#the algorithm loves McCartney

[girlinthebrightbluejeans]

Everyone pls look at my tunes!

[sugardollcurse]

Hello sugar — your posts showed up on my recommended and it struck such a nostalgic chord. I haven’t read Beatles x reader since I was 12 or 13 so it was a blast from the past in the best way! I love what ur doing and hope u continue to do what u do cuz it’s awesome and great fun. This is an atypical request but I’m a trans guy so I don’t fit the usual femme archetype, but if u could write any prompt with a gender neutral/masc reader that would tickle me pink. Thanks and much love ☃️🩵

𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑠𝑎𝑦 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑙𝑜𝑢𝑑 | paul mccartney x reader

𐙚 summary ; paul finds himself writing songs again. you're why.

𐙚 note ; hello darling !! first of all, what a message. you’ve just smacked me in the chest with joy. bless the algorithm for bringing us together after all these years. i adore you for saying something, and i’m thrilled to oblige. i hope you enjoy!!

Paul notices your hands before he notices your face.

It’s not that he hasn’t looked before... he has, often, to an embarrassing degree. But tonight it’s different. You're tucked in the corner of some half-dressed backstage room in Manchester, tie loose around your neck, sleeves rolled up. The lads are loud, chaos blooming around every corner: George tuning something with teeth, John trying to fix a kettle with a biro, Ringo muttering to his tea like it insulted him.

And then there's you. Leaned back in a fold-out chair, one foot propped on a case of cables, hands loose in your lap. Not doing anything special, not trying to be looked at. But Paul’s eyes catch there anyway. On the way your fingers tap a silent beat on your thigh. On the way they curl when you laugh.

He thinks, wildly: I want them on me.

He also thinks: don’t be a tit.

“Penny for your thoughts?” you ask, smirking.

Paul startles, eyes jumping to yours. You’re watching him, head tilted, that curious half-grin on your face. The one that always makes him feel like a bug under glass, but one you like looking at.

He clears his throat. “Was just-” He gestures vaguely toward the amp in the corner. “Wondering if that’s gonna short out again.”

You glance at it. “If it does, I’m not saving anyone.”

“Even me?” he asks, trying to play it off light.

You raise an eyebrow. “Especially you.”

Paul snorts, covers it with a cough. His fingers twitch like they want to write that down somewhere.

The night rolls on. Soundcheck. Rehearsal. People filtering in and out, stagehands and label folks and the usual whirlwind of cigarette smoke and misplaced instruments. Paul moves through it all in a daze, like his body’s performing from memory but his mind’s stuck on a loop.

Because here’s the thing:

You’re not in the band. Not exactly. You joined for the tour, assistant to the tour manager.

You’d walked in wearing a suit that didn’t care about your shape, boots that made your walk heavier, and a grin that gave absolutely nothing away. Paul had stared.

He’s still staring.

It starts on the bus, somewhere between Liverpool and Leeds.

You’re sitting across the aisle, bent over a notepad. Paul doesn’t mean to watch you. He’s got his own notebook open, lyrics half-scribbled and useless. But you keep licking your thumb when you turn a page. He watches the motion, the softness of it. He wonders what kind of paper it is. What you’re writing.

Then you look up. Meet his eyes. Paul panics, jerks his gaze away.

Later, at the next rest stop, you sidle up beside him while he’s sipping coffee from a cup too hot.

“What rhymes with ‘hesitate’?” you ask.

He chokes a little. “Er-meditate? Underrate?”

You nod like that helps, then nudge your shoulder against his. “Cheers, poet.”

And walk off.

Paul spends the next hour trying to rhyme something with your name.

⸻

You don’t flirt with him. Not exactly.

You do things that feel like flirting, though. You sit close when there’s space elsewhere. You compliment his handwriting. You touch his arm when you laugh.

But you don’t treat him special.

You talk to John like he’s your favourite sibling. You sit on the floor with George during long waits, arguing over chords. You let Ringo fix your tie once and didn’t even flinch.

Paul’s used to being the centre. The gravity. But around you, he feels like a satellite. Pulled, blinking, spinning.

And it’s bloody annoying.

⸻

Paul sits beside you on the stairwell. It had been maybe three years since you started working for them.

It’s a service exit, concrete steps, a rusted door behind you, some muffled bit of a night wind that smells like cigarettes and fry grease and road salt. Show’s been over an hour, but neither of you’ve moved. There’s something about the quiet after noise, the ringing in your ears, the thrum still stuck in your chest. Neither of you wants to break it.

You’re both bent at the waist, arms resting on knees, not touching. You pass him your cigarette. He takes it.

Then, a beat later, you say, “Been a long run, hasn’t it?”

Paul huffs out a laugh. “That’s one way of puttin’ it.”

You smile faintly, eyes still forward.

Another pause. Then you ask, “You ever think about what you’d do if it all ended tomorrow?”

He looks at you. You don’t look back.

“Y’mean the band?”

You shrug. “All of it."

Paul thinks on that. Takes another drag.

“Sometimes, aye. Not really."

Your eyes slide toward him, the corner of your mouth twitching. “And?”

“And,” he says, breathing smoke, “I reckon I’d miss the bloody racket.”

You chuckle. “Even the parts you complain about?”

“Especially those.”

He offers you the cigarette again. You shake your head.

“I think I’d miss the noise too,” you say. “But sometimes quiet’s all I want.”

Paul hums, low and thoughtful. “Y’always did like the edges of things.”

You glance over. “Edges?”

He shrugs one shoulder, lazy. “Y’like where the light stops. Where it gets quiet.”

You nod once. “Maybe.”

And that’s all. You sit in that. Two people caught somewhere between movement and stillness, the space where something almost happens.

When he gets up first, he doesn’t say anything. Just taps your knee lightly. You follow.

Paul became your closest orbit. The person you always sat next to on the bus. The one you traded books with, notes in the margins. The one who started writing a song every time you left the room.

None of it got spoken. Not directly. But he handed you his lighter when you needed it. Called you love once when he didn’t mean to. Slid his foot next to yours during soundchecks and left it there.

You existed in the ellipses of each other’s days.

⸻

The grass is cold beneath you.

It’s after a gig in Wales, summer near the end of its breath. Everyone’s inside but you and Paul, both stretched out under the open sky, backs against the hillside behind the venue. You’re half-dozing, picking at a fraying shoelace. He’s chewing a stem of grass like he’s got nothing better to do.

You’re quiet for a long time.

Then, still looking at the stars, you murmur, “I’ve been thinkin’ about packin’ it in.”

Paul turns his head. “Eh?”

You shrug, not quite meeting his eyes. “After this run. Maybe. Just feels like I’ve been running a long time and... maybe I’ve seen enough.”

There’s a beat of silence. He swallows hard.

“You wouldn’t.”

“I might.”

Paul’s heart stutters. His chest goes tight like it’s shrunk inside his ribs.

“Nah,” he says, but it comes out thin. “Y’wouldn’t.”

You don’t respond right away.

Instead, you turn and look at him, really look at him, eyes steady, like you’re trying to see the version of him behind the face. Trying to get past the cameras and vinyl pressings and headlines. Just him, in this field, with that fucking grass in his teeth and his curls haloed in moonlight.

“If I did,” you ask quietly, “you’d come with me, yeah?”

His mouth opens. Closes.

He stares at you like you’ve just offered him a way out of something he didn’t even know he was trapped in.

“…fuckin’ hell.”

You raise an eyebrow. “That a yes?”

Paul drops the grass stem from his mouth. His tongue darts across his lip, quick. He sits up a little, not straighter exactly, just more alert, like the ground’s shifted under him.

He doesn’t answer right away.

You wait.

Then, finally, in a voice so low it barely rises above the crickets: “I dunno.”

Your chest tightens, but you don’t look away.

“I mean,” he goes on, tugging at the grass near his knee, “if it were just me… maybe. But it’s not. It’s never just me, is it? There’s the band, and the tour, fuck, it’s not like I can just vanish, is it?”

You don’t say anything. Not yet.

Paul exhales hard, like he’s mad at himself.

“I want to,” he says. “You’ve gotta know that. Half the time I see you lookin’ out windows like you’ve already gone and I think, God, take me with you, but then I get in the room with the lads and I’m… I dunno."

He rubs a hand over his face.

“Feels like if I stop now, it all comes undone.”

You’re quiet for a moment, picking at a thread on your sleeve.

“I wouldn’t ask you to leave it all behind,” you say.

Paul looks at you, eyes tired.

“But if I did ask,” you say, slower now, looking at him like you’re trying to read him backward, inside out, “you’d want to. Yeah?”

He swallows.

“…Yeah,” he murmurs. “I’d want to.”

You don’t move.

Neither does he.

You just sit there, dusk creeping soft around the edges, the heat of the day finally dipping beneath your clothes. A wind comes over the hill and carries the scent of something blooming too late, honeysuckle, maybe, or something just like it. Paul’s fingers twitch in the grass like they’re reaching for something and not sure if they’re allowed.

So you reach first.

Your pinky finds his. Hooks it gently. His head turns toward you like it’s on a thread.

“Alright,” you say.

He blinks. “Alright what?”

“If you’d want to,” you murmur, “that’s enough.”

Paul looks at you for a long time. Really looks. His hair is messy, the collar of his shirt skewed, eyes soft with something he's never managed to write down. But you know it. You’ve felt it in the spaces where he looks away. In the places he lingers just a second too long.

“I’d want all of it,” he says, barely above a whisper. “Y’know that?”

“Yeah,” you say, and your voice almost breaks on it. “I know.”

