Ep 97 | Why AI Will Kill Bad Music, Not Real Artists | Stephen Limbaugh

Summary

Zero Hour with James Poulos: Episode 97 Summary

Title: Why AI Will Kill Bad Music, Not Real Artists
Host: James Poulos
Guest: Stephen Limbaugh
Release Date: May 11, 2025

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1. Introduction to Stephen Limbaugh (00:30 - 01:35)

James Poulos opens the episode by introducing Stephen Limbaugh III, a renowned composer and concert pianist. Stephen’s impressive credentials include performances at prestigious events like the Golden Globes and the White House, as well as recordings by the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra. His debut album, Pants a Loaded Term, achieved the top spot on the Billboard classical charts in 2014.

Notable Quote:
James Poulos: “Stephen Limbaugh III is a composer and concert pianist whose works have indeed been recorded by the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra.” (01:09)

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2. The Essence of Classical Music and Artistic Inspiration (01:36 - 07:00)

Stephen discusses his current project—a symphony celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. He delves into the depth and complexity of American identity beyond its economic and technological achievements, emphasizing the inspirational power of art.

Notable Quotes:
Stephen Limbaugh: “I think just in the asking of that sort of question is what is probably the most inspirational of activities that you can get to be able to sit down and eventually get to pen and paper writing notes out on the page...” (03:19)
James Poulos: “It's not Brave New World. It's not the feelies strapped to your pleasure machine.” (04:31)

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3. Challenges of Modern Composition and Audience Engagement (07:00 - 16:11)

The conversation shifts to the challenges composers face in the digital age, particularly concerning short attention spans and the struggle to create music that resonates deeply without relying on vocals or conventional rhythms. Stephen emphasizes the importance of technical mastery and familiarity with musical literature to create sophisticated compositions.

Notable Quotes:
Stephen Limbaugh: “I feel like artists, whenever they're doing their work, the best are antennas for inspiration.” (04:31)
James Poulos: “But it's not Brave New World. It's not the feelies strapped to your pleasure machine.” (04:31)
Stephen Limbaugh: “There's nothing that's predictive of what's gonna go viral or whatever.” (07:14)

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4. The Intersection of Classical and Modern Music (16:12 - 25:08)

Stephen explores how classical music can incorporate modern elements without losing its essence. He references influential composers like John Williams and discusses the importance of orchestration and understanding musical canon to create compositions that are both authentic and contemporary.

Notable Quotes:
Stephen Limbaugh: “You have to know the canon. And I'm doing all these little clips on X about my process.” (16:11)
James Poulos: “One of my favorite examples of this... is Angelo Bottalamenti, his longtime composer.” (11:30)

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5. The Role of Authenticity and AI in Music Creation (41:03 - 56:15)

James and Stephen debate the impact of AI on the music industry. Stephen argues that AI may eliminate the production of low-quality, formulaic music but won't replace genuine artistry. He emphasizes that true artists infuse personal experience and technical skill that AI cannot replicate.

Notable Quotes:
Stephen Limbaugh: “No, because you can't make art by calculation.” (47:02)
James Polis: “But it's still going to be helpful about this AI thing, though.” (48:32)
Stephen Limbaugh: “AI is never going to be able to make a suggestion like that.” (47:02)

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6. The Evolution of Music and Audience Preferences (26:00 - 39:13)

The discussion covers the transformation of music from the 90s to the present, highlighting shifts in tempo, melody, and lyrical complexity. They examine how contemporary sounds, influenced by artists like Trent Reznor and bands like Radiohead, cater to a digitally immersed audience seeking deeper, more contemplative music.

Notable Quotes:
James Polis: “But I get the feeling that you're trying to get a little something extra across.” (18:37)
Stephen Limbaugh: “People want something that helps them point the camera inward a little bit on themselves and they just need some quiet.” (32:31)
James Polis: “It's ... a simulation of the 90s.” (38:19)

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7. The Future of Live Music and AI Integration (56:16 - 60:44)

Stephen anticipates that AI will revolutionize aspects of live music production, such as sound mixing and orchestration, by automating technical tasks. However, he asserts that the creative and performance aspects of music will remain human-driven, preserving the artist’s unique vision and emotional expression.

Notable Quotes:
Stephen Limbaugh: “But there's still going to be a Human to decide what kind of thing they want to ask the AI to do for them.” (48:32)
James Polis: “But you can't have the high. Yeah, he starts with the high, and the phrase ends in this weird low off note.” (22:56)
Stephen Limbaugh: “AI is going to kill those guys because AI can make bad copies of the.” (56:15)

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8. Closing Remarks and Future Projects (59:00 - 60:44)

In the final moments, Stephen shares his aspirations to complete his symphony by year-end, expressing hope for a benefactor to help with recording. James encourages him to stay focused and work diligently towards his goals.

Notable Quotes:
Stephen Limbaugh: “I've written it, and I put it out pseudonymously at Canonic.” (58:34)
James Polis: “All right, get to work, you lazy bum.” (60:36)
Stephen Limbaugh: “That's the long and short of it.” (60:39)

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Key Takeaways

• Authenticity Over Automation: True artistry, characterized by personal experience and technical skill, remains irreplaceable despite advancements in AI.

• The Role of Inspiration: Artists are inspired by a blend of historical influences and modern experiences, allowing them to create complex and meaningful works.

• Evolution of Music: Contemporary music trends favor slower tempos and more contemplative sounds, influenced by digital culture and the need for deeper emotional connections.

• AI as a Tool, Not a Replacement: While AI can handle technical aspects of music production, the creative and emotional elements are uniquely human.

Conclusion

Stephen Limbaugh and James Poulos engage in a thought-provoking discussion on the interplay between classical artistry and modern technological advancements. The conversation underscores the enduring value of genuine, heartfelt music creation and the limitations of AI in replicating the nuanced, inspired process of true artists. As the music landscape continues to evolve, authentic expression remains paramount, ensuring that quality and depth in music persist despite the rise of automated tools.

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For more insights and in-depth discussions, subscribe to Zero Hour with James Poulos on YouTube and join the conversation on the intersection of art, technology, and culture.

Transcript

[Stephen Limbaugh]

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[James Polis]

He's performed at the Golden Globes and the White House and gotten his works recorded by the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra. Stephen Limbaugh joins us in studio next. I'm James Polis. This is Zero Hour.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

La la la la.

[James Polis]

Stephen Limbaugh III is a composer and concert pianist whose works have indeed been recorded by the Russian philharmonic orchestra. His 2014 debut album, Pants a Loaded Term, as you soon shall see, topped the Billboard classical charts, and he's performed at major events like the Golden Globes and the White House. Welcome, Stephen.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Thank you. Thank you. I really like your theme song.

[James Polis]

I really like your pants.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

My. My motley trousers?

[James Polis]

Yes. You've got more than one pair of motley trousers.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah. Yes, I do.

[James Polis]

It's your thing.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

This is what happens when you have your musicians on the show.

[James Polis]

You know, everyone needs a theme. You're right.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

They don't. They don't come, you know, dressed like normal blaze guests, I guess. Right.

