Episode 87 - ft Jeff Brandt: If Video Killed the Radio Star, Will AI Kill the Studio Star?

In this episode of ALPS In Brief, our Risk Manager Mark Bassingthwaighte sits down with University of Montana Professor Jeff Brandt to talk about synthesizers, AI, and his class on the history of rock and roll.

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Transcript: 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Hello, I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, the Risk Manager here at ALPS, and welcome to ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful Downtown Missoula, Montana. As many of you know, I have been in Florida now for a number of years, but I'm back at the home office here, and we have a special event every two years where we bring in a lot of our bar associates from various bar associations around the country. Then we have some special speakers that come in and talk about all kinds of things. 

I have just finished attending a presentation given by Jeff Brandt, who is a professor here at the university and does a course on the history of music. I got to say, in all honesty, folks, I wish you could all have been here. This was one of the most fun, creative presentations I've seen in a long, long time. Jeff, it's a pleasure to have you here. Before we get started, can I ask you to take just a little bit of time and tell us about who you are? 

Jeff Brandt: 

Okay, so I was born in Sitka, Alaska, which is a tiny, well, it's a big island actually, but a tiny town on a big island in Southeast Alaska. Average rainfall there is about 96 inches per year, so it's a Pacific Coast rainforest. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Right. 

Jeff Brandt: 

I went to college in Tacoma, Washington at Pacific Lutheran University. Taught private percussion lessons after that for about 20 years. Somewhere in the middle or somewhere in there, I got my graduate teaching degree. Then we ended up in Missoula, Montana as a result. Then by happenstance, the History of Rock & Roll as a course fell into my lap. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

That was an established course before you got here? 

Jeff Brandt: 

It was. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Okay. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Yeah. There were a lot of people that have taught it prior to me, but when I was given the opportunity to run with it, it was one of the first online courses developed at the University of Montana, and that's really when I dug in because I knew that teaching it in an online setting, I was going to have to be more aware of the points I was trying to get across and how they were delivered. I dug deeper and deeper into the historical aspect of the course, and then I just started creating these different slide programs. Now I'm on my third set of slides and I think it's my final because they're so good now I don't want to mess with them, but that's my brief history. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

I didn't realize this is online. Could anybody get online and just take this course? 

Jeff Brandt: 

Anybody can take it online. I'll give my spiel about online education, to be honest here, is I think online education is good if you have time to do it. I think in-person education, generally speaking, is better. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

I would agree with you. 

Jeff Brandt: 

There are so many different resources now for people to learn. Just with YouTube alone, you can go down an endless pit of stuff on one member of one obscure band, it seems. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Yeah. Mine is one of the many resources out there. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

You're welcome to share. Folks, I'm telling you, if you have any interest at all in the history of rock and roll and want to have some awesome fun, this is a course I would encourage you to take and see. I didn't realize. How might folks find this? 

Jeff Brandt: 

Well, you go to the University of Montana. I believe you have to register as a student. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Okay. 

Jeff Brandt: 

You think that I would know all the hoops you have you have to jump through. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

No, that's fine. 

Jeff Brandt: 

You have to jump through several hoops and then you can take online classes. I do encourage people who are not working 40 hours a week and who are interested in really digging in, to take it in-person because there's so much more interaction with the way the clips are played and the way the slides are presented. Get on the University of Montana website and search it, and you can join the online course or the face-to-face. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

You clearly have a passion. It just seems like listening to you, you're having just a ton of fun too, and I love that. Folks, I can also share this course is I think the number one or the number two top. 

Jeff Brandt: 

It's one or two or three. It depends on the year. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. Why do you do this? 