The quiet stretches again, but it’s warmer now. Like it’s wrapped around you both instead of pulling you apart.

Paul leans in, so slow you could stop him if you wanted to. But you don’t. You never have.

His forehead rests against yours. Not kissing. Not yet. Just that.

Just breathing the same air.

The hill behind you is steep and the grass wet against your back. But here, like this, Paul’s lips barely brushing yours, it’s the most grounded you’ve felt in months.

“I don’t wanna lose you, y’know.” he says, like it’s the first time the words have ever touched daylight.

“You’re not going to,” you whisper. “Not if you keep meeting me here.”

“On this hill?”

You nod, forehead still resting against his.

And then he kisses you.

Not loud. Not rushed. Just a slow, certain thing, like he’s not proving anything anymore, just giving it. His mouth is warm, steady, a little unsure.

When he pulls back, you’re both blinking hard, dazed from something quieter than fireworks but bigger somehow. Like you cracked a seam in the universe and stepped through.

You tilt your head, rest it on his shoulder.

Paul lets out a slow, breathy sound, not quite a sigh.

“Think you’ll go?” he asks.

You trace a slow pattern on the back of his hand with your thumb.

“Don’t know,” you say. “But if I do… I won’t leave without saying it proper.”

He nods.

And then, quieter:

“If you do go,” he says, “I’ll write a song about it.”

You smirk. “Better make it a good one.”

He grins down at you. “Wouldn’t dare make it anything less.”

taglist: @sharksausages, @wavvytin, @wimpyvamps, @finallyforgotten, @lennongirlieee, @silly-lil-lee, @alanangels

[paulandjohn]

John & Paul: A Love Story In Songs tells the story of the tempestuous, tender, intimate, phenomenally creative relationship between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. It’s about how two damaged young men merged their souls and multiplied their talents to create one of the greatest bodies of music in history.

It starts in 1957, when the two of them meet, before taking us through their rise to fame, stupendous success, acrimonious split and aftermath. I tell the story through songs, since it’s my belief that it’s impossible to understand the music of the Beatles except through the alchemy between John and Paul - and you can’t understand that alchemy except through the songs. John & Paul offers a whole new narrative of the Beatles; one which scrapes away the clichés in order to reveal the group and its two principals afresh. It’s a story full of joy, love, pain and pathos. But don’t take my word for it…

The first new Beatles story in decades - and the one that will make your heart burst.

Caitlin Moran

No writer has ever gotten to the heart of the John/Paul saga as brilliantly as Ian Leslie. This extraordinary book sheds light on a cultural mystery: how two nowhere boys from Liverpool formed a teenage bond that transformed the future, and in so many ways, invented it. John and Paul is a bold, original, empathetic revelation of why our world is still fascinated by this friendship-and still trying to live up to it.

Rob Sheffield

I’ve been working on this book for the last three years and it’s now pretty much done - we’re in the very last round of copy edits. It’s the best thing I’ve ever written and I can’t wait to share the whole thing with you. The notes section has been completed (I am so glad to say). The pages have been typeset. Most excitingly: we have a jacket design. Actually two, because John & Paul has two terrific publishers, one in the UK (Faber), one in the US (Celadon).

The Ruffian is deeply intertwined with John & Paul: A Love Story In Songs. The book sprang from a long piece that I wrote about McCartney on here back in 2020. It went so unexpectedly viral that I started to think, huh, what if…? I’d already been thinking, vaguely, of a book about the two of them, but now it seemed viable. I got a similar response to my piece on Peter Jackson’s Get Back, also published on The Ruffian. Those two pieces became my kind of standard for the book - I wanted the whole thing to elicit as powerful a response as they did.

It’s been a massive undertaking and without income from The Ruffian I simply wouldn’t have had time to do this story justice. Over the months to come, especially as we get nearer to publication, I’ll be sending J&P-related posts exclusively to paid subscribers. These will include pieces on the writing of the book, extra material I had to leave out, and perhaps some extracts. There will be other goodies too; my publishers have some exciting plans.

YOU CAN NOW PRE-ORDER ‘JOHN & PAUL’

Yes, it’s out there on the virtual shelves, waiting for you. And I would absolutely love you to pre-order (to those of you annoyed by this arguably redundant term, I apologise but it’s handy).

Every sale of this book counts but some sales count more than others. Pre-orders are simply more valuable to authors. Why? Because they move the algorithmic needles. The more orders a book receives before its publication date, the more prominence the retailers give it when it arrives, and so the better it does on release It’s all about the big mo. The prize is a spot on the bestseller lists in that first week. So let’s give it a go…

If you can afford it, please smash your preferred link and get your order in now (UK and US retailers below):

UK

Waterstones

Amazon

Foyles

Blackwells

U.S.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Bookshop

Audible

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

Hi, Fiona! I thought Here today should have been the first knowing your love for this song? Also, do you have a post dedicated to this song?

What are your thoughts about Junk? I love this song as well!

What algorithm or programme have you used to make the ranking? (want to do it as well)

Too many questions in one message))

Well, making number 10 is absolutely nothing to sneeze at! All songs in the top 20ish are incredibly near to my heart.

I did make a post about Here Today a long time ago, though it doesn't encompass everything I love about it. I also talked about it in this post about John tribute songs.

I think Here Today arguably contains Paul's finest lyrics (except maybe for Junk, more on that later). Starting your song by saying you know someone so well you know they would say you don't know them at all – the paradox, the dark humour in it, the ache! And opening with "And if I said I really knew you well" and closing with "And if I say I really loved you", like the change from the imagined conditional 2 to the real conditional 1, it is like actually masterful, I will NEVER shut up about this.

The way the song is dripping in uncertainty and finds solace in pulling away from agonizing about how a hypothetically alive John may feel and instead focusing on the steadfastness of Paul's love for John – "But as for me."

I also think the arrangement is gorgeous, I love when the strings ascend for the last "And if I say", I love how Paul switches between guitar styles, I love how his opening chord encompasses that uncertainty he's singing about.

Now, onto Junk!!!!

I think Junk tells the story of life, essentially.

Childhood:

Motor cars, handle bars Bicycles for two Broken-hearted jubilee

Youth (specifically a young man):

Parachutes, army boots Sleeping bags for two Sentimental jamboree

Marriage:

Candlesticks, building bricks Something old and new Memories for you and me

And interspersed, it asks why things have to end. Why do we have to move on from all the "junk" from the previous phase? Who gets hurt in the process?

Junk (1970) by Paul McCartney is literally everything packed into an under two minute song. I do not know what more I could ask for.

You can find the code to do the sorter yourself here.

[jcmarchi]

How you can use AI to push boundaries in SaaS products

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/how-you-can-use-ai-to-push-boundaries-in-saas-products/

How you can use AI to push boundaries in SaaS products

My name is Juliette Denny, and I am the CEO at Growth Engineering. We create really engaging technology fueled by artificial intelligence.

Now, I know this subject can seem like traveling to an alien planet, but I’m giving you a step-by-step guide to reach lift-off!

Here’s the breakdown: 👇

Main talking points

What is AI

AI in more detail

Hollywood has warped our understanding

Business applications

Unprecedented growth

Better outcomes

What is AI?

There’s a number of different definitions of AI. But none of them define it better than this quote from Professor John McCartney.

In other words, AI represents our efforts to stimulate human intelligence through machines. AI is usually applied to automate tasks or processes to make them more efficient.

These are the more challenging tasks that humans would do, rather than easier tasks. An important thing to note right off the bat, is that AI isn’t a substitute for human activity; it augments human activity.

AI can take over tasks that would be more time-consuming for a person, like looking through legal documents to find precedents and commonality. On the other hand, things that’re easy for human beings, like walking, are very hard for AI to pull off.

Okay, so now that we’ve got the definitions out of the way, let’s dig into AI in a little more detail.

AI in more detail

Now, within the subject of AI, there are many subcategories, and we’re going to cover them in this section.

Weak/narrow AI

Typically, when people are talking about weak or narrow AI, it’s the type of artificial intelligence that’s limited to a really specific or narrow area. So, for example, we have Alpha Zero. That’s a computer system that’s basically excellent at chess. But if you were going to bet on this system in a game of Scrabble, you’d be out of luck.

General AI

This system seeks to establish a kind of intellectual agent that can learn any top tasks that  humans can. In other words, it’s on par with a human ability. This has been used when assessing loan criteria, for example, whether something is low or high risk.

Super AI

As you may have guessed by the title, super AI would be something that has superseded human intelligence. The potential of these kinds of technologies is unprecedented (and potentially scary!) It’ll probably be a long time before we arrive at this point.

Machine learning

This is a subfield of the wider AI. It allows the software to learn through an algorithm so that it can complete tasks more efficiently.

Deep learning

This is a type of machine learning that uses artificial neural networks. It progressively learns from the data that’s being pushed through the neural network. This is a textbook example of AI augmenting human actions.

Hollywood has warped our understanding

Sadly (or maybe luckily!) we’re not anywhere close to Terminator 2 or Ex Machina.

Better examples

Modern-day examples of AI include things like:

Recommendation engines

Virtual assistants

Chatbox

Intelligent Search

Email filtering

Driverless cars

All of these are powered by AI. Now, we’ve highlighted some modern examples of AI, let’s look at some companies that have invested heavily in AI.

Domino’s

So, I don’t know about you, but I love pizza, but do you know what I didn’t love? Ordering pizza on my cell phone for deliveries. Often you’d be waiting there, not knowing what time it was going to arrive, wondering if they’d forgotten about it even!