[James Polis]

Or like normal classical composers.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah, that's right, Indeed.

[James Polis]

And you're composing something right now that's. That's also not particularly normal.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

That's right. I'm doing a symphony to celebrate the 250th signing of the Declaration of Independence, which will be next year.

[James Polis]

It appears that we are actually going to make it as a country to the big 250, which is.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Which is nice as a republic. Is that good? Better than average, typically.

[James Polis]

It is. It's, you know, the Federalist Papers really big on the idea that, like, there's never been a large republic before. And so this is kind of, you know, some, some people like to think of the American experiment as, like, what if you just sort of suck crazy people in from all over the world and see what happens. As far as founders were concerned, it was, can you have a large republic at all? That's a nice thing. Can we have the nice thing?

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Sure.

[James Polis]

So, yeah, as far as large republics go, 250 is a big deal.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

It's a big deal. And I also, I'm investigating one of the questions just about what exactly is America like? It's. I don't know. Not to get Too deep in the weeds. But it's too late. Yeah. Too, too late. Sorry. Whenever you ask the question, I mean, it's not just, okay, there's 50 states and it's this many square miles, or the people are like. It's. It's more than that and more than a road trip. It's more than a road trip. It's more than the aggregate of its, you know, economic output or technological progress. There've been lots of places that have had good economies or technological progress or whatever.

[James Polis]

The British Empire.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

The British Empire. But we would easily make a distinction between the British Empire and what it was in America. Yeah, we were part of it once and didn't work out too well. Didn't work out too well for them. Worked out great for us. And so the. I think just in the asking of that sort of question is what is probably the most inspirational of activities that you can get to be able to sit down and eventually get to pen and paper writing notes out on the page because it puts you in a state to where you're. I feel like artists, whenever they're doing their work, the best are antennas for inspiration. We're not really creative in, like, I am making this because everything's kind of derivative. Everything. You know, I think these ideas, if they're some sort of platonic form or whatever it is, it comes in, comes from God, and then it is performed, and people then feel something. Right, Right. Hopefully it's more than just a mere hedonic response to the music or the artwork or whatever it is.

[James Polis]

It's not Brave New World. It's not the feelies strapped to your pleasure machine.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right. Yeah, indeed. And it's not X, and it's not TikTok, and it's not these technological things that do make people feel something, and they are, of course, entertaining. But classical music especially is trying to hit at something a little bit deeper. And as long as I am provoking deep contemplation, then I'm doing my job right. As, like, a high artist. I'm not trying to say in the high arts, that's the ultimate goal that you're trying to do.

[James Polis]

So let's pause here, because classical music, it's still around, not to the degree that it was in the past when there weren't other kinds of music. You know, no vocals usually, typically, I.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Mean, if you count opera or discount.

[James Polis]

Opera, but I'm talking about symphonic. You know, the kinds of stuff that you're writing right now for this grand occasion. No vocals to sort of lean on Creatively. Right. No vocals to lean on in terms of what you're trying to communicate to the audience. Possibly no percussion. I don't know. You might have some timpanis in there for sure. Timpani, but not like a kit, you know, that's like no drums leading people beat by beat through. There's less hand holding.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right? Yes.

[James Polis]

And so if you go back to, you know, like whether it's Rite of Spring or the Marsh Slav, you know, which Tchaikovsky, we're still kind of residually familiar with these things, thanks to people like John Williams who just shamelessly ripped off Tchaikovsky. Right. Or no, hate, you know, because it's fourth of July and this is what you listen to when you're watching the fireworks. Right. And it goes.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Russian music is what we listen to.

[James Polis]

It is, it is viscerally easy to understand that.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yes.

[James Polis]

But it's a simple message. Celebration, independence. Yay, we made it another year. It sounds like you're trying to craft a more three dimensional message, a richer message. Are people still in 2025 capable of hearing what a classical composer has to say and is only saying through melody?

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right, that's, that's a huge, huge question. Because if we talk about how short or insanely long attention spans are, they'll listen to a three hour podcast, but.

[James Polis]

Not remember anything, not remember anything in.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

It, but they'll listen to the whole thing, even if it's on 1.25 speed or something. Or they're like, if I'm not interested in this clip, I'm swiping after four seconds. And so I don't know what that means in terms of audience. I actually don't know the answer to that question.

[James Polis]

Because you're about to find out.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

I'm gonna find out. Right? Well, I think that as an artist, these are all interesting questions and of course you can think about them, but whenever it comes to the process of writing, I feel like the first job is to do the work, not judge it, maybe not rationalize why an audience might not like it. Yeah, it's just, you have, you just have to get it out and then if it goes, it goes, because it's also not. There's nothing that's predictive of what's gonna go viral or whatever. I mean, in classical music, there is something that is different than other, other forms in that if you do have something that turns out to be, let's say, culturally significant, even if it has a slow ramp up, the staying power is a lot more significant. Yeah, I, I think there is some sort of statistic somewhere that, for example, the number of Mozart streams. If you take all of the. Everything from YouTube to Spotify to whatever, if you just count him as a single composer, not the various symphonies or artists that perform his music, and you add all of those up, they do beat all of the major pop artists.

[James Polis]

Right.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

And if you count all of the classical composers. Now, it doesn't beat rock as a genre or pop music as a genre, of course, but the individual artists are still in the running and many of them have been dead for 200 years.

[James Polis]

Yeah, you just don't know. I mean, I think of like, you know, a night on Disco Mountain or a fifth of Beethoven. Like, who could have produced, predicted that we'd end up with, you know. But these things do. They do make this impact and they do resonate. And there are certain things about melody that, you know, the earworm was a thing. You know, 800 years ago, Plato understood that there were earworms. This is all very real.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

And the Greeks also understood that music plays an important part in the formation of character. Plato, I'm not, I'm not totally sold on his viewpoint, and I think there's some weird esoteric thing going on.

[James Polis]

You had been out of the city a long time.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah, I would have been out, completely out of the city. You know, I would, I would have, you know, Socrates would have kicked me off the dock.

[James Polis]

Right.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

You know, and. But Aristotle, I think, had a better viewpoint to where he's like, look, it's important for education because it's going to teach you how to think. Because music is. I don't mean this in the lame, dumb way, but it is a. It is a language that is. I mean, there are even scientific, physiological reasons why certain harmonies and melodies are going to sound consonant or dissonant, for example.

[James Polis]

Yes.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

And the.

[James Polis]

Can be very, very violent.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

And it could be very violent. And you can. You can carry dissonance for a long time and then resolve things in a way that feels very satisfactory. And that's sort of like a tragic element. If you could bring a literary device into music or something like that.

[James Polis]

Yeah, you feel when the minor key happens and then, you know.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

And so Aristotle calls this. He says it's outright. It's the imitation of human emotion because all the arts are some form of imitation. In drama, it's men in action. In music, it is human emotion. And so it seems very obvious, like, oh, up and down and you feel up. But of course, emotions are much more complex than that. And whenever you're able to Have a technical mastery of how melody works. How not to abuse people in their pattern recognition sense with baby shark type stuff. That's trite and stupid. But how you could expand that out because something like baby shark is, you know, there's a minor third in that and a minor third is the opening to, you know, are these thirds or the opening to Beethoven's fifth. But it's what he does with that content and expands out on it that's the genius. So then form kind of becomes the main part of the art. The art in a symphony like that.