Jeff Brandt: 

Well, honestly, the first time it fell in my lap. I was just kind of given the opportunity to sub for somebody and subbing for somebody in a college course is, it's a lot to take on because you jump into it usually with all of their materials because that's usually the unwritten rule is, "I'll let you use my stuff." I mean, back then, I mean, it makes me sound like a dinosaur, but the person that gave me the stuff had overheads, and so I was using overhead. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Wow. Yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Maybe it was a year later that I was using slides, but they gave me their overheads. I jump in, I'm starting to do this, and honestly, I was scared because I guess when you're, I can speak as a male when you're 23, 24, 25, you think you know a lot of stuff. I just cracked open the first of two textbooks that this prof was using, and I was like, "Oh, boy, do I know nothing and I'm teaching it in three weeks." 

Then fast-forward, I end up digging in reading resources, listening to a lot of albums. I'll be honest with you, I hadn't really dug into the Beatles that much prior because there were so many other acts that I was interested in. Then I started listening to their catalog and the Rolling Stones, and again, that's a tiny scratch on the surface that doesn't include the other British bands like The Animals and The Who and Led Zeppelin and then John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers and all these other in-depth things you can go in. That's just the British blues scene. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Right. 

Jeff Brandt: 

What I realized was in order to make this work and why I continued to want to do it, is what I would need to do is have what I would call kind of a surfacey understanding of about 300 to 400 acts in the entertainment business. Gradually bit by bit, the department would buy my recordings. I would go and dig in and listen to everything from Blind Lemon Jefferson to the Spice Girls. I would just year-by-year chip away. When you get into a subject like counted cross-stitch or skiing or building doors, you get better at it and you realize ways to enjoy it more. 

I got to a point where I created my final, what I call my final set of slides, and I really, really carefully planned out the layout of the slides, how the format of the class was going to move and how I was going to justify only featuring certain artists as opposed to leaving out bands, like the one I always pick on is AC/DC because they're not really a part of the course. That's why I do it and why I like to do it, because it's like anything else where you get into it, then you kind of become addicted once you have a little taste. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah, yeah, I get that. Year after year, how do I want to say this? Let me do it this way. What do you hope students get out of your class? 

Jeff Brandt: 

Well, there are these objectives that we write in the syllabus that you're supposed to abide by, et cetera, et cetera, and I do, but what I really want people to get out of the course is I want them to understand a general approach, or I guess have a general understanding of the social history that rock and roll highlights in America. That's one thing. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Okay. 

Jeff Brandt: 

I want them to understand that rock and roll is not white, it's not Elvis Presley, it's not AC/DC, it's not, even though I love them, it's not Metallica. It is something that came about quite by accident and through a lot of pain. That part is kind of an inconvenient truth that some students don't like. I have to warn people in the beginning, "I'm not going to sugar coat this, I'm going to bring it directly to you. Some of the things are inconvenient truths that you may not have faced prior. Depending on how invested you are in learning as a person, it may buck your understanding of how this thing has worked." 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Just for example, the inconvenient truth, like I was mentioning today that Elvis Presley is a cover artist. Bill Haley is a cover artist. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Mm-hmm. 

Jeff Brandt: 

They're not original rock and roll artists. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Right. 

Jeff Brandt: 

The original rock and roll artists are people like Chuck Berry and Little Richard and Bo Diddley and all of the artists on Chess Records. Those are the original rock and roll artists, but because of the unfortunate existence of so much racism in our country, a lot of those people were shoved aside because it was easier to market people with light skin. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

So interesting. 

Jeff Brandt: 

That's another thing I wanted to go with and maybe if I'm going to highlight a third thing I want them to go away with, is an understanding that you can listen to more than one subgenre within rock and roll. You get people that are "metalheads" and people that are into techno pop or house or people that seventies rock, or here's another category I have, people that love the sixties. They have blinders on. If it's between '64 and '69, it's in, and if it's '70 and on, it's out. The understanding that if you listen to pick your artist, like name a person, let's just pick like Katy Perry. If you listen to Katy Perry and you put hours into it, you will grow to like that artist. If you listen to Destiny's Child, you will grow, if you listen to Frank Zappa, you will grow to like it. I want express in that third point that it takes time to do that, and it's an investment and it's a willing investment. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