What Domino’s pizzas did is they used artificial intelligence to develop a model which allowed them to predict when your pizza was going to get to you. They went from an accuracy of 75% to an accuracy of 95%. This also worked out well for Domino’s because it meant they weren’t getting as many calls.

Deutsche Bank

This company really utilizes AI in a different way. They used it to identify attractive loan clients to speed up their loan approvals. This happens as the customer is actually filling in the form, and it’s really speedy and efficient. Just think about how much manpower and how much expense banks must rack up from having to employ people to carry out those checks!  

The knock-on effect has been that more people have signed up to use this process. Now, more loans are getting approved, and more business is being done.

IBM Watson

IBM Watson has a number of applications in terms of customer service. They have a smart assistant, which uses conversational AI to help resolve over 7,000 customer inquiries a day. The reason why this works is that most of the customer inquiries are the same customer inquiries, it doesn’t require human intervention, so we’re driving down the cost of delivering the service.

Real breakthroughs

Having said that, there are also really powerful examples of AI. It has the potential to engineer unthinkable technology, as well as technological and scientific breakthroughs. Because machines are able to analyze data so much quicker than mortal brains.

A good recent example would be…

Deep Mind

Deep Mind’s AI program was able to solve a problem that scientists have been trying to crack for almost 50 years. Now, I’m no protein scientist, but what a protein does largely depends on its own unique 3D structure. Understanding how different proteins can fold can really help us develop new medical treatments.

It represents a real, significant advance in human understanding. Because scientists were unable to understand how the math worked, It was estimated that it would never be known.

But of course, Alphafold came to the rescue! It’s a software from DeepMind that’s able to analyze the available data. It then develops really strong predictions of the underlying physical structure of the protein within a matter of days.

Unprecedented growth in AI

A lot of large organizations are investing in AI. If you’re a small or medium-sized business, never think that you are locked out of AI, because the reality is, there has been a huge amount of investment made by the big technology companies. And now this technology is widespread. It’s very accessible to smaller companies.

Don’t believe me? Here are some key stats on the growth of AI:

97.2% of organizations are now investing in AI (NewVantage Partners)

AI tech investment will reach $232 billion by 2025 (KPMG)

AI will contribute $15.7 trillion to the world economy by 2030 (PwC)

Why should AI be so interesting to you? Well, first…

It automates time-consuming tasks

Let’s say in customer success, for example, they’re answering the same questions over and over again. By utilizing bots, you can speed up the time that you can respond to customers.

When you usa a customer support helpline, you’ll typically encounter a bot filtering out the common questions before they put you in touch with a human being.

AI increases team efficiency

Your team is freed up from answering the same question over and over again. They can work on more challenging questions, and they can really formulate creative ways to innovate, do their jobs, and deliver value for the customer.

Is AI going to replace humans?

This is really the million-dollar question, right? But the reality is, it’s really not true at all. Robots are not going to replace humans, they’re going to make human jobs more humane.

Robots will be doing the four Ds in jobs. These are:

Jobs that are more difficult

Jobs that are more demeaning

Jobs that are more demanding

Jobs that are more dangerous

Humans get to be the superheroes

They can get creative and really focus on solving complex problems, those wonderful things robots will never be able to do. What we really should be doing is trying to advance AI and machine learning to take over stuff that we really don’t want to be doing ourselves.

What we do at Growth Engineering

The first thing is, we are not a big company. We’re working on a shoestring budget to produce something which is really meaningful. Humans are naturally curious, but sometimes when it comes to doing online learning, we stop being curious.

Our main goal is to determine how we can get AI to facilitate learning being easier. Here are some of the ways that we think can achieve that:

AI can automate tedious admin tasks

When you join a Learning Technology Department, you don’t join because you want to work a learning management system or create e-learning, you join because you love training people. So, one of the things that we really wanted to do is enable L&D professionals to focus on what they love doing, which is developing people.

How can we utilize AI for account provisioning, user provisioning, etc?

AI can create personalized learning pathways

Think about your Netflix recommendations – which are AI automated– how would you feel if it kept pushing the same content at you based on an algorithm? E-learning is the same. By freeing up people, we can allow them to curate pure curiosity and deliver the stuff our learners really want.

How can we refine learning?

One of the things that’s really important in learning and development is showing that you can do something as well as know it. We want to make learners more than a passive recipient of a piece of content.  

AI can help in getting people to practice the skills before they actually put it into practice.

We want to make it easy for admins to understand the process of learning.

We want them to understand that:

You need to see the information.

You need to be reminded of it through testing and assessments.

You actually need to do it.

If we can pull together processes, AI can actually facilitate this for the admin, and we’re going to get better outcomes.

Better outcomes

Example 1: recommendation engines

There are many big technology companies that have recommendation engines you can plug into really easily. All you need to do is Google AI and you will find a whole variety of different services that they offer. One of the things that they offer is recommendations engines.

What does that mean for us? Well, we need APIs that bring together our user-provisioning information with our content information in order to deliver good recommendations for our learners

Now, one of the challenges in this is that the model can only be trained once the user information is there. You need to have a cold start, but once you get going, one of the great things about recommendation engines is they focus very much on what colleagues in your industry are doing rather than the actual content itself.

Example 2: User & content provisioning

This is admittedly pretty boring, but it’s a massive part of onboarding.With our customers from  big companies like L’Oréal and BT, the users and content they provision can come from five or six different enterprise platforms.

Not only that, the content can come from five or six different content providers, including their own content providers. We can end up with different elements of metadata in the information that we get. For users, we can get a lot of patchy information.

Often it’s a real nightmare for some of our clients to be able to put the data in the structure. We need to onboard them and get the right recommendations in terms of content. What we’ve been able to do with AI is use auto-tagging.

This allows us to match between the content and the provisioning data in order to get the model started. It’s not quite a cold start. We’re able to get between 56 to 70%, depending on how much information is coming over from the content metadata.

Example 3: Intelligent search

We need a deep intelligence search on our own platforms, as well as on the learning content itself. We need to do intelligent search on everything in the ecosphere of our customers, not just the information on our platform, Intelligent Search is a great way of doing that.

Using API’s, you can easily push out to other platforms, get that information, and then bring it back to your users in whatever the user interfaces.

Example 4: Content Creation

Content creation is a massive headache! Most organizations have a huge amount of information that they need to get out to their people. Some of our biggest clients are in retail, and there are products coming all the time. You can have a situation where you’ve got to spend 180 hours creating a single hour of e-learning. Yeah, no-one has time for that, right?

AI can very easily upload PowerPoint presentations, upload work docs, upload PDFs, and then put it into a series of templates. Again, this frees up educators to do more actual educating. We’re in a situation where we’re able to coach people one-on-one in a more personalized manner.

Example 5: AI coaches and mentors

Okay, so let’s say we know what the correct curriculum is, if we push that into the AI engine, we create the content really quickly. Once students start asking questions, the AI can query it out, and find subject matter that answers these questions.

You’re going to have some tutors there initially, but it could be a very personalized level of learning.

Ideas are cheap…delivery is expensive

This may be true, but let’s also remember that there is no delivery without ideas. You’ve got to start somewhere, right? We can’t just all throw up our hands and say, “it’s all too big! It’s all too complicated. It’s all too expensive.”

AI is absolutely not a mysterious planet that can only be visited by spacemen, or, in real world terms, the top five technology companies. It really should be the new bread and butter of any SaaS company.

At Growth Engineering, we’re a very, very small company, but we’ve made AI and ML absolutely central to how we operate.

Everything that our department does is driving towards this idea of utilizing AI and ML where possible, in order to deliver more, for less. That mindset change is a really important part of moving towards AI.

The problem is always data

Don’t think that your first thing you’re going to be doing is building neural networks. The thing is, you don’t have to. There are just so many free and open-source elements to try. Instead, the constraint is always data. If the problem is that you’ve got lots of replicable data, then you will very easily be able to find an AI or ML solution.

Find the thing that can be automated

Find the process within your organization that can be automated. Find out which of those processes you’ve got the most data for. If you don’t have a large amount of data, then reach out to open source sites for code that’s been written, and try and play around with it, if you can’t find it for free.

There are lots of SaaS providers that have all the components you really need in order to plug your data for.

Find a pilot project

Finally, if you have exhausted the above, look at paying for a pilot project for a consultancy. This can be internal or it can be external. To be honest with you, I don’t think you need to be putting in huge amounts of resources for actually building the model.

Key takeaways

AI helps us to automate time-consuming tasks: Just imagine the much innovative, creative work your team can do when they’re freed by AI!

It has helped other industries to cut out costs and drive more value: It might seem like a big investment, but it’s more than worth it. Believe me.

Intelligence is what makes us human: AI is just an extension of that.

AI is not going to take over our lives. If anything, it’s going to make our lives infinitely better.

Have fun!

[trilobiter]

I'm going to elaborate, because it will bother me if I don't.

I have a very expansive understanding of what art is, and I don't want to give the impression that I think images or sounds generated by computer algorithms are by definition "not art." I do want to state explicitly that I think a great deal of the "A.I. art" that has been presented to me is bullshit, and that I am hostile to things I think are bullshit.

Why is it bullshit? Well, that's the tricky question, but I think the core of it comes down to, not what art is, but why art is interesting. That is to say that all the art that I have ever loved, or hated, or puzzled over was made by people with life experiences and points of view that informed the ways that they made what they made. Art is a conversation between maker and audience, and that is why I value it. It makes me feel like I can see something in the mind of a person who took the time to craft something of themselves in a way that others could experience in interesting ways.