[James Polis]

One of my favorite examples of this. I, you know, I. Some, Some artists command my attention more than others. Even, you know, if. I'm not sure if I. How did you know? How do you describe your relationship with an art? Like parasocial relationship with an artist? I'm a big fan. Or like, I'm a, you know, I stand. I'm a sim. Like what? I don't. I don't even want to question what's going on there, but I do find it difficult not to pay attention to David Lynch.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Okay, sure.

[James Polis]

And a big part of why is Angelo Bottalamenti, his longtime composer.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Oh, okay. Yeah, sure.

[James Polis]

And so many examples scattered throughout the lynch corpus.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah, I saw the twin. There's a great Twin Peaks video of how they came up with the theme.

[James Polis]

Right. So you're one step ahead of me.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Usual.

[James Polis]

And it begins with just, you know, this very like slow and spare and almost despairing out of the gate. And then it. Still keeping the same sort of melody. And then something up, something else swells up from within it and becomes, you know, this heartbreakingly beautiful and vulnerable crescendo of sound and becomes like this. This higher theme and. And, you know, the. Now that lynch has been killed by the California wildfires, I do bear grudge. There's this wave of appreciation on X that has yet to subside. So this is where I'm getting this from. So. So lynch and Bottle of Enti discovered after the fact that the. The structure of the melody, when you sort of graph it out, formed two peaks, which was, you know, the. Any kind of artist, any kind of creator has these kinds of experiences from time to time where, you know, it's not like I sat around dreaming until I had the most brilliant idea. And then I sort of patted myself on the back and wrote it down. They're gonna love this. Like, it's not that.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right.

[James Polis]

It's. It's entering into a sort of state of fecundity where something generative can take place.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yes.

[James Polis]

And then once it sort of is birthed and like, there it is. And then you kind of see it for what it is.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

And, you know, who loves it are the analysts. You know, the theoreticians is like, oh, well, you know, then the peaks have these two peaks in it. And, you know, but this was total happens.

[James Polis]

Flies descend and they're scuttling all over your beautiful creation, you know, and so.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Much of the time, I think there was even a funny joke in, like, Entouraged where James Cameron gets, you know, fictional James Cameron gets pinned and somebody's like, you know. Were you thinking of, you know, some historical references? Like. No, actually, I just, in this part, wanted to make girls cry. And it was literally that simple. But sometimes those basic fundamental, you know, for sure, hit type ideas, sometimes there is something. There is something more, and I don't know exactly what it is, but there is something more profound that happens underneath whenever all the stars align and you have that sort of moment. And in the lynch thing, it totally makes sense that they were standing in a room together with a little piano or something. And lynch is closing his eyes, talking about what he sees.

[James Polis]

Oh, yeah, he's just. Now make it come up, Angelo. Make it beautiful. It's just hurting your heart, you know, he's like, all right, all right.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

But here, here's one also, I think something that's interesting is I. I wouldn't be able to attempt at the same things unless I had a technical understanding of how music worked.

[James Polis]

Yes.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

There is a syntax to music. Yes. And you do have to be a student of human nature and you do have to live in this world. Because I don't even think if I went out to write a minuet, nobody knows how to even dance that anymore. Why would I write a minuet?

[James Polis]

To mock and shame.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Barbarian or some sort of homage to the. To the form in general. But you would still have to put in modern. A modern aspect, so it's more intelligible to the audience that exists right now.

[James Polis]

Sure.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

And you can't know what your future audience is gonna be. So it's not like you don't take them into consideration whenever all these magical things are happening in the studio or whenever you're getting to work with David Lynch. But, gosh, it's a funny occurrence.

[James Polis]

So how does this boil down and show up in a symphony for Americ on the big 250?

[Stephen Limbaugh]

So listening to a lot of music. So you. In my opinion, you have to know the canon. And I'm doing All these, like, little clips on X about. About my process. And so I went for 90 minutes, almost 90 minutes one time, and I'm looking at a musical problem because you write a melody. I was like, okay, I'm satisfied with this melody. And then you have to figure out what instruments are going to play what. And that's a thing called orchestration. And there's a whole art form within the art form that is orchestration. Well, those sorts of choices also have to do with how things swell or the balance. If you want to hear the melody, then you can only choose certain instruments. If it's in a flute, then you can't have loud brass at the same time. It'll get drowned out those sorts of things. Well, so I. Look, I. I had a problem and I said, well, I just. I have to look at what Stravinsky would do in this situation, because this is kind of similar. There's a solo going on. And so I pull the score off my shelf and I look at Petrushka. Okay, what did he do here? And then in trying to figure out what he did, which I did something, but I saw something else that was a clue. Oh, you know what? He doubles this flute part right here. If this is. If I'm using a trombone instead of a flute, then I should maybe double these high notes with the French horn. These are the sorts of technical things that are going to. They're super subtle and. But they. But they matter a whole lot. But I don't know what score to reach for whenever I have a problem. Unless you know the literature incredibly well.

[James Polis]

Right.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

I'd say a lot of conservatories don't even teach this stuff anymore. They don't teach the literature. It's. This is a problem across all disciplines in the university, of course. But I'm really hard on the conservatories because aside from teaching you and forcing you to write noise music, I had a student in my class who's a fierce year composition major, who hadn't heard Beethoven's sixth Symphony. This is one of the most famous ones of all time. They hadn't heard it. What are you doing here?

[James Polis]

Right. Literally, how did you get here?

[Stephen Limbaugh]

How did you get here?

[James Polis]

Did you wander in off the street? That's crazy.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

And then I figured out that they were also a vocalist. It's like, okay, well, come on. Yeah, that's why you're. In theory one. You didn't test out. Sorry, I'm just kidding. Vocalists.

[James Polis]

But you're trying to say something specific about this country. On this occasion.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right, right.

[James Polis]

And it's probably going to be, like, reasonably accessible to the average American.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right, right.

[James Polis]

But I get the feeling that you're trying to get a little something extra across.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

A little something extra because you don't want it to just be a copy of Aaron Copeland. Right. I love Aaron Copland. If I wrote something like Rodeo, that would be awesome, because I would be in the Western canon forever.

[James Polis]

Yes.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

I would be known after I'm dead.

[James Polis]

For a long time in meat ads for the rest of.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yes, that's right. Time on Earth, which would be wonderful.

[James Polis]

Which would be.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

But he captured something at the time, sort of the Western ethos of America going west. Covered wagons, Appalachian Spring, you know, that's another piece. These are dances.

[James Polis]

Right.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

You know, fiddlers. He's imitating all these things that he had that he had heard or experienced in his life. I'm not sure how far or how frequently he made it out of New York City.