It's very interesting. I appreciate what you're sharing, and again, after hearing what you had to say here just a few moments ago, it has changed how I look at certain things. What I liked about it, it helps understand the culture, understand music in general, where it comes from. I mean, I have a greater sensitivity. Yeah, I just thought it was very good. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Well, it's almost like one thing along those lines, it's almost like with Louis Armstrong. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Louis Armstrong was this one of several trumpet or cornet players as they were originally, in the early jazz era that was a soloist and gained a following from the general public, the general population in the United States. Now, Louis was seen as a performer on stage, but at the same time, he couldn't stay in the same hotels, he couldn't eat in the same restaurants. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Right. 

Jeff Brandt: 

He could walk on stage in a club, but not eat at the restaurant in the club. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. Yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

He would've to be fed backstage and those kind of inconvenient truths to uncover that for people in a day when I think it's easy to brush that aside and highlight that he was an ambassador to the world in the 1970s. Yeah, in the seventies he was, but for the majority of his time as a performer, he was only respected as a performer, not as a human being. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Wow. I agree with you, that is a great message I think. God bless. These are important things. 

Jeff Brandt: 

I mean, I think that, and another thing that's along those lines too, it's a little bit of a stretch as a parallel, but it is a parallel, is that performers in rock and roll, many times are actors. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Okay. 

Jeff Brandt: 

If you're in a heavy metal band and you're acting all angry on stage and chugging it away on your guitar up there and singing these lyrics that are full of vitriol, that doesn't necessarily define who you were at breakfast at 10 o'clock that morning or who you are when you're off tour with your wife and kids or with your partner at the winery or whatever. That's a different thing. There are a lot of people that can't get past that. They see name your hard rock artist, "That's an evil person." That person puts on sweatpants, watches reruns of shows that we all like on Netflix, enjoys a donut every now and again, and takes a walk with dog. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

They're just real people, right? 

Jeff Brandt: 

They're real people. That part is also misunderstood about rock and roll in the same way that people can't or don't want to unveil the truth about black artists. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Right. Right. One of the things, we talked a little bit last night, and again, you were sharing this in your presentation, one of the things that really sort of struck me was your comments about synthesizers. I'm a guy that likes that sound, but I didn't fully appreciate its impact and the evolution and how that impacted the artists of the day. I guess I'd have to honestly say I'm still not sure where you come out on synthesizing. Is that a good thing? Is it a bad thing? I'd be curious, what's your thought about? 

Jeff Brandt: 

Okay. Well, I mean, I own a synthesizer. Every band I've played in has used a synthesizer. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Okay. 

Jeff Brandt: 

I'm not against synthesizers. I also don't dislike house music. I don't dislike techno pop. I don't dislike the synth revolution that happened in the late, let's call it the late seventies to the early eighties where it exploded, where everybody had to have a Yamaha DX7. I don't dislike that. What I think is problematic, is the idea that this machine is everything. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Right. 

Jeff Brandt: 

I think the other part that's problematic is that, and this is going to make me sound like I'm super old because my instrument, my main instrument is drum set. People will ask me, "Well, why haven't you dug into this or this or this about the history of rock and roll?" I say, "Well, I also practice instruments and I have a passion for playing them." To me, it's not just about reading and regurgitating facts, it's about keeping up my musical skills. What happens when you get into the world of synth is to some degree, you lose the world of any sort of musical technique because the machine can do so much of it for you. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Okay. Right. 