It is possible to use "artificial intelligence" in ways that center the human experience, but the vast majority of what I've seen amounts to "look what I got the machine to do, I am very clever for getting the machine to do this." And that's when the technology is acknowledged for what it is, and not used with the explicit intention of deceiving people for bad reasons. Whether you want attention on a facebook page for bird photographs but you don't know how to use a camera, or you want to sway an election by hoodwinking people with fraudulent evidence to prop up falsehoods, the only thing the product of A.I. generation tells me about the human ostensibly behind it is that they don't care about real things that matter.

Every now and then youtube suggests to me videos featuring an A.I.-generated facsimile of some old band singing a song they never really recorded. I've only actually watched one of these: it was "Paul McCartney" singing "God Only Knows," and as far as I could tell it existed for no purpose except to satisfy some one's curiosity about "what it would sound like" if he'd sung that song instead of Carl Wilson back in 1966. "God Only Knows" is one of my favorite songs, and it's famously one of Paul McCartney's as well. But this video said nothing about his relationship to the music. The only thing it said to me was "I told my computer to make me a Paul McCartney, and look how almost human it sounds."

That video had nothing to do with anything that mattered to me: it was bullshit. It wasn't just that the "voice" was perceptibly artificial. It was also that it purported to be something it fundamentally wasn't. It was a tech demo dressed up as a performance. It was a category error, only it read less as an "error" and more as a deliberate misrepresentation by a cynic who didn't care about the difference.

Here's the thing: art has already grappled with the question of whether you could take a shit on a plate and call it a sculpture and put it in the MOMA. Art grappled with this and related questions (what about a photograph of the shit, or a mass-produced t-shirt with a print of the photograph of the shit?) for most of the 20th century. But if nothing else, those shits came out of real asses, and somebody had to wash their hands after plating them. Now that the question has become whether a computer program can shit on a plate, I honestly cannot be moved to care.

Marcel Duchamp rooted around in the garbage* to find his Fountain. It was stupid and ugly and that was the point. It was only interesting because a person decided to make it interesting. A.I. art can only be interesting if people do interesting things with it. Dinking around with it like a magic toy isn't that.

*or he just bought it from the manufacturer. Either way.

I don't know how I could possibly be expected to care about art that wasn't made by a person. I also don't know how I could possibly be expected to applaud, or feel anything but contempt for, a person for telling a machine to "improve" another person's work of art.

Call me when your program has a biography instead of just a patch history.

[thewreckkelly]

THE MISEDUCATION OF DEREK KELLY (BEATLES FAN)

(29 November 2021)

Well I woke up Monday morning with no way to hold my head that it didn’t hurt.

The weekend had been spent renewing acquaintance with four old friends whom I’ve known for the better part of forty seven years yet had never met nor spoken directly to – and it all proved a lot to take in. For nearly eight solid hours between Saturday and Sunday I was allowed to get to know these lads a whole heap better - thanks to Peter Jackson and his Fab Four Fan Crew.

My sons Stephen and Robert along with music guru friend David Lloyd have been promoting the documentary to me for more than a year with an anticipation that was always in danger of delivering disappointment. It didn’t, they weren’t and I certainly wasn’t - though there was a level of pre-match trepidation as I positioned myself in front of a 46 inch screen having smoked a gentle one in deference to what and who awaited me – toilet breaks were scheduled for every two and a half hours and bladder be dammed.

The first thing that hits you is the quality of the footage – I’m talking of the physical not the content here. It’s absolutely savage how clean, sharp and immediate the delivery of this fifty two year old film stock and audio tape is – I know it’s all about processing power and algorithmic application but, shit, this return is exceptional however many Apple Dollars were spent on it.

(My heart honestly skipped a beat at the opening scenes as I immediately thought; Jackson is going to do a whole pile of re-enactments to pad the footage – it was tantamount to shocking when I realised it was the actual set of 69, the actual crew of 69 and the actual Beatles of 69 crowding the screen - Look I’m not gay but in all fairness when Paul McCartney walked on to set for the first time dressed in all black and sporting more perfect hair than Vidal Sassoon ..... all in razor sharp HD..... well ..... enough said .... )

I will absolutely concede the entire thing is not for the faint hearted and it does help enormously, (I’m sure), if you are a Beatle nut like me - however as music documentaries go, it is so far ahead of anything else I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen more than a few believe me – leaving yours truly in no doubt whatsoever this piece of work should only be restricted to that category for catalogue reference purpose as no category I’m aware of would actually describe it properly.

This is an important piece of unsentimental musical history - without the bells and whistles of manufactured performance or staged writing. It should be and must be included and placed high in the pantheon of educational pieces for those who would aspire to knowing what it takes, what it’s like and what it’s all about.

I knew a lot about the Beatles – enough to say my Bonnie is equal to the love you make – before this marathon of TV. I now know the Beatles in a way that takes them beyond the cheeky chappies with a canon of songs you couldn’t beat with a stick.

The music business has a penchant for making people involved with it bitter and twisted and given the four lads from Liverpool had ridden the highest level of fame for nigh on seven years- when this film was originally shot - would lead one to expect a high degree of cynicism – and maybe that was the case in many other aspects of their lives – but when it came to musical creativity, composition, collaboration, cooperation and compromise there is no doubt in my mind it doesn’t get better than what’s on display for the hours of this documentary.

I am and have always been an advocate of music and, particularly, young musicians having a primary role – almost to the point of compulsion - to promote rebellion and, where necessary, revolution in respect of what was and is for what could be and should be.

Chuck Berry, Elvis, Dylan, The Stones, Bowie, The Pistols, Biggie, Tupac, Nirvana, M&M and notable others played their parts and changed the ‘civilised’ world to varying degrees – all imbued with a depth of talent and an ability to express it at the highest level to audiences that got it.

The Beatles just did it bigger and more often and to a greater immediacy of impact. Such impact has endured way past the expected lifetime of any four piece musical combo - and much of the reason for that can be found in Jackson’s ‘Get Back’.

Ringo’s sardonic disposition – clearly representing a working musician/man who has enough nous to know when to hold’em and when to fold’em .....

George, in semi-muted frustration - falling into the category of second fiddle in an orchestra that features two virtuosos of incalculable ability ......

John wallowing in a comfortable genius while exercising a churlish cynicism that is almost brittle when confronted by the awesome creative ability of his co-writer .....

Paul, an undoubted phenomenon, accomplished and sure but betrayed by the inherent need to outwardly portray a polite English diplomacy that never quite rings true .....

All the ingredients of something that almost defies definition – a mess that is anything but Eaton – a moment in time when the pinnacle is reached and the end in sight and, even though we know for certain, we pray for a different conclusion.

I sat and watched four people live a creative experience over a fractious month at a time when the twentieth century was defining change. I sat and watched as music spilled out of three of them. I sat and watched the superior in glorious colour and laughed often and out loud; out of joy, out of envy, out of awe - all with a degree of curiosity as to why it didn’t seem in any way nostalgic.

I held the supporting cast in suitable respect, (taking the opportunity to put some level of living personality to names and faces I knew only from knowing the Beatles). I watched and was satisfied that the New Zealander who put a value and visual substance to Tolkien’s mammoth trilogy had brought his A game to a trilogy recognising the best band of all time.

Mucho Gracias Pedro.

So what did I learn that was new to me or indeed any Beatle fan of long standing?

George

It was hard not to feel some level of sympathy for George despite the fact he comes across as a petulant instigator of much of what Yoko has been traditionally blamed for. The guy had a lot of good songs in him with the occasional great one to properly stamp his card as a fully paid up member of the band. But the lack of - what could best be described as - an outgoing personality along with his consistent third place finish - in the speed & depth of intellect stakes, (where Paul & John constantly finished in a dead heat) – left him wanting more often than not, reminding me of a suspended chord in need of resolution.

Ringo

I learned absolutely nothing new about the fella who wasn’t even the best drummer in the Beatles other than confirming he’s impossible not to like.

John

His fear of confrontation was not that much of a surprise and his use of sharp clever, witty retorts as a method to conceal an inner neediness is something I had always suspected – though seeing it in the stark environment of casual banter was alone worth the ticket price. JWL’s competence on the guitar was new for me as I’d never associated him with being much more than an innovative rhythm player. Like many before and after me I’ve been through a John or Paul phrase over the years and find my seat on the fence the most comfortable because, while Paul is undoubtedly a musical prodigy in the modern sense, John has an edge that challenges twenty four seven – making him the member of the band who most meets my criteria of rebellious revolution (though it was George & Paul who took an NWA attitude to the police while John seemed a bit unsure).

Paul

I came away from this documentary with a whole new view of James Paul McCartney. In the past I have cringed when ‘pop’ stars are compared favourably to dead classical composers of the highest note but McCartney would not be uncomfortable in the same room as Mozart, Beethoven, JSB or Hayden. He is the living embodiment of music and this is openly on display throughout the seven and a half hours. In my mind he peaked in his relationship with John but that was a very high level, (the highest to be honest), though what he brought to the game after the Beatles was not too shabby in anyone’s language.

I saw George striving to clarify his place with fair entitlement. I saw John enjoying his relationship with McCartney and having no problem with it continuing for as long as it continued. I saw Paul outgrow the Beatles. I saw Ringo.

I could go on about the songs that were literally written before our eyes - or the whole Yoko; ‘seemed okay to me’ thing - or the ridiculous nature of Michael Lindsey Hogg’s views, cigar and accent - or how remote George Martin seemed to be - or how tacky Dick James was - or Mal and his anvil - or the actual true value of Billy Preston .......