[James Polis]

But, yes, that music covered Wagon's expectation versus reality.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yes. But that music at least came back, and he had to have been familiar with it. Yeah. Well, the world in America has changed since then, so I think that you can obviously pay homage, and I should incorporate some of those elements, some of that language, some of the vocabulary from that. But we live in a world where it's partly digital, largely Digital, maybe not 50% yet, but, you know, what does that mean? How in a. Like, what does that equal in musical terms? What else has happened since Aaron Copeland? Film music has exploded. And Williams. John Williams is one of the masters. Elmer Bernstein one of the masters, where they were able to take Tchaikovsky, like you were saying, Stravinsky. And they did invent a film music language that everybody is familiar with. It doesn't matter what your age is. Well, I should borrow from that tradition as well. One of my teachers is. I would say my only great teacher in composition and orchestration was Conrad Pope, who was John Williams's orchestrator. So he did. He orchestrated for John Williams on, like, Schindler's List and the later Star wars and Harry Potter and all these. So the guy knows everything. But this is an oral tradition. There's no book. And so the only way you get this information is by. So he'll impart something that they had an. They did an experiment in the studio once with the London Philharmonic and rewrote the music on the fly and this sort. And actually, I can. I'll just share. You put the. All. You put four trumpets low. The sound doesn't get lower. It Gets darker. Okay. That's something that you can use for an aesthetic purpose that isn't written in the Rimsky Korsakoffe orchestration book.

[James Polis]

Right.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

It's oral tradition.

[James Polis]

So I just. I want to translate this just a little bit. At least give. Give an example, because I think I know what you're talking about, and I do feel like I was maybe. Maybe a little too harsh on John Williams. Well, I mean, but, you know, we all are borrowers. We autists.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Absolutely.

[James Polis]

But what's fascinating to me about John Williams and, you know, he played Coachella and like, you know, I saw John Williams playing Coachella and I was like, respect, you know, and people were really into it. They were walking between, you know, the Sahara tent where all the DJ sets are and the main stage and sort of stopping and being like, oh, yeah. And they had all the movies on the screens. So that was a helpful cue.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yes.

[James Polis]

But, you know, who doesn't know the Jurassic park theme within one second of hearing one second? But here's the thing about the Jurassic park theme. It's like, very recognizable, very major. It's like Indiana Jones level. But then what happens to that melody? What's that note? And then it comes all the way down to dun, dun, dun, dun. Yeah, this weird low note. And you can't have the high. Yeah, he starts with the high, and the phrase ends in this weird low off note. But that's what allows you to get back in.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yes.

[James Polis]

And that's genius.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

It's. It's genius.

[James Polis]

And it's technical genius.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

It's technical genius. And those are the. Those sorts of themes and melodies is what he works on the most. Yeah, he spins. He got. He's a big golfer. He spins. Seriously. And he's. He goes out there and he thinks.

[James Polis]

A terrible golfer, but a big golf.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah, right. Big golfer, terrible or not great. And he's also. I think. I don't even know if he plays.

[James Polis]

Anymore because, I mean, can you imagine just, like, killing it at golf while you're, like, composing in your head? I don't know. Maybe you can.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Sounds wonderful. But, yeah, it's. It's. There is something about having a menial task that you're doing, and then an idea comes. Like you as an author. I'm sure an I. A great idea comes whenever you're washing dishes or doing something totally unrelated that sort of gets you out of your. Out of your conscious thought. You're doing something subconscious, even just walking. Walking around.

[James Polis]

You know, Nietzsche wasn't right about everything, but he Was right that walking is good for you as a, you know, someone who's trying to piece things together without hunching over your desk.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah. Beethoven was a big walker. Was a big walker. I think Mahler, too.

[James Polis]

Yeah.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

And their pieces sound like nature because that's what they did. They got out into nature. And it's. It's very. Mahler and Beethoven especially. I mean, I mentioned that Sixth Symphony, Beethoven. It's all nature. In fact, the titles of the movements are, you know, you know, entering the country or something like that. You know, this. This kind of stuff. And so. Yeah, I don't. I don't think people. I think sometimes people are hard on John Williams for being a big borrower. But, you know, Brahms also got a lot of flack for his first symphony. Saying this, like, Beethoven. Right. Shut up.

[James Polis]

Right.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

It's great. You know, every. Everything's. Everything's derivative. I think that's like a Von Dutch quote.

[James Polis]

That's painful, right? The noted composer Von Dutch, Right.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

Well, yeah. I mean, you know, Beethoven was. Was sort of writing some stuff for Mozart from time to time at Lisht. I mean, this is. They're all in the same.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yes. But it eventually does get to the point to where we do recognize John Williams. Whenever we hear John Williams, even if we say, ah, that's kind of borrowed from Tchaikovsky or something.

[James Polis]

Right.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

It's like. But his voice is very clear. So one thing that.

[James Polis]

And if you go back, you know, if you go back to Tchaikovsky and you listen to Marshall, it's just like banger after banger, hook after hook after hook after hook. It's incredible.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

How many nutcrackers stacks over and over again?

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah, the nutcrackers, they're all bangers.

[James Polis]

Yeah.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

John Philip Sousa.

[James Polis]

Right.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Every one of those marches is a banger. Absolute Stephen Foster cold. Yeah. You can't sing the lyrics anymore, but Stevens Foster's melodies are remarkable, and that's in the American ethos, too. Probably a B theme in the symphony that I'm gonna use. Sounds like it maybe could have been something like Stephen Foster mixed with a early Methodist hymn that was appropriated from a drinking song or something.

[James Polis]

Yes, all good Methodists.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Like all good Protestant hymns.

[James Polis]

Yes, that's right.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

They started out in a tavern, but, you know, holy, holy, holy. That's a banger. You know, I mean, the hymnal has. Has really, really good catchy stuff, and that uplifts people. You know, there again, there's. There's the balance of how do you make it not totally corny? And like, you were talking about those Jurassic park notes. That's how it ends up just not being so. So predictable.

[James Polis]

Oh, and that's leaving out the whole, like, you know, the bridge part, which is incredibly. I'm not even going to try to, like, hum that melody.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

And that. And it just brings you right back to the. What everyone knows is that first couple notes, and they're, like, right there. Right there with. With Hammond.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yes, that's right. And it's. I mean, look, it's. It's remarkable. And like I was saying to be. I. I don't know exactly where it comes from. I'm. I'm doing stupid things like reading Heidegger to try to figure out the being of music and the origin of the work of art and. And what.

[James Polis]

But it comes from silence and stillness.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

That's where you got to start.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

I. I think Heidegger says that silence is a form of communication.

[James Polis]

Yes.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

And that has profound musical applications because there is a Tchaikovsky quote where he says silence can be musical. Absolutely.

[James Polis]

Absolutely.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

When are you not playing the notes?

[James Polis]

Brian Eno? Repetition is a form of change.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Oh, interesting.

[James Polis]

Yes.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

That's great.

[James Polis]

Right? Isn't that good?

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Eno?

[James Polis]

Talk about guy who's like bangers just light years ahead, to the point where mgmt, as you probably know, has a song called Brian Eno.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Oh, do they really?