Jeff Brandt: 

I think that the bad side of synth is highlighted like groups like Human League, because if you look at a group like Human League and they're early stuff, it sounds like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, it's very robotic and synthesized, as we should say, in the sense that everything is exactly placed on the exact moment of the exact quarter of the beat. That there is no doubt in your mind exactly where the center of the beat is. You can press a button and the synthesizer can do that. Whereas on piano, you have to go to make the same da-da-da-da-da-da, you have to go like fingers, 4, 3, 2, 1, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da over and over again to make that same key do that. To some degree, whenever electronics jump to the next level, we lose a tiny bit of our ability to perform on those instruments. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Okay. Yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Like with synth, you lose a little bit of ability to perform on a general keyboard. With electric guitar, you lose a little bit of ability to perform on an acoustic guitar. With electric drums, you lose a little bit of ability to play an acoustic drum set. I mean, imagine if there was an electric French horn, for example. French horn is one of the most difficult instruments to play, right? 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Right, of course. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Period. I mean, it's like a French horn. Missing notes on a French horn is a Monday, that's normal. You can't avoid it. Imagine if there were a way to synthesize so that it would know that your note was going to be missed by your embouchure, and it would bring the correct note out. We would lose some of the, maybe the desire to practice and get it to where we are. That's where I feel it's the bad side of synth. But in general, I'm with you. I like the sound of the synthesizer. I like the ideas you can get from the synthesizer. I even like the drum ideas that you get from a synthesizer. I think that we were talking about last night, it's like you can go too far with something, where you need to think about reining it back in. It's like alcohol. It's like collecting cars. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. Yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

It's like colors of carpet in your home. At what point in time do you say enough is enough. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. Yeah. Well, my interest in this, it's my understanding again, that when this technology, as it sort of evolved and really became mainstream, there were a lot of responses. One of which was this is going to put people out of work because it was the Moody Blues, you could go and see the orchestra. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Didn't need the spring place. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

It changes. I hear you can lose some skill sets because the machine is doing it for you, but it also brings about, I think, some creativity. It seems to me once the revolution happened, the music industry didn't go away, but how it works changed. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Yes. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

We're at a point where I think, and even involved where, we're having all kinds of discussions and reactions with the evolution of generative AI. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Mm-hmm. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

There are people saying, "This is going to take jobs away from all kinds of people," not just musicians with the synth, but I also can see that this could bring about some incredible creativity opportunities, allowing just the exploration of music to go far further in directions we've made never even think of right now. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Right. Right. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Could you do all sorts of things with tones, vocal tones, and I don't know. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Yes. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

What is your thought? Do you see this as a game changer? Is this much ado about nothing? 

Jeff Brandt: 

Well, first of all, I think that it's inevitable. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Okay. 

Jeff Brandt: 

You could use the Pandora's box example. Once Pandora's box is open, then it's open and you can't shut it again. Well, the synthesizer was going to be developed, I'll tell you why, is because it comes from the pipe organ. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Oh, really? 

Jeff Brandt: 

The pipe organ is the first synthesizer. The pipe organ has stops that create different sounds. If you study the pipe organ going way back, you look at real pipe organs, they have sounds on them where you pull stops out and make it sound like a flute and make it sound like a trumpet. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

I never thought about it that way, but you're right. Yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

It has a pedal system because pipe organ players have to read three staves. They read treble, they read bass, and then they read sub bass, as I'll call it. I honestly don't know the exact term, but another bass clef for their feet. They're basically playing, no pun intended, a synthesizer with their feet, while they're playing two synths with their hands. That's the original synth. People that think that this came about in like '64, it's been around since Bach, and guess what? It's not going away. 

I think the part about the synthesizer and change, is that it is inevitable that AI along with that new technologies will enter where new possibilities will come up. I think that the good side, is some things are a little bit easier for us to do. For example, Pro Tools is a program where you can click into the program and cut right in, and it both takes the ambient sounds from before and the ambient sounds after and blends it together so you can't tell the person was clicked in at that moment. That's amazing. That makes it simpler. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Right. 

Jeff Brandt: 

It saves money for people that own Pro, it saves time, and humans are generally speaking all about that. I mean, if there's a cherry tree here and there's a bigger cherry tree across the river and you're like, "I'm going to stay with this cherry tree right here because I don't want to cross the river." That's what we would literally call the lowest hanging fruit. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Right. 