For those who crave their information in headlines then this is not a show for you. For those who wonder at what constitutes the depth of artistic creativity and have no problem being a voyeur into the life and times of something special; clear your diary, light a joint and prepare to be enthralled for a long, long series of magic moments.

[andreacaskey]

New Text-Based Conversation Platform Community Strives To Deliver What Social Media Promised, One-To-One Relationships

My friend Jefferson Graham of USA Today reached out to talk about Community, a new conversation platform that promises direct and instant communication at scale between a brand, celebrity, artist, personality and their ‘community’, via text messaging.

Cue the record scratch.

Text messaging?

But we live in a world of social media…you know, “social” media?

The great social experiment that is social is still evolving. Some might argue that in many ways, platforms have cultivated anti-social behaviors. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my connections on the platforms I use. I’ve had to though, over the years, especially recently, curate my networks to continually shape creative, productive and fulfilling engagement.

The idea of Community is to bring 1:1 engagement using a platform that still after all these years, thrives as such, text messaging.

Did you know that 90% of text messages are opened within the first 3 minutes?

Maybe they’re on to something…

I wanted to share the conversation I had with Jefferson with you here. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on the platform.

USA Today: Want to text Amy Schumer or Paul McCartney? Community can help

Over the years, social media has, app by app, helped celebrities build closer and closer connections with their fans. Going back to the early days of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snap and now TikTok, etc., made it so that direct to fan relationships could flourish, without the traditional publicists or fan teams speaking on their behalf all the time. But even though this is supposed to be ‘social’ media, the platforms ultimately owned the data and the audiences. Plus ever-evolving algorithms pretty much guaranteed that fans didn’t always see every or most updates.

Since social media gave everyone a voice, it complicated the attention economy in a way that made it almost impossible for meaningful engagement to thrive at scale. Attention became a currency that was spent and overspent on every platform. Everyone, not just celebrities, was craving attention at all costs. The onslaught of updates coming from everyone and everywhere resulted in plummeting engagement.

Then services like Cameo came along, and for a fee, celebrities could send personalized videos to fans. It was a reminder of what one-to-one engagement looks like and why it’s so special.

Now, with tCommunity, celebrities are betting on text messaging to further that personalized engagement through the semblance of one-to-one connectivity.

Is it always the celebrity reaching out?

No.

But text is a very direct and personal medium. It’s platform agnostic. It creates a closer sense of belonging and engagement and that’s what communities are all about.  I bet celebrities will actually start to feel more compelled to engage everyone personally because of the very human nature of direct engagement.

You can read Jefferson’s full story over at USA Today.

The post New Text-Based Conversation Platform Community Strives To Deliver What Social Media Promised, One-To-One Relationships appeared first on Brian Solis.

New Text-Based Conversation Platform Community Strives To Deliver What Social Media Promised, One-To-One Relationships published first on https://likesandfollowersclub.weebly.com/

[girlsbtrs]

Opinion: Respect the Fangirl

The internet was buckwild last week as Halloween, the beginnings of Mercury Retrograde and the fall officially hit. Between My Chemical Romance coming back, more impeachment inquiries and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announcing Twitter would no longer be promoting political ads, there were plenty of trending topics to be paying attention to.

However, one trending topic stood out amongst the rest. At roughly 3 AM PST, international Kpop boy band Monsta X’s Wohno announced an extremely shocking and swift departure. The details of the departure are due to a series of alleged scandals that you can find research into outside of this article.

For us, it’s what happened after that counts. Monsta X’s fanbase, dubbed “Monbebe” -- a combination of Monsta X’s name and “baby”-- immediately sprung into action. Trending topics were made, a petition for his return came, other large Kpop fandoms like BTS’ Army, iKON’s iKonics, NCT’s NCTzens, Got7’s Aghases, Exo’s EXO-L, BlackPink’s Blink, Twice’s Once and many more banded together to support not just Wohno but their fellow Kpop fans who felt the lose reminiscent of that fateful day in March 2015 when Zayn Malik announced his untimely departure from One Direction.

Within 15 hours, the petition had almost 300k signatures, Monobes had two different hashtags trend worldwide with over 1 million tweets each, and, as this is being written, it looks as though they have no signs of stopping. At time of publication, Monbebes have effectively run through a new hashtag every twelve hours to remain on the Top Trending Worldwide Count, and they continued to protest in South Korea outside Starship Entertainment, with some international fans flying in to join their Korean sisters.

Over the years, fandoms online have become increasingly engaged within their communities. They have become politically and socially engaged, they have grown to understand and ask for accountability from their “problematic faves” and have begun to have the fledgling conversations of nuance for what is a “cancellable” offense and what or whom can be redeemed. There’s a movement amongst fandoms on the internet, and it aligns with a lot of the movements we are seeing of the youth in 2019. “We’re here, we know what we want, and we’re not going anywhere.”

To break down the phenom that can create such dedication and a riot online, we need to go back to the pre-internet music industry days. To days of John Lennon and Paul McCartney and the days the Beatles first touched down on U.S. soil. While we often herald The Beatles as the greatest group of all time -- rightfully so -- the context of who put them there is glossed over in conversations of their technical contributions to music.

In every Beatles documentary you watch, there’s always a slew of camera clips of them running from young female fans, of fans jumping on their getaway cars, crowding the airports, passing out just looking at them. The fans’ arms are full of albums, they’re crying over how much the music means to them, and they’re forming friendships, relationships and bonds over music that set the tone for the first intense wave of fandom success. And while the Beatles’ male fanbase wasn’t lacking, it’s not hard to see who put them on the charts, and who kept them coming back.

Young women’s influence on music has often been thrown aside as a “fangirl mentality.” Where women like music for two reasons: the first being they have more interest in the members than they do the music, and the second being that the music can’t be that good if it’s only young women listening to it. As we strive to break fangirl stereotypes, we see the efforts of these fandoms that have created some of the biggest artists in the world ignored.

Most obvious in this ignorance was a recent Pitchfork article accrediting Kanye West with the success of musicians going viral on Twitter. This claim ignored the early days of Bieber fans -- you know, before Justin tried to start his own social app (RIP Shots) --, Swifties -- who largely began their crusade online after the infamous incident--, Directioners -- arguably the first fanbase to truly use Twitter to its fullest extent--, and more. The cultural and social significance of the fangirl doesn’t even have proper documentation. There is so little academic study into the passion of young women and how they form the grassroots of and self-market artists, who go on to have the kind of cultural impact to swing elections. It’s disappointing.

Even more recently, The Hollywood Reporter released an interview with Kpop mold-breaking sensation BTS that was nothing short of disappointing for long-term fans and a band who sold out the Rose Bowl twice in minutes. The lack of awareness from one of the biggest entertainment editorial structures in the U.S. speaks volumes about just how irrelevant cis-white-male-centric-run publications claim young women to be. When the writer Seth Ambrovitch was critiqued by both fans and journalists alike for his poor misuse of precious time with some of the most sought after musicians in the world, he claimed he was doing them a favor, that 99.99% of the population didn’t know who BTS is yet, and that he was bringing BTS to the attention of the general public. Nevermind the sold-out U.S. stadium tour - One Direction, Beyonce nor Taylor Swift sold out the Rose Bowl - or the fact that since BTS’ breakout moment and their hard work to help credit the validity of the Kpop industry in the west has allowed multiple other bands like Monsta X, NCT 127, Super M and more receive well-deserved credibility here. Seth just didn’t seem to care. Because 99.99% of his immediate population didn’t know BTS, he didn’t bother to do his research and realize that young women -- fangirls -- around the world have risen BTS to an international household name, one that you would have to live under a very specific bubble to ignore.

So what makes a fangirl? The definition is broad, but it’s mostly applied to young people -- mostly young women/nonbinary individuals who are incredibly passionate about musicians they listen to. It’s a term that’s been weaponized, attempted to be recaptured, and forced on a lot of people who make that delicate transition from female fan to female music industry professional.

In 2015, Zayn Malik left One Direction, and the internet had a field day. Directioners were one of the first massive young female fanbases to overtake Twitter, constantly winning 1D fan-voted awards, pushing every single thing the band did, and creating fan accounts that accumulated mass amounts of followers in short amounts of time. And yet, on the day Zayn Malik left, and Directioners were grieving on a platform they largely helped grow, they were mocked, meme’d and, again, not taken seriously. But it was hard on these young women. They invested, they voted, they fought for the legitimacy of One Direction. They bought tickets to tour dates all over the world, they cried to their music, had their first kisses, first drinks, graduations, first loves, friendships, break-ups and lives soundtracked by five boys from the U.K.

The internet allowed them to connect across the world with people they would have never otherwise known. It created a safe-haven online for people to discuss the real problems teen girls face, open their eyes to the issues of other young women around the world, and it took a lot of them to different countries they would have never seen. When 1D, the Jonas Brothers, Bieber and many other male-centric fandoms were suffering from a unique drought, the Beyhive, Swifties, Selenators and Arianators were there to offer community. Where you were a fangirl once, even with a broken heart, you could find love again.

Two years before 1D broke up across the world, Kpop band BTS debuted under the small company Big Hit Entertainment. As is standard with Kpop bands, they were promoted around Korea, did various variety shows, performances, etc. But BTS also did something different: they began to utilize western social media more interactively with their base. With the decline of One Direction and no main boy band in sight, there was a missing stage from the U.S. Market, and it didn’t take long before BTS was rightfully filling that role. With their first world tour taking place in 2015, the hype quickly began to build with their social media presence and fan interaction.