[James Polis]

On their Congratulations record, which is like the horrible comedown record after their big.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Was that their second album?

[James Polis]

Yes.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

The sophomore slump.

[James Polis]

Yes. Well, you know. You know, the COVID of the record is like a cartoon dog on a surfboard, like, looking back in fear at this enormous wave that's about to eat him. So that was. That was their record about how it felt to suddenly become famous in the early 2000s.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right. And, like, no offense to the guys, but, like, barely being able to play their instruments too well.

[James Polis]

Yeah. So there's this song, Brian Eno on the record, and the chorus of the. Of the song is basically like, brian Eno is always one step ahead of us wherever we go. There's already Brian Eno sort of there laughing at us, making us think, you know. You fools. You thought that you had one original thought as a musician, right? No, I did it 30 years ago.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Absolutely.

[James Polis]

Yeah.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, when did Eno join up with you two and do the whole digital delay thing? When was that was that on?

[James Polis]

I think that was Joshua Tree.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

That was Joshua Tree. Whenever that. Because that was a whole sound. And that's. It's so much of a sound that you Go to any, you know, modern evangelical church right now, and you got the low drone and then the digital delay guitar guy while the prayer's happening. And then, you know, now we're all going to pray silently and then the, you know, the evangelical song comes in and it's. I mean, like.

[James Polis]

And it's where. Where the streets have no name.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah, right. That's really what. But it's. But, you know, Jesus, please, you know, I know your name instead.

[James Polis]

Or as Patrick Bateman calls it, where the beat sounds the same.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

That's good.

[James Polis]

Let's talk about tempo a little bit. Because as you try to make classical music resonate with people circa 2025, what I've noticed, I don't know if you've noticed this. It seems like music has really kind of crumbled in terms of melody and lyrics. Right. The poetry of it seems to be decaying.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

What poetry?

[James Polis]

Well, I mean, you go back, Brandon Flowers is still out there doing. Doing real lyrics. Yes. And some people are not into that and wondering why he's doing records with K.D. lang and you know, the 2000s. But, you know, he's out there.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

He's earned it. He's earned it. He's earned it. Yeah.

[James Polis]

Right. But one thing that, that does seem to be working for music these days, which was not the case, you know, over the past couple of decades, is I think the Internet has cultivated in people a fresh appreciation for slow music.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Sure.

[James Polis]

For lo fi, slower tempo, downbeat, you know, music that you can go on Spotify and it's just an endless number. Or YouTube, endless number of, you know, like study music, like beats to chill to just like really down tempo, you know, sometimes like 24 hour super cut of just like vibe tracks.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yes.

[James Polis]

And I find this to be, you know, very interesting. And I find it also to be very interesting that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Right. Have become Oscar winning soundtrack guys. And so much of what their music does for movies, I think has to do with tempo. And if you go back to Social Network, one of the things that Bottalamenti said Lynch was always telling him was like, slower, slow it down, slow it down. Stretch out that musical phrase.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

And when you go to Social Network and you listen to some of what those guys are doing, you know, it's like ding, ding, ding, pause, Pause.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

Ding, ding, ding. And it's like. That's your phrase.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

And the rest of it is just kind of atmospherics and just softness and just like, you know, really incredibly contemplative. And gentle and oceanic for a film about Mark Zuckerberg.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

At Harvard. Right, At Harvard.

[James Polis]

Certainly not someone that you would associate even now with that sort of contemplative, oceanic state of calm. Right. And this. I don't want to think about how long ago that movie came out, but those guys seem to have been sort of forerunners of an era of contemporary music that isn't Philip Glass, that isn't just sort of an assault on the senses, isn't intentionally discordant, is intentionally very, very melodic and very euphonious. But in this, like, sort of stretched out, vibey, sort of, you know, almost sensory deprivation tank thing.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right.

[James Polis]

That seems to be really resonating with. With like younger listeners who spend time on the Internet.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right. And. And look at their world. The world is extremely noisy. And it has been noisy since the Industrial Revolution. Yeah, but also the Internet's really noisy. I mean, you go into a Rite Aid and they're just blasting stuff from the early 2000s, like the fray. Like, no hate on the Fray. Yeah, but they are blasting the Fray still.

[James Polis]

Right.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

And so it's, it's curious. So it totally makes sense that audiences want something that helps them point the camera inward a little bit on themselves and they just need some quiet. That totally makes sense why Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have done so well. Because even in their, like in the crazy David Fincher movies like Gone Girl, I mean, there's wild, because they do get wild, but even then there's very, very subtle, subdued, very round and warm tones that hold up the scenes and hold up the vibes as dialogue is happening. This is distinct from the John Williams method, which is typically to have something, let's say, a little bit more technical underneath. Both approaches can work and totally evoke drama in the scene that needs to be evoked.

[James Polis]

I remember when the Fragile came out in, in 1999, and this is like Trent Reznor's like, double album.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

Nine Inch Nails after, you know, Downward Spiral came out, it was like so influential. And he was doing stuff with lynch for, for Lost Highway. And that soundtrack is just, you know, an attack on your sense of well being and inner peace. And then here comes the Fragile. And, you know, it's got some. It's got some incredibly aggressive tracks on that record, one of which was the occasion for like, his big public reunion with Marilyn Manson. And very intentionally scary and sort of like in this. In this broken down limousine in the desert. And this is just dread. But there's also, you know, like a six minute Just kind of floaty piano thing called La Mer.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

And, you know, and where is the center of gravity of that double album? And it was more on the kind of, you know, the oceanic thing. And he's doing the press tour, and, you know, he's like, I don't want to, like, pop out of the coffin with the vampire fangs, like, every time.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

And so this is, you know, you can go all the way back to, like, 99 to the end of the 90s, which was an incredibly noisy decade to start to see these first stirrings of some of these guys who, you know, had just been. I mean, you know this as well as I do, like, early 90s Reznar, Billy Corgan, Courtney Love, Marilyn Manson, Kurt Cobain, like, they were all coming up all at the same time.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Stone Temple Pilots.

[James Polis]

Stone Temple Pilots. You know, Scott Weiland. I was. I was, you know, I was really dating myself, listening to the mid-90s stone temple pilots record tiny music songs from the Vatican gift shop. And this is like their version of MGMT's Congratulations. This is after. This is after Core. You know, it's after, like, the Big Butt rock anthems. And then they're sort of like, what is happening? You know, and they got the. The deleo brothers, who are like a couple of weirdos, you know, one guy on bass, one guy on guitar, and they're like, I think we should add more lounge into the music. Scott, he's like, I guess. And, you know, he's, like, nodding out half the time. Yeah, but all the lyrics of those songs are sort of like. It's all so confusing. Like, what do I do? Like, the. The corporation's trying to kill me, and people are like, oh, this is so self indulgent. And, like, you know, eventually he does die of sort of, like, not being able to understand, like, how to. How to reconcile these things.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

But in that. In that 90s era, though, then Radiohead popped. Yeah, they had their initial single, but then all of those. I mean, they were a very chill.