Jeff Brandt: 

With a synthesizer, if there is an option to make something a little bit simpler, people are going to use it. Again, there's the when is when part, when is enough enough? When is too much, too much, is what I mean. I think with AI, it's going to inevitably bring up other options that we haven't thought of, and it's inevitably going to bring about sounds or feelings or grooves or patterns that will catch people's ears that you cannot create with guitar rhythm guitar standard acoustic bass, or electric acoustic bass and drums, and we like that change. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Speaking personally, is your, I guess, conclusion or do you see the rise of AI, generative AI then, as a positive development? Are you optimistic looking forward to see what the music industry does with this? Or is it cautious optimism? 

Jeff Brandt: 

I'd say it's cautious optimism because it is true, for example, let's just go with trucks, there are trucks now that can be self-driven. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Right. 

Jeff Brandt: 

I don't necessarily think that's a good thing. First of all, I think that we can put things on trains, and I know I sound like a total socialist here, but you can put things on trains and all of those cars are "self-driven" by the one engineer up there, and it's very efficient. Trucks that are self-driven will become a problem at some point because you can hack into that. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yes. 

Jeff Brandt: 

You can't hack into a human's mind nearly as easy, so there's that. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

I think that it's good to have the humans operating things. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

At the same time with the music business and recording, if you go back to the sixties and then the seventies, you had tons of studios that were busy hour by hour, day by day, week by week. You'd have to book into that studio six months in advance to get a four-hour space. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Right. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Now, there are studios that are completely abandoned because they've moved into people's homes because of the laptop, because of microphones like the one we're using right here, and because of the synthesizer. Is it good or is it worse? It's change. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

That's what it is. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Is it going to affect having lots and lots of people play a string track versus using a synthesizer to simply overdub things? Yes, it's going to affect that. Is it going to affect it to the point where somebody goes to a symphony orchestra or a jazz concert and they see 18 mannequins on stage holding up instruments, and all of it comes from a synthesizer? I doubt it because we like to watch artists perform. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Like with hip-hop, almost all of the time in the hip-hop genre or any sub-genre or sub-sub-genre of hip-hop, you have people that are using synthesizers to create the entire track other than the vocals. They're even manipulating the vocals using the synth. When they go on tour, now, increasingly there are people that are using instrumentalists on tour because it's more interesting to look at. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

That makes sense, yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

You don't want just two turntables and a microphone back there because that's all it is. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. Yeah. Why pay all the money to go? 

Jeff Brandt: 

When you go on tour, it's convenient for artists like Mariah Carey to just take the synths and go out there, but she knows that when she can afford to hire the string players, it looks cool. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. Yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

I think it's a case of are you going to see the glass as half full or half empty? It's here. It's been here since the pipe organ. It's going to stay. It's a question of when do you say enough is enough, and how do you look at it from your perspective as a musician? I guess I'd add one more thing. If you're afraid of the synthesizer, learn to use one. Right there. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I really, really appreciate and love everything that you've shared. Folks, one of the reasons I wanted to do this, as you well are aware, our profession is struggling. There's a lot of people that are very much embracing the AI evolution and a lot of others very, very concerned about will they have a job. A lot of legal staff are concerned, "Will I have a job in a couple more years?" I'm using AI myself to do a lot of writing, and it's saving me tons of time, and it elevates my game. It really does. I still am the one that policy, it's an idea generator for me. 

Getting back to this, I'm hoping that it is helpful to you who are listening, as we think about the challenges, the concerns, work through this, it's easier to hear and get some thoughts about how we should be responding or what do we do with all this, when we talk about it in the context of something else. Discussing this as it relates to music, I think is very eye-opening. I love the comment, you are absolutely right this synthesizer. 

Jeff Brandt: 

It's hard to say. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

I always get tongue-twisted. 

Jeff Brandt: 

It's really tough to say. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

It's been around since Bach. 