Rightfully dubbed ARMY, BTS’ fanbase weaponized the internet in a Swiftie/Beyhive-like takeover, and before you knew it, not a single tweet could be found without a Kpop fancam under it. BTS grew exponentially and routinely received millions of likes on single posts on Twitter, making them one of the most interacted with Twitter accounts on the platform.

Fast-forward to 2019, where Harry Styles is accrediting his success largely to his female fanbase, BTS sold out two nights at the Rose Bowl in minutes, Taylor Swift is being honored as Artist of the Decade at the AMA’s and Selena Gomez took two days to garner enough streams to debut on the Billboard Charts. It’s evident and clear that as long as social media is a prevalent part of music, the fangirls yield power. As they learn these lessons about nuance, start banding together more often as fanbases, and demanding accountability, there’s truly no telling what young women are capable of in this industry.

At time of press, Harry Styles announced his new album Fine Line will be released on December 13th, and the internet and young women he’s so long accredited with being the key to his success responded in kind. Four of the top worldwide trends are currently about Harry Styles, Monsta X and BTS, with multiple tweets crossing fandoms, once again reminding us of the significant power that stan twitter and its fangirls have.

As far as we go, we’re investing in them in the long-haul. We’re watching them teach themselves how to video edit, use photoshop, optimize analytics, control trends, outsmart algorithms and even create movements within themselves. We’re hoping to help all those brilliant young women who have found a home in a smooth melody and an intense emotional connection to find career paths in the things that make them passionate and happy.

And while we are on the side of the Monbebe’s, and we hope Wohno returns to Monsta X happy and healthy, we are proud of these young fans for standing up for what they believe is right, supporting one another, having honest conversations about accountability, but mostly inspiring change. We’re hoping to see more fanbases coming together as human rights violations take a world stage in the upcoming 2020 U.S. elections. We’re hoping to see the power these young women hold continue to transfer into the parts of their lives that have been fighting for equality and justice.

All in all, it’s time we #RespectTheFangirl, and we’d love to hear your favorite fangirl stories.

- article by Shelby Chargin

[rilenerocks]

  A good friend of mine told me a while back that I was “living large.” I guess I’d have to agree with her. After Michael died, I thought very hard about how I wanted to live the rest of my life. I’d always thought that based on the longevity in Michael’s family, that I’d either die before him or that we’d age together. I didn’t know what I’d feel like after the five years of his cancer dominating our lives. In the months before his death, he’d ask me what I was going to do without him. I truthfully responded that I had absolutely no clue. We’d been together for so many decades. I never imagined life absent his presence. He encouraged me to find partnership, saying I was born to be with someone. As it turns out, that was true. But apparently he was the only someone. I haven’t had the slightest interest in these past few years of seeking out a new companion. I’m still with him. But I have chosen to live in ways that I would’ve liked to share with him. Ways that I know would he’d be glad I’d chosen, an active adventurous life, both mentally and physically. The mental part has been easy. I’ve always been intellectually motivated and curious so there’s no end to my interests. I can say that happily, I’m never bored. I’m more likely to be frustrated that there isn’t enough time in a day for me to explore all my ideas.

The more physically demanding life was more of a challenge. After hobbling around with two bone-on-bone knees, I finally got replacements which changed the way I could experience the world. But even before that, I struck out on my own, traveling alone to Sedona and the National Monuments of Arizona. I spent a week in Cincinnati, enjoying my first ever professional tennis tournament and seeing my beloved Roger Federer. I went alone to Glacier National Park and also took a fifteen day road trip with my son which covered twelve states. I planned a 50th high school reunion, attended the Laver Cup in Chicago and have seen a half dozen live concerts which included Paul McCartney. I then drove south with my sister and knocked three more states off my list, hoping to see all fifty of them before I die. I only have a few left.I had a big adventure planned for May, a trip to Vancouver, followed by an Alaska/Denali sea and land journey which would ultimately end in Anchorage. Fifteen days of new experiences which would offset the challenges of May. My wedding anniversary is on the 1st, followed by Mother’s Day, the birthday of my oldest friend who’s been dead now for 32 years, then my birthday, the anniversary of Michael’s death and finally, his birthday. A rugged month. But then along came Covid19.

I was lucky enough to squeeze in a trip to Naples, Florida to visit friends  before the pandemic began to pick up steam. By the time my ten day vacation ended, I had a harrowing, paranoid journey home through two airports, one flight and one bus ride,  during which I sanitized my hands until they felt like sandpaper and avoided close contact with anyone breathing nearby. From then on, March 11th, it’s been self-isolation until my kids and I got to the point where we felt safe enough to see each other. I’m one of the lucky ones who has family nearby. They are working online and trying to educate their kids for whom school has been cancelled. Needless to say, the Alaska trip is off-all that’s left of it is trying to recover the money that was paid in advance. Certainly not the most wonderful experience. I can’t go swimming any more because the pool is closed, but I am grateful that I can walk without pain. I wish I could get some of those endorphins that always emerge from me in water but that’s not happening. Life has become unpredictable and much smaller. The question is, for how long? I’ve been thinking about what will happen when this need to re-open life in my part of the world becomes real. Will I ever live large again? Or is it time to scale back and live in a limited space.

Doctors are reporting that a mysterious blood-clotting complication is killing their coronavirus patients.

Every day there are new scary headlines. It seems that in rapid jolts, a small, threatening twist to this unpredictable virus is unearthed. If you shut the political noise out and study the science reporting, it seems clear that the predictive algorithms are fluctuating. It’s not only older people who are vulnerable. Anyone can get sick and anyone can be a silent carrier. Significant and widespread therapeutic treatments seem to be pretty distant right now as does a vaccine. And who knows about the efficacy of a vaccine? Flu vaccines help, but in some years they’re hit or miss. What is the overall implication of that formula?  

This is my bedroom, my sanctuary where I retreated every night with Michael, where we found comfort and respite with each other. Thankfully, I still feel the same about my room. This is where I think about these uncertain times and how I want to handle myself in the midst of them. I look around and see the choices of my life. My partner and my family photos. The Beatles and Federer.

My favorite artworks and my books are close by. I have my small fish tank with the little swimmers whose bright rhythmic darting is so relaxing at night. There are volumes of photo albums and a hoard of Michael’s movies on dvd. I have beautiful notes he wrote me long ago, in the beginning, which warm me still, after a lifetime.

Rocks and seeds sit on my bookshelf. Shells that I gathered on the Gulf shore beaches are arranged on a wall plaque I made, right next to the Mayan calendar date of our May 1st wedding anniversary, made in Tulum, Mexico where we went for our 25th. This is my small life, inside this space. I’m happy here. I feel like choosing this for now is the wisest thing to do, given the current murky future out there in the bigger world. Going to a movie theater? How about the pool which might remind me of a petri dish? Will I feel comfortable going to get my hair cut soon? That question is funny. I’ve already cut my bangs twice. But I’m not ready to take on all these mystifying layers on my head. Back when I was thinking about Marie Kondo’s minimalist guide, holding an object in your hand to see if it gave you joy and if not, discarding it, I grabbed my bag of hair accessories from my dresser. Back when I had long hair I used them all the time. I did the looking thing and just got annoyed so I put them back where they came from. That must have been a prescient moment – I’m certainly glad I’ve kept them around to help me manage my untamed mane. Who knows? Maybe I’ll have one more crack at a ponytail before I die. So no more big trips for the foreseeable future. And I’m on the fence about whether the benefits will outweigh the risks for what were seemingly normal activities BC – Before Covid19. But I still have my garden which provides ample opportunities for fresh air, exercise and interesting yard visitors. I’ve been having car social hours with my friends, meeting at parks or in other natural areas where we can chat from within our safe spaces and still feel connected. There are plenty of clouds to photograph and paving bricks to decorate with my collections of shells and rocks from travels. I’ve been trying to recover my drawing skills, primitive though they were. There are lots of Netflix shows, of course, and many old movies to watch.  I always have books.

If I’m going to be leading this smaller life, though, I felt like I needed something more, a new thing to love. I was thinking I’d just hang around waiting for “it” to come to me. Suddenly I remembered what I’d loved a long time ago, back in the time before computers and cell phones with keyboards. Back in the time when cursive was still a thing. I remembered learning to write cursive in elementary school. First we had to get through printing. All of this learning and practicing was done in pencil first. There had to be a way to erase mistakes and pencil erasers were easier to use than ink ones. We had these little lined workbooks, the lines that delineated the heights of upper and lower case letters. I just loved the whole process. We got penmanship grades. I was good at all of it. When you got really good, making few, if any mistakes, you graduated to pens. I loved pens. For the longest time, my favorites were Parker T-ball jotters. They moved so smoothly across a piece of paper. But better things awaited and I found them. Fountain pens. Beautiful fountain pens with little tubes of ink that you popped into their chassis. For a time, I collected them. They were sleek and romantic, perfect for the aspiring writer or at least, a writer of journals. I went into the office Michael and I shared and rummaged around in my supplies. And there it was, in a beaten up metal case.

It hadn’t been used in ages so I had to order ink. When I loaded it in, voila! A working fountain pen after so many years. Indeed, this is a really small thing, this slender little pen. But vistas have opened to me and it’s going to be a wonderful companion for this time when I’ll be living smaller.

  Living Smaller A good friend of mine told me a while back that I was “living large.” I guess I’d have to agree with her.

[theliterateape]

Woke Super Bowl Commercials

By David Himmel

Super Bowl Sunday is a time for most of America to share in a single experience: The Big Game. It’s when we set aside our disdain for the NFL for how it has handled the criminal behavior of its players, ignored the life destroying facts of CTE, and taken a stance in favor of confused patriotism. Because even if we hate football, we love commerce and there’s no better commerce than Super Bowl commercials.