[James Polis]

Yes.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Band compared to most of the stuff that was out there. And then that kind of birthed early 2000s stuff like death Cab for Cutie, I remember a friend saying they went to a Death Cab for Cutie concert, and everyone just kind of stood there, you know, it was just very chill music. They didn't have an uptempo thing at all, but people loved it.

[James Polis]

Well, I mean, you think about Radiohead and all these guys, you know, they come up at the same time, and they go from being marginal indie acts to being like, here's all of the money.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

And here's pro tools and here's all of the resources. And it's going to be the biggest and most compressed. And just like all of the knobs up, all of the levers up and the world tour and the magazines and just like.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yes.

[James Polis]

And they all kind of got burned out in their ways.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

And so you have Smashing Pumpkins doing a door in 1998 which goes from enormous, you know, fuzz rat pedal.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

Total sonic explosion stripped all the way down to like piano goth, you know, sort of like wispy eight minute songs about, you know, Billy Corgan's mom. And you have Radiohead going from, you know, the bends and enormous soaring guitar anthems to, you know, weird sort of trip hoppy sort of instrumental lo fi motion picture soundtrack. In meeting people's easy. Like that whole kind of very lo fi thing. Massive Attack, you know, all that kind of British stuff that was.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

I didn't know Massive Attack.

[James Polis]

Oh yeah. Like, like you'd know it if you heard it.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Okay. Yeah.

[James Polis]

Mono, you know, these are really deep cuts here. But my point is like that was also a time and some people, you know, want to relive the 90s. Certainly in fashion, the 90s are just back with a vengeance.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Billie Eilish is kind of like female Nine Inch Nails.

[James Polis]

Yes.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Even same label I was on Interscope.

[James Polis]

Yes.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

And that Nine Inch Nails were an early Jimmy.

[James Polis]

I was very at home on Nothing.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Records, that sort of thing. Right. Yeah.

[James Polis]

So people want to revisit the 90s. A lot of people who regret that we can't go back to the 90s would rather go to. Into a simulation of the 90s.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right.

[James Polis]

And that's a little, you know, caution, danger, warning. You know, the simulation is not as to go back to you too. Even better than the real thing.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right, right.

[James Polis]

Like that's kind of that technology is giving us this temptation to be like, well, if I can't have the real 90s, then gosh darn it, I'd rather have the simulation of it than nothing.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right.

[James Polis]

Then force myself to confront the fact that I am living in a new moment.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right. And it's hard to be authentic whenever it's that brazen. Right.

[James Polis]

Yeah.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

And I think authenticity is what people still do crave whenever they. Whether it's their pop stars or their composers or their movies or their any form of artists. I think people do crave an authenticity. Somebody who doesn't. It doesn't feel like that they're just setting Themselves up for. To sling a perfume on Instagram and this sort of thing after they get their big record or whatever. But for my purposes, there is a way to appropriate those things. You know, if just like Tchaikovsky appropriated, you know, Oriental music, as it was called at the time.

[James Polis]

Yes.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

In the Nutcracker. But he still. It was still Russian. In. But it was the. But it's. It worked. It worked. And, you know, nobody was offended back then. Everyone thought it was great. They still think it's great. And they play the stuff in China.

[James Polis]

Back when the Orient just meant East.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

East. Yes. Which is kind of a funny proposition anyway for Russia, because they are east as well.

[James Polis]

Yeah.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

And so maybe this is how they get out of the. Getting canceled or something. Maybe so. But anyway, point being that the same appropriation process can take place. And I think in the symphony, you know, you're gonna make your symphony very stupid if you just introduce electric guitar. It just doesn't make sense. We saw Mr. Holland's opus. That piece was so dumb. And everybody knows it was dumb, but it was like, it was a good movie. But then like, you listen to the piece at the end, it's like, ah, that was a letdown.

[James Polis]

This is a. Yeah. And so the only ones who can get away with it, once again, the Trans Siberian Orchestra.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Okay. Perfect example.

[James Polis]

Yes.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

They are doing like Russian Eurasianism. Yes. Right. Or what was the other big one that has all the crit? Mannheim Steamroller.

[James Polis]

Yes. Russia's big favorite. Yeah.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Those are great.

[James Polis]

Absolutely.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Like, those are amazing. Right. But I feel like if you're going to appropriate things from, let's say, the pop music world and whatever. Whatever that is, starting in whatever year it could, starting in the 60s or whatever through now, you know, artists like. Like a Bjork, you know, is somebody you can kind of pull from. I feel like you could pull from Radiohead. And that just means they're. They're harmonic content. It doesn't mean you need to pull out guitars and that sort of thing. But there's, you know, the. Everybody rags on like the four chord progression. But what if you did it cool.

[James Polis]

As people keep finding ways you keep.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right. And they're. Coldplay is like another one, you know, one of those down tempo bands that came up in the late 90s.

[James Polis]

Yes.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

That most of their stuff is down tempo. Yellow was even medium tempo. And that's like their loudest song probably.

[James Polis]

Well, and to me, like, you get into sort of later Coldplay and it's, you know, at the time, in the early 90s, before Coldplay came along, you had John Tesh and you had Yanni and you had like these big sort of sappy adult contemporary big phrases, three or four chords and that, you know, that's kind of where Coldplay went.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

And Hans Zimmer. Yes, Hans Zimmer kind of turned. He's got a tour right now very successfully, Very successful. I mean, it's like super boomery because he comes out and like does a bass solo with like a five string bass, right? Just like, oh my. And he's got like yellow pants. I'm like, golly, this is like the most boomery thing I've ever seen to like. But look, you know, that guy is like a force, like a fortress of like composers and people helping him make this entity. That is Hans Zimmer, right? Like, that's the. That's the entity. That's what it is. He's not trying for Dune. He's not going out trying to compose a late 19th century type star wars thing. He's trying to go to other worlds. You know, whether he's successful in that.

[James Polis]

I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's not Jurassic park, but like that. Yeah, right. That's another thing. It's like two seconds, you're like, I know exactly where I.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

It's like that's Dune. It totally paints it in one little Middle Eastern sounding yodel thing.

[James Polis]

Right, right.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

But then he uses, he uses a duduk in the love love scene, which is a very, very old instrument. It's an Armenian clarinet, basically. And, and like, that's it. Like, man, you could have wood shopped that one a little bit more because I once, Zendaya and Chalamet are like, you know, fallen in love, man. They had this big, wide, soaring overhead shot of them on a dune right there is a bit like you. You really should have just reached for the violins there.

[James Polis]

Have you, have you held an Armenian clarinet?

[Stephen Limbaugh]

I've never held one, no. No, it's kind of. It's probably this big.

[James Polis]

It'll sell you a car. It's got a great beard.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. Good price on Mercedes, right? Glendale, best price. Best price. Yeah, that's good.

[James Polis]

I can say this, having lived with, with the dear sweet Armenian people of Glendale for, for many years. During COVID during lockdown, own fire department, own police department, kept the coffee shops open.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Polis]

Gotta love it.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Great folks. Great folks, Great folks. They got a really rich musical tradition too. Khachaturian is a phenomenal composer. Soviet Armenian composer, but he is phenomenal Right. He's not quite Shostakovich and Prokofiev, but he is probably number three.

