, the Fifth Dimension songs. All of them written by Jimmy Webb, all of them wonderful.

I also had the pleasure of meeting him backstage. As a Freight donor, I was invited to sponsor a show, and I jumped at the opportunity to choose this one. An additional benefit was a meet and greet with the artist in the green room, which is adorned with the signatures of the performers who can get their hands on a black sharpie. (I failed to take my picture with him, but here's an older photo of me with artist graffiti in the background...my name is mixed up in there somewhere, too!) We chatted about a few things including the effect Artificial Intelligence (AI) will have on music and writing. Mr. Webb is on the board of ASCAP, and you can imagine this is a hot topic. Without artist consent, AI recently "scraped" songs from Spotify and Apple Music and is using them to learn how to create new songs that sound like a specific artist. Here's an article from the Washington Examiner about it.

It's fitting that someone who has written so many popular songs is part of this discussion within ASCAP. This is way bigger than taking money out of artists' pockets — though those implications are also huge. I've played with one of the AI apps, Chat GPT, a bit. It's scary how it can generate unoriginal original content. (In fact, this newsletter platform — Constant Contact — is offering AI services for writing marketing content!)

I doubt AI will be able to do what Jimmy Webb does with lyrics. His words guide you down universal pathways, paint images, release sentimental feelings, and — it's an indirect route. I have been thinking about Wichita Lineman:

"I am a lineman for the county and I drive the main road, searching in the sun for another overload. I can see you in the wires, I can hear you through the whine..." This is not a literal or linear concept. In a handful of words, Jimmy Webb shows you the ordinariness and boringness of such a job, makes you feel bright, hot days driving a company truck in Kansas as you imagine high tension lines making their unusual sound, and understand the guy is alone with his musings of how he feels about his woman.“When I heard it I cried,” Glen Campbell said. “Every follicle stood up on my body...it’s just a masterfully written song.”

Can Artificial Intelligence write a song that makes you cry or feel aligned with the Lineman? Please don't tell me yes...I don't want to believe it.