Over the years, these commercials have been funny, touching, and inspiring. That’s no longer enough. We don’t want to know whether a brand’s product is any good, we want to know if that brand can do good, and if it is woke enough to realize that it has a responsibility to do good. Brands know that if their big ad doesn’t get the traction of Gillette’s online short film, they’ve missed the mark. This is why we can expect to see many woke commercials from our favorite brands this Super Bowl Sunday. Well, our favorite brands until they take a woke position we don’t agree with. And in that case, we’ll burn our shoes, razors, and soap, or whatever, the way Tom Brady and Bill Belichick should burn in hell.

Here’s a sneak-peek at some of the woke Super Bowl commercials we can expect to see.

Volkswagen – “Schindler’s Car”

Popular VW models transform into one another through the decades bringing us to today.

[V.O. – MAN] A lot has changed in eighty years. The way we live. The way we drive. The way we don’t kill Jews. The all new 2019 Volkswagen Jetta. It’s not a Jew killer. 

[Volkswagen logo]

Miller Lite – “Great Taste, Less Rapey”

ALYSSA MILANO sits alone at a high top table in a sports bar with a fresh bottle of Miller Lite. A hive of activity occurs behind and beyond her as bar patrons mingle and watch the game on flat screen TVs. Alyssa speaks directly to the camera.

[ALYSSA] Brett Kavanaugh drinks Budweiser. He probably fondled those horses, too. When you drink Miller Lite, you know you’re getting a great taste that’s less filling and isn’t the drink of choice for horse-fondling, rapey judges.”

[Miller Lite logo with text below] #dontdrinkandassault

[ALYSSA V.O.] Not my Supreme Court Justice.

Facebook – “The Fault in Our Algorithms”

A montage of happy moments. Videos and pictures and posts being shared, and liked, loved, and laughed at. 

[V.O. – WOMAN] Facebook was created to connect us, bring the world closer together. Get Zuck laid. Make Sheryl Sandberg millions. We never intended to get called before Congress or become the plaything of Russian hackers. We kinda hoped the cyberbullying would have petered out after the first fifty-seven teen suicides. We should have stopped it. We could have stopped it all. But we didn’t. And now you don’t trust us. And Zuck had to testify before Congress! That’s bad! So, we’re making Facebook better. We’re changing the way you connect with your friends and family, and adjusting your feed so that you get the news you want to see, not the news you need to see. News that aligns exactly with the way you already think, presenting you with opinions you already have. We want you to trust us again. Please, lean in with us. Tell us what you want. We promise, we won’t exploit it.

Facebook ‘F’ logo appears on screen against brand color backdrop. The choices of LIKE, LOVE, LAUGH, WOW, SAD, and ANGRY appear above the logo. The iconic LIKE is chosen.

[Text] #makefacebookgreatagain

Dove – “Coming Clean”

Chaka Kahn’s “I’m Every Woman” plays.

A black woman stands alone in a brightly lit, white room wearing a white spaghetti string top. She smiles. She begins to remove her top. As she does, she transforms to a Pakistani woman wearing the same thing. She smiles brightly. She removes her top. This time, it’s an Asian woman. This happens over and over again, each time revealing a different woman of color.

[Dove logo with text below] Just because our soap is white doesn’t mean you have to be.

Pepsi – “#BLM”

CLOSE UP on the hands of a WHITE MAN as he opens a CAN of Pepsi and pours it into a large glass. The Pepsi SIZZLES with carbonation, the ICE CUBES CRACK and CLINK as they shift in the glass.

We PULL AWAY to reveal CHRIS PRATT has poured this refreshing drink. He’s in a clean and spacious kitchen. He flashes that Chris Pratt charm at the camera as he walks into his living room. 

[CHRIS] You know, Pepsi really does believe that black lives matter.

He hands the perfectly poured glass of Pepsi to his guest: KEVIN HART.  

[KEVIN] See, Kendall? You shoulda been black. Woulda had no problems. 

[Pepsi logo with text] The Choice of a Black Generation

[small disclaimer at bottom of screen] The opinions expressed in this ad do not reflect those shared by the NFL.

Starbucks – “Room for Change”

A montage of Starbucks stores that show how this one little coffee shop is a part of all the different Americas. The big city coffee shop, the suburban drive-thru, the airport food court, the downtown of a farming community. The customers and baristas interact like they are old friends. Urban hipsters and rural cowboys. The captain of industry and the student. 

[V.O. – WOMAN] Our plans were to inspire our customers. The closest we got was inspiring an unhealthy obsession with pumpkin spice flavored foods. Sometimes, things don’t go as planned. That’s a lesson we’ve learned the hard way. That’s why we’re not going to try and change the world all at once. We’re going to try and change it one person at a time. Not by forcing our customers into awkward conversations about race, but by serving our scalding hot burnt coffee in cups that are designed to be easily thrown at anyone who challenges your convictions.

Inside the big city store: A woman wearing a #MeToo T-shirt throws a cup of hot coffee directly in the face of an older man wearing a MAGA hat. 

At the suburban drive-thru: A conservative-looking mother with soccer-uniformed kids in the back seat of the SUV peels out of the parking lot and throws the cup of hot coffee on the homeless person asking for money at the intersection.

 At the airport food court: A Hasidic Jew and Muslim engage in a Mexican standoff.

In the farming community: A farmer throws his hot coffee at a teenager who is obviously his gay son. His gay son takes his hot coffee and throws it back at his farmer father.

[V.O] We’re a company that sells coffee and Paul McCartney CDs, so it’s up to us to be the change we want to see in the world. The only way to end disagreements in America, is to end those who disagree with you. Starbucks. We’re leaving room for change.

[Starbucks logo]

[Small text at bottom of screen] This ad paid for by Howard Schultz for President 2020.

BIC Pens – “The Pen is Mightier than the Tweet”

SPLIT SCREEN. We walk back with a man and woman in their mid–late-thirties as they walk separately down the street. They are buried in their phones: texting, posting, sharing, etc. 

[V.O – MAN] Most of us type things up instead of writing things down. But when there’s something really important to say, nothing says it better than a hand-written note. Take time to write an apology letter to the girl you drunkenly kissed at the Beta house that one Halloween in college.

SINGLE FRAME. The man and woman meet on the sidewalk. They stare at each other.

BIC pens. She’ll always remember you.

[BIC logo with text below] #themightypen

[ulyssessklein]

Dave Mason on the Rock ‘n Soul Review with Steve Cropper

By: Rick Landers

Dave Mason – Photo courtesy of Dawn Studios

Armed with a talent for creating an eclectic array of songs, with clever twists, beautiful melodic riffs, butter smooth vocals, the legendary singer-songwriter, Dave Mason, has gifted us with such memorable tracks that include: “Feeling Alright”, “Only You Know and I Know”, “Hole in My Shoe”, “So High (Rock Me Baby and Roll Me Away)” and many more.

Mason has toured the world for over fifty years, beginning with his time as a member of the acclaimed British jazz-blues-rock-pop fusion group, Traffic and later as a solo act. Not that he was a loner.

No, Dave’s worked alongside other rock icons like Jimi Hendrix,  Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson, Leon Russell, the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac and a host of other majors in the pantheon of modern music.

Listen to the opening acoustic riffs on Jimi’s “All Along the Watchtower” or the vocals of the Hendrix classic, “Crosstown Traffic” and Dave’s made his mark. Be reminded that Mason had a turn managing The Spencer Davis Group, then later running solo, he had his 1977 hit, “We Just Disagree” a staple of the classic rock airwaves with it’s honey soaked vocal and poetically aching lyrics. And let’s not reduce the album, Let It Flow, to just that single, the album is a masterpiece. And, yes, Dave’s got his well deserved place as an inductee in the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame. There’s more, like his work with the Stones on Beggars Banquet and George Harrison’s prolific All Things Must Pass solo pursuit.

Music runs in his veins, yet when asked about his love of rock ‘n roll, he merely claims to be a “working musician”.  And on his latest venture, the Rock and Soul Revue Tour with the legendary Stax session man and stellar song-writer, Steve Cropper, Mason deflects praise directed his way to his friend Steve.

Steve Cropper’s and Dave Mason’s Rock and Soul Revue has kickstarted and will roam America for months. We can expect to hear many of the hit songs that they’ve appeared on, like “Green Onions”, “Dear Mr. Fantasy”, “All Along the Watchtower”, “We Just Disagree”, “Feeling Alright”, “Sitting on the Dock of a Bay”, “Soul Man” and many more that have been a part of their storied musical careers. The term legend floats around easily these days, but in fact. Steve Cropper and Dave Mason are the true grit that’s fundamental to the word – legends, indeed. The Rock and Soul Tour is one not to miss…

Steve Cropper and Dave Mason Rock & Soul Review Tour 2018

TICKETS ON SALE HERE

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Rick Landers: Songwriting has changed over the years due to technology. When lyrics or melodies popped into your head decades ago, how did the challenges of keeping them for later differ from today?

Dave Mason: Well, I ‘d use cassettes. I didn’t start writing until ’67. If the song was worth a shit, then I’d just remember it, but otherwise, for the most part, I’d just use a cassette.

Rick: I recently saw a photo of you playing a sitar. How’d that come about and were you influenced by Ravi Shankar, George Harrison, Shawn Philips or some other players? And, what other instruments are you comfortable playing?