Jeff Brandt: 

It's been around since the organ. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

I never really understood that. I think some similar things can be said about AI. It's been here a lot longer than we realize. Not in the same way, generative AI is certainly very, very new. I am cautiously optimistic about it. I would encourage you folks to just take a realistic look, take some opportunities, if you're threatened by it, pick up the instrument and learn it, and it can help your practice. I just think it's a positive thing overall. We got to be careful going too far. I can keep rambling on about this stuff for a long time. I have so many planes in my head up right now. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Well, there's one more thing that's worth adding. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Please, please. 

Jeff Brandt: 

There's a drummer in LA named Greg Bissonette. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yes. 

Jeff Brandt: 

He's a studio drummer. He went to University of North Texas. He's played with lots of different artists. Greg Bissonette has always made his living playing drums. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Okay. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Now, when he first entered the studio scene in Los Angeles, as far as I know, he was going to studios and recording. You'd get your drums carted over to the studio by a carting service. You'd show up, you'd play the gig, which was a recording gig, and then you would pack your stuff up or the carting service would pack your stuff up. You'd go home and you'd be waiting for your next booked gig. Now, Greg has a microphone set up in his home. People send him a file. He listens to the file. There's maybe a click track on it, or maybe not, maybe he has to create his note. I mean, I don't know him personally, but if you need a reference for Greg Bissonette, he played all of the in-between clips on the Friends show. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Oh, seriously? 

Jeff Brandt: 

He's that guy and he's done a lot more than that. Understand that the convenience of somebody emailing you a file or dropping a file in a box and you download this file and then go ahead and say, "Okay, I'm going to add drums to this track," and you do it from your home studio. There are some good things about this. Number one, he's not driving a car in LA traffic to a studio, which means he gets to spend more time at home and more time with his family. That's better for the environment. Electric car or not, it's better. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Agreed. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Okay. It doesn't have the same in-person work environment that you had say in the sixties when the Fab Four or the Rolling Stones are right there together, hashing it out like, "What does this mean?" That's different. The truth of the matter is, I don't think anybody who's listening to something Greg Bissonette has recorded probably would go, "Oh, well, this obviously is something this guy did at his home studio with the downloaded file." In that way, it doesn't matter. Again, it's a choice of how do you want to do the track? Is it a jazz band? You probably need to come together and play. Is it a digital track and they want live drums on it? 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Send it, who cares? 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Right. 

Jeff Brandt: 

Again, this idea of change is the only constant. I mean, maybe I'll be eating my own words and I'll be replaced by a robot that has all of the personality of a human being and knows every single history of rock and roll fact. Sure. Maybe that'll happen. I doubt it. People like Greg Bissonette are still out there finding a creative way to make a living simply because they went, "Oh, now I need the studio at home. Oh, now I need this technology so that the files can be sent to me. I need my microphones, everything tuned up." 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

You still find a way to do it, and I think that we will. I've never bought that line about AI and knock on wood, that it's going to come together and destroy the human race. I think that's silly. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah, I do too. 

Jeff Brandt: 

I think what it's going to do is it's going to be one of those things where we just have to be careful how we use it. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

I think you could say we have to be careful. We have to be careful about how we drive Hummers. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. 

Jeff Brandt: 

We have to be careful about not making buildings too tall. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Right. 

Jeff Brandt: 

We have to be careful about not making wave machines so powerful that kids get knocked over when they're going to a wave machine at a water park to have fun. It's pretty simple stuff. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. I want to thank you for taking the time to sit down and talk. You have said so eloquently, things that I have trouble saying. I can't put it into words in the same way you do. All I can say is, folks, Jeff, the insights here, what I'm trying to get across, I hope it's self-evident now, you're summarizing all this just perfectly. That's it. I appreciate your coming. I'll let all of you get back to work. If you have any thoughts, questions, concerns on risk management, ethics, insurance, etc, remember, I'm not the Risk Manager of Alps, I'm hired by Alps to be your Risk Manager. Feel free to reach out anytime. It's MBass@Alpsinsurance.com. Good talking to you all. Take care. Bye-bye.