[James Polis]

The other fun thing about Armenians in LA is you have the Soviet ones and the post Soviet ones. Yeah, it's like totally different. Vi.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

It is different vibes.

[James Polis]

Yes.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Okay. So was. What was the band System of a Down? System of a Down.

[James Polis]

Serge Tankian.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Were they pre or post Soviet?

[James Polis]

That's a great question. They must have been pre. They must have been pre.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right.

[James Polis]

I don't know when they, you know, just. Just how. How, how, how fresh off the boat they were.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

But another great band for like, you know, where does creativity come from? Studies, you know, and we can have a whole conversation that we're not about Rick Rubin and sort of how to assess. You know, I'm starting to see in my feed, like, the only people who are going to have jobs after AI are people like this guy. And it's like Rick Rubin and like the Lotus. I'm like, okay, all right. Slow, right? Decelerate. Hold on. But, you know, Rick Rubin, another one of these guys who's like about the vibe and about, like. I, you know, I try to stay out of the way of the band. I try to, like, wait for the band to sort of get stuck or ask me a question. And so with System of a Down, who had the number one record in the United States of America on 9 11.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Oh, that's right.

[James Polis]

They did a show to promote the release of that record on release day in.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

In.

[James Polis]

In the street on Sunset Boulevard in front of Tower Records and caused a riot.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Awesome.

[James Polis]

Because people are so pissed about what was going on in America.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Rock and roll, man.

[James Polis]

Yeah. You know, I mean, you put on that record and it's like track one. They're trying to build a prison.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah, they're trying to build a prison.

[James Polis]

And it's like so intense, so noisy, so belligerent. But, you know, I mean, single after single off that record too.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right.

[James Polis]

And extremely, like, you know, barbarian midgets with like, horn helmet, like that kind of vibe, but then it sort of slips into, like, these gorgeous melodies.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right, right.

[James Polis]

You know, and some of that was, you know, was Rick Rubin, like, waiting for them to get stuck and being like, just take a book off the shelf, open it up, read a line and like, sing that. See what happens.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

That's cool.

[James Polis]

And what. It. What. What did he end up with? Father, into your hands. I commend my spirit. Like, that's, you know. Oh, y. Yeah, these little things and. And they work and you hear them on krock as you're like driving through the canyons and it becomes sort of some part of your mental framework and you don't even know why.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right.

[James Polis]

But it does have this kind of provenance to it and. And some of it's very intentional and some of it is not very intentional.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right. Well, and this is why no real artists are really worried about AI because AI is not going to tell you to ever. They're.

[James Polis]

So you're not worried at all.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

No, because you can't make art by calculation. You got a concert pianist in a concert, solo concert, he's going to play a sequence of 30 something thousand notes and he's going to play it with like a 99.5% accuracy if he's great, which is remarkable that he's going to do that from memory.

[James Polis]

Yeah.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

30,000 notes. He's not going to make a single calculation. AI could not attempt that without making calculation. So what's the. So you. Whenever the inspiration is striking, whenever you have the producer in the room that's going to say, like, take. AI is never going to be able to make a suggestion like that. They might be able to take a bunch of information about how records were made and all this, and then they'll calculate a suggestion for this and that. Not worried about it because it's not going to be the right. I feel like there are AI tools that will be incredibly useful as tools, but it's not the same process. Like Herbert Dreyfuss has all this information about why nobody needs to worry about AI because it's a metaphysical thing that's happening in the creation of things. Even in just whenever you go to stand, you stand up and you go to open a door, you're not calculating the door, you just open the door and it's subconscious.

[James Polis]

You don't need eyes on your shoulders and on your knuckles to adjust and understand.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah, you don't need any. You don't need any of those things. And so artists. But there are some tools that'll be useful. The live sound guy might go the way of the dinosaur.

[James Polis]

Yeah.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Because there are going to be AI measurement tools that are going to take a venue and they're going to be able to get the reflections and then it'll be able to mix your kick drum so it sounds like Led Zeppelin. Da da da da da. And they can dial it in and it'll sound like it came off of Physical Graffiti or something. Those sorts of things probably are going to happen now. It's going to take still a Human to decide what kind of thing they want to ask the AI to do for them. But it'll make all the compression in the. In the frequency adjustments to be able to make it sound like that. Well, are we really losing much from the live sound guy anyway? The live sound guy in most venues, I mean, you've. You played the Viper Room back in the day.

[James Polis]

Well, that's, you know, most. Most venues are not built for the benefit of the musician at all. But a good live sound guy, you know, is. Is makes the difference between having. Being able to focus on the performance and sinking fully into your performance rather than being like, okay, like, monitor anymore.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Hear myself.

[James Polis]

Right.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

I know you're just sitting up there drinking beer the whole concert.

[James Polis]

And presets are fine, but, like, presets only get you so far.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right.

[James Polis]

You know, it's like failure. One of those great 90 90s bands that had had a second act in the 2010s, incredibly influential on, you know, Tool and some other bands.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Oh, cool.

[James Polis]

And they, you know, transitioned their rig away from, like, an enormous pedal board with all the connectors and everything to just everything sort of shrunken down into presets. One board. Five, you know, smart. Five. It is smart. And you could, you know, it sounded exactly the same, but they weren't, like, trying less, you know, they weren't working less hard.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

You still have to be able to, like, do the performance.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right.

[James Polis]

And, you know, you. You can't, like, preset the mic. It's still your voice. And to have someone who is, yes. Adjusting to compensate for whatever awful, you know, sonic architecture you're having to deal with that night, weather conditions, size of the room. Is it open air, is it not?

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

I think that's still going to be helpful about this AI thing, though. I mean, I have. I have a lot to say about this, you know, for good or for ill. I don't know. Sometimes it all blurs together. Let me see if I can set this up. So in my experience, there's. There's a. A significant chunk of the kind of, like, MAGA intelligentsia.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Okay.

[James Polis]

If I can. It's not an oxymoron, is people, including a lot of Southern California people who did not, you know, write down MAGA intelligentsia as the job that they wanted to have when they were kindergarteners. Right. In fact, they never really wanted to be public intellectuals or. Or anything. They wanted to be artists, they wanted to be novelists, they wanted to be filmmakers, they wanted to be musicians. They wanted to be, you know, they Wanted to live the life of the arts. And at some point in their 20s or 30s, they had a moment where they had to choose between the life of the artist slash barista, or the life of the intellectual and enough money to start a family or to buy a house or to simply not have to be a barista. And, you know, I know that when I found myself sort of at that fork in the road, it was. It was not a. You know, not for a minute was I willing to just like, serve people coffee in order to pursue my art.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right.