Dave Mason: Back in the Sixties…I’m English for one thing and we had a lot of Indian restaurants where I grew up. So, I was familiar with the Eastern music and then the Sixties started to make its way into Western music . And I was listening to all kinds of stuff back then; Bulgarian music, Eastern, classical, jazz, rock, blues, whatever. It was interesting and, actually,

George Harrison gave me my first sitar. I used it on a couple of Traffic’s things. I used it on the first song I ever wrote, Traffic’s first big hit called, “Hole in My Shoe” and I used it on “Paper Sun”. I actually did a couple of tracks with Hendrix where I used it, I played bass, but I have no idea what happened to those things. I played around with it. I haven’t used it in years.

Rick: You played on Electric Ladyland? 

Dave Mason: Yes, I played on Electric Ladyland, played on “All along the Watchtower” sang on “Crosstown Traffic” and just some tracks that Jimi and I just cut together. We did complete tracks, drums, whatever. But, but I don’t know what happened to them.

Rick: Going back in time, I suppose you were inspired by Scotty Moore, Eddie Cochran, Johnny Burnette, Grady Martin nd Chuck Berry. But, it seems that a lot of British players wore out records of B.B. King, Muddy Waters and other blues players too.

Dave Mason: My stuff originally? I listened to The Shadows, with Hank Marvin, The Ventures, then got more into things and started to listen more, Wes Montgomery, George Benson, Kenny Burrell, all the Kings, Albert, BB, Otis Rush, Elmore James, all that stuff. 

Rick: How’d Traffic come together?

Dave Mason: Jim (Capaldi) and I had bands together, the Deep Feeling and The Hellions. We cut a record with The Hellions, didn’t do anything. And then we met up with Winwood and Chris Wood in Birmingham, in a place called The Algorithm, an after hours club. We all sort of just hung out when we could. We had pretty diversified tastes. We were all pretty much listening to a lot of the same stuff.

You know, when people talk about the British Invasion? The British Invasion is an American story. It’s not a British story, without America and the music coming from here, there would be no Eric Clapton or any of us, frankly. That’s what we did, we learned from all the American music. It all goes back to the early stuff, Alexis Korner and earlier and Long John Baldry, Bryan Auger, John Mayall. There was the blues influence and the hits. A lot of the stuff was covers of American hits.

Rick: Yeah, even The Beatles and the Stones did American covers.

Dave Mason: Yeah, we learned from here. So, obviously for me, to be able to do this after all these years with Steve Cropper is a huge thing for me. Because, that shit we were listening to back when I was 16, 17 and 18 years old. What’s interesting to me in doing this with Steve is to find out how few people know who the hell he is, let alone Booker T. and the MGs did, and the records those people played on is just ridiculous, and then of course the songs Steve co-wrote.

To me, it’s like “Wow!” I didn’t realize it that nobody really know who the hell this guy is, it’s amazing. That they did that whole HBO Special on the Muscle Shoals guys, Hawkins (Roger Hawkins) and all those guys, and I don’t understand why they didn’t do one of those things on Booker T. and the MGs. And what they did, it’s ridiculous.

Rick: I saw Booker T. and the MGs and Cobo Hall in Detroit with Creedence and Wilbert Harrison. I was floored how good they were and they got a standing ovation.

Dave Mason: Yeah, well I saw them in ’67, at the time they were backing Otis Redding. I mean, take the entire Stax record collection and they were backing everybody!

Rick: What was your first impression of Jimi Hendrix and what was he like as a collaborator?

Dave Mason: I just got to know him and I got to hang out with him a lot and I got to go to the studio with him and record, We both heard John Wesley Harding together, and something caught his interest on “Watchtower”.

I found myself in the studio with him and Mitch Mitchell, got the track down. Otherwise, I mean, just hanging out with Jimi, he was a pretty quiet guy, soft spoken. In the studio he was all business. The thing about him, and there are a lot of great guitar players, a lot of them, but there are no more Jimi Hendrix’s. I mean the guy was just so innovative.

  Dave Mason – Photo by Chris Jensen

Rick: You were with the Island label early, with many of the British folk artists of the time, John Martyn, Nick Drake, and I think the Incredible String Band. Did you know them well?

Dave Mason: I don’t really know them. I never worked with them. One person I used to listened to was Davey Graham.

Rick: Yeah, Graham was amazing, loved his “Angie”. Traffic was such a cool group with some jazz-blues grooves. How did you guys click?

Dave Mason: I have a pop sensibility, but we all pretty much liked the same kinds of music, more or less. And Traffic, I guess, was one of the first alternative bands, basically.

Rick: Yeah, your music was different. You’ve got “Feeling Alright” that’s got kind of  Motown and Stax sounds that could have easily been covered by the Four Tops or the Temptations.

Dave Mason: Well, I think it may have been. [Laughs] Over fifty major artists have covered it.

Rick: You’ll soon be on the road with Steve Cropper. How’d your Rock and Soul Revue tour come about and how’d you meet Steve? 

Dave Mason: I was in Nashville a year ago and we had lunch with a mutual friend and kind of threw some things around. Kind of doing something and then last New Years, I have a house in Maui and Shep Gordon does a benefit thing every New Years and everybody goes there, like Mick Fleetwood and whatever musicians are around.

Steve came over and we started talking about it. That’s basically how it came together. Three weeks ago we rehearsed for the first time. It’s the first time we played together, rehearsing this show at a friend’s ranch in North Carolina, in the northern corner.

Rick: That’s bluegrass country.

Dave Mason: [Laughs] Yeah! And I’ve been doing gigs, besides when I was with Traffic, since I was 22 years old, and now I’m 72. So, I thought it would be fun to do it now, something different and turn people on to who the hell Steve Cropper is and the songs, his “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay”, “Soul Man:, “In the Midnight Hour”, I mean, c’mon! 

Rick: Have you guys come up with a structured set list or are you going wing it, some of it? Or half you, then half Steve, then mix it up?

Dave Mason: No, no, no… we’re not going to wing it. There’s a set list. We’re playing on stage together and there are songs of mine that he’s not on and songs that’s he’s doing, like “Green Onions” and two or three other things that I’m not playing on, because I think me playing some of the guitar parts, I’d be getting in the way, keep to the original.

I’ve got great musicians, great players, Gretchen, Rhodes, Tony Patler and my keyboard player has a great R&B voice. And we’re doing other stuff like, “Can’t Find My Way Back Home”, “Shake, Rattle and Roll” and then I’ve got my songs, “Only You Know and I Know”, “We Just Disagree” and stuff like that. So, let’s put it this way, there are no filler songs in the entire show.

Rick: It’s gotta be tough fitting in all the songs you like to play. Do you pick songs you love to play or the big sellers?

Dave Mason: It’s a combination of both, a combination of hits with Cropper’s stuff; his records are huge, they’ll get played.  

Rick: You’ve got a lot of albums you’ve put out. I think there’s close to twenty-seven. 

Dave Mason: Oh, God I don’t know. [Laughs] I can’t say I’m putting anything out. In the last ten years, there’s no label. It’s a waste of time. It’s sad that there’s no radio anymore, no DJs, no way to promote anything. I think it’s the biggest flaw of it all.

Rick: What kind of rig and guitar are you grabbing for this tour? 

Dave Mason: I play a Strat.

Rick: What about acoustic?

Dave Mason: I‘m using it on “We Just Disagree”. I’m using the same 12-string I’ve played for years, an Alvarez Yairi.

Rick: The black one?

Dave Mason: Yeah. And, then I use a rig I put through a Fender Blues Deville.

Rick: During the late sixties and the early ‘70s, what do you think was the best rock city in America?

Dave Mason: The best rock city? It’s hard to say if you go back to the ‘60s and ‘70s. There was music coming out of Nashville, Philadelphia, Detroit, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles. You had a shit load of places and, it depends, I mean rock music could have been cut in any one of those places.

I don’t know, when I think of rock ‘n roll and what people classify as rock ‘n roll are different things. On the set we do, at the end of the show I tell people I’m gonna to do some real rock and roll, not AC/DC, okay? Real rock, like in 1954, “Shake, Rattle and Roll”, Little Richard’s rock ‘n roll, Eddie Cochran’s rock ‘n roll and all that.

Rick: You ever play the old Grande Ballroom in Detroit?

Dave Mason: Probably. [Laughs]

Rick: I’m from the Detroit area and we’d go there and Cobo Hall.

Dave Mason: Yeah, I played there too. Kick out the jams motherfuckers, [Both Laugh]

Rick: Yeah, I saw them (MC5) do that back in ’68 or ‘69 at the Grande. Anything you’re looking forward to on the Rock and Soul Revue Tour you and Steve (Cropper) are doing?

Dave Mason: We spent a week working on the show and to me it’s a great honor. It’s like completing a circle for me, fifty, sixty years later.

Rick: I was gonna say, he’s a hoot. He’s fun.

Dave Mason: Steve, oh yeah [Laughs] He’s got an endless amount of stories.

Rick: I think you’re gonna have a blast. How many gigs do you have?

Dave Mason: I’m not sure, probably about thirty at the moment. We’re just going to see how it goes. We’re going wherever we can.

Rick: You still like playing rock ‘n roll?

Dave Mason: I love playing. I’m a working musician,

Rick: What kind of acoustic guitar do you noodle around with at home?

Dave Mason: I have a Taylor that I bought back in ’94, and I have that beautiful Alvarez Yairi 12-string that was made for me twenty-five years ago.

Rick: Any parting words about the tour?

Dave Mason: I just hope people come out and check out the show and re-discover one of the greats, Steve Cropper