May Music – tarantula-nebula.com

Visual Art

In the early 1990s, I was taking a Fine Arts class at a community college. One of my projects was to visit the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. Over there, you can view a Manet, and a Monet! How cool, right? You can see paintings by Rembandt, Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, Renoir, Vigée Le Brun, Goya, Canaletto, Vuillard, Cézanne, Dali, and more! There are sculptures and other works of art! What a wonderful time!

The big local rock station in the LA area was KLOS. Now and then, they would play the entire side of a popular album. On my way back from Norton Simon, they played Breakfast in America by Supertramp. I wasn’t expecting much but a few songs into it, I was like, “Wow! I know all these songs! What a great album!” I wound up buying it on CD and I listened to it a lot. Even the songs that didn’t get FM airplay were pretty good.

My involvement with AI art began with visual imagery. It wasn’t until a few of months ago that I discovered the musical side. I continually feel compelled to release a disclaimer about it. AI art, both visual and musical, is not for everyone. YouTube requires creators to disclose when they use it. I’ll admit that at the beginning of my journey, I was weirded out by much of it. I understand that cartoonists have a difficult time replicating five-finger hands in a realistic way. The Simpsons’ characters have three fingers and a thumb on each hand for this reason. Other cartoons do, as well. AI has a terrible time with hands. Often, I’ll create an image where everything is great except the fingers. It’s too bad, but that’s the stage we’re at. Otherwise, it’s a lot of fun. As for the music, I love the output most the time. One of my issues is that the songs cut off right at four minutes. I have to splice a resonating end the best I can, or else start over.

Last month, I made a rendition of Journey’s Escape album–all ten songs. I liked the way it turned out. Eight of the songs had the same AI-created image, and the other two had their own unique images, but they still fit the theme. This month’s project will by Breakfast in America by Supertramp. In my mind, I connect this album with visual imagery because I was driving home from a great museum when I was turned on to it. I’ve already created many of the images, and now I have to create the music. Like Escape, I will pick different genres and moods. I look forward to this project. It’s a great set of music, and it’s something I should enjoy doing.

On a final note, I wanted to mention album art. We say “album” generically a lot of times, even when we’re talking about CDs or digitial media. There was a time, though, when vinyl records ruled supreme. Albums housed vinyl records which needed a 12″ x 12″ casing. There was more room to work with, therefore, there was more of an emphasis to create something visually alluring. This was especially true during the 1970s. This was the sweet spot between vinyl 45 record singles of the 50s and 60s, and the smaller CDs of the 80s and 90s. The Beatles are widely credited with creating the first popular “theme album” when they released Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. I took a History of Rock ‘N’ Roll class after my Fine Arts class. The teacher explained that the Beatles were likely influenced by Frank Zappa. Regardless, in the 1970s, “theme albums” became the norm. Great album art was also being produced.

Supertramp’s Breakfast in America was released in 1979, at the end of the decade. MTV was right around the corner, so visual art still played a major part in popular music. Their album cover featured a large waitress holding up a tray with orange juice with the New York cityscape in the background. I happen to be a conspiracy theorist. This album visually predicted the 9/11 attacks. This is widely believed. It’s not hard to find Google articles and images about this, and it’s not my intention to go into that tangent here and now. I’ll briefly add that you have to look at the album mirrored horizontally. You can clearly see “9 11” near the Twin Towers. Nonetheless, Breakfast in America stands on its own. I enjoy listening to all the songs all these years later. I hope you enjoy my rendition…

— Homer Cocktail

(Eddie)