[James Polis]

And, you know, there. There are different reasons for that, but like, it was a choice and coming out of that kind of experience, when I think about the AI problem when it pertains to art, this is kind of inside baseball, but why not? So in my feed, my ex feed, I think it was actually just this morning, Naval, who's sort of big tech bro guy, just, you know, one line post like, I can't believe that people are actually like, no entrepreneur should be afraid that AI is going to take their job. Or no entrepreneur is afraid, okay, that I will take their job. And then Rune, who's like another, like a guy, was like, they should be. And my reaction to this was actually, you know, I think the entrepreneur, including the artist, as almost all artists now must be entrepreneurs, isn't really afraid that the AI is going to take their job, but that it's going to take their audience and that there isn't going to be anyone to pay them enough to do their art without having to surrender a pound of flesh artistically to the life of a barista or a Chipotle manager or whatever. The kind of job that you sort of have to get if you're trying to give as much of your life as you can to your art.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right. I suppose we did go through an experiment where every artist in the country did get just a lump of money to be able to pursue their art in a couple years to do it.

[James Polis]

Yes, but only if it was sufficiently vibrant and diverse.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Right? Yeah, but even if you just took regular Covid bailout money and whatever, like people got a chance for two year. And the number of artists or people that claim to be artists themselves that sat around and watched Netflix instead of pen to paper write your novel that you've been talking about, especially, you know, lived in la, like all these people is like, oh, my screenplays, Whenever it's finished, I'm gonna give it to you. And you know, they never finished the screenplay. I knew a guy that was in LA for seven years and he was gonna get his voiceover demo reel. He didn't ever make the demo reel. Seven years was he. He was slinging beers instead of coffee at bars. But this is, you know, so. So it's funny. On the one hand, you know, is there a money problem? Do they need support? It's like the right ones need support and the wrong ones do need to do something else. I think that's okay with the audience problem there is. I mean, look, you. You already have what they call library music. So if you watch any reality tv, I know you watch probably a ton.

[James Polis]

All the time.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

All the time. Especially the trashy stuff. Only whenever the women start pulling each other's hair out and this and that, there's like these big taiko drum tracks that are just sort of a knockoff of early Hans Zimmer stuff. Those are library tracks because he kind of invented this sound. And now everybody wanted to copy that sound because it's big energy and that's how you get the. The audience to keep watching and whatever. And the people making those library tracks are just worker be on the grind, just trying to churn out thousands of these things a year. And it's all trash. But it. But they buy it because production companies buy it for the reality TV shows or because it's extremely cheap. You don't have to hire a composer. You don't have to hire me to write a beautiful score for your trash reality tv because they're like, why would we do that anyway?

[James Polis]

Right? There's.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

And why not?

[James Polis]

Has no place here.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Beauty has no place here. And so AI is going to kill those guys because AI can make bad copies of the. And so you talk about audience. Yeah, there's huge audience and that's all the music that they're getting.

[James Polis]

Yeah.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

I still think that we're Talking about that 90s thing about the loud early 90s and how that, you know, there were some little. Some other artists that took a different approach that kind of popped up and then they start a thing. That probably indicates to me, I think. I think that indicates to me that despite what AI is going to be able to spit out in terms of, let's say, the mass market of music that your high art musicians, or let's say even bands, if there are any bands left, but let's say even pop artists or something are still going to probably be able to do something that's going to capture attention. I don't know if that reduces the number of them because there aren't even a whole lot of pop artists left anyway, like, early 2000s. There are tons of them, tons of boy bands. And now there's, like, three main females. Ish. Maybe four. I mean, Miley Cyrus doesn't even tour anymore, and she was, like, the biggest one of the last decade.

[James Polis]

Right.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Because she can't pack a stadium and get the insurance for it and all these things. That's why they go on these, you know, singing competition shows, to be judges, because that's a guaranteed paycheck. Probably like 20 million bucks. You show up, say a bunch of stupid stuff, you're still famous. It's like, why would I tour? Yeah, but that's also a different business. Yeah. I wish I could replace those hosts soon.

[James Polis]

Hashtag soon.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Hashtag soon.

[James Polis]

You know, and just. Just to go back to the. I mean, you know, no disrespect to. To the baristas out there, and. And I did, you know, the. The pain of having to make that choice of being like, I'm not actually willing to bet my future on my art.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

That stuck with me because I was in that position of having written my first novel in manuscript form, and it was sitting there, and I was sort of like, you know, do I. Do I enter the workforce at, you know, a level that makes a total mockery of my college degree in order to, like, see if I can actually get this novel over the finish line? It. It did haunt me. And I did try to make it happen, you know, sort of throughout the ensuing years. And I did it during COVID I did write my code novel. You know, wrote it. I wrote it, and I put it out pseudonymously at Canonic, where you can get this book.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

And. And I did it pseudonymously because, you know, I did think, like, gosh, you know, I'm. I'm a public intellectual, and, like, what if, you know, people read this and you're like, this is. This is inappropriate. You think you're, like, an artist now. Like, what? Just the fear of. Of judgment was powerful, and. And the suede thing was popular. And so I thought, like, all right, I'll just. Just do this. And, you know, probably someone's gonna write a novel or make a movie about the Jeffrey Epstein verse. You know, like, Ghislaine was still running around at large, and then she was arrested, and I was like, you know, surely this is gonna happen. And it didn't happen. It hasn't happened. And so I put my own name on it.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah.

[James Polis]

Talking to Walter Kern about it.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Nice.

[James Polis]

You know, this is, like, six weeks before the election. And when no one knew what the hell was going on, and he had read it and he was supportive and, you know, he ended up giving me a blurb for the book, but he was like, just put it out, James. We could all be chaff, you know.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Great. Yeah.

[James Polis]

And it's like, all right, I'll do it. I'll do it. So. So I put it out. It's on Amazon. It's called. I know this sounds crazy. And you can go to Amazon and get it right now for just $22. I am contractually obligated to myself. Wrote a contract for myself to squeeze in the plug.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Good for you.

[James Polis]

45 seconds. Final thoughts. Just let's let us know when this. This symphony is coming where we'll be.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Able to hear it. Not sure. I haven't thought that far in advance about.

[James Polis]

You actually haven't written anything.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

I've written. I've. I've. I've written it in. My goal only is I want to finish by the end of the year. Yeah, but that's the only goal that I sh. I feel like I should be focused on right now, before the Fourth of July. You know, there's seven months, six months. You know, I. I have a feeling maybe, look, maybe somebody will come along, some sort of benefactor of some sort, and get the thing recorded.

[James Polis]

You can say that to camera?

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yes, I can.

[James Polis]

Yes.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

And so if there's a benefactor that come along, the main thing is you just need to get the. The deal recorded. That's the most important part. I would say that's more important than a performance, because then everybody can listen to it if it's recorded and streamable and that sort of bit.

[James Polis]

Yeah.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

So that's the beautiful. That's the long and short of it.

[James Polis]

All right, get to work, you lazy bum.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

Yeah, that's right.

[James Polis]

All right. Stephen Limbo, always a pleasure.

[Stephen Limbaugh]

I appreciate it. Thank you.

[James Polis]

All right, cheers. And thank you for watching, like, subscribe if you're watching on our new YouTube channel. And until next time around, I am James Polis. This is Zero Hour, and may God have mercy on us all.