I Still Make the Music Myself

A dealership quoted me $5,900 to fix my car.

For months, that car had been stalling out in the middle of traffic in Center City, Philadelphia. Every drive was a knot in my stomach, because this wasn’t a hobby car. It was how I got to my job, and my job is how I pay my bills. So a stall in the middle of an intersection wasn’t just inconvenient. It was my whole week riding on whether the engine would catch.

Before the dealership, two professionals took a swing at it and failed. Between them I’d handed over about $500 and still had a car that died in traffic. So I did the thing you’re not supposed to do. I sat down with an AI, described what was happening, and let it walk me through the diagnosis step by step. Parts, symptoms, what to check, what to rule out.

I fixed it myself. About $130 in parts and roughly an hour of work, for a problem a dealership wanted $5,900 for and two paid pros couldn’t crack.

I want to be careful here, because I’m not trying to dunk on mechanics. Most people in the trades are sharp and honest. But I’ll say the quiet part gently. Somewhere along the way, some folks stopped caring about the work. Not everyone. Maybe not even most. But enough that a guy with a broken car and a fair budget couldn’t find a competent person with integrity to just help him at an honest price. That’s the part that stings. The AI didn’t beat the mechanic because it’s smarter. It won because it showed up, paid attention, and didn’t try to sell me anything.

That’s kind of how I feel about AI in general right now. It reminds me of Google before Google got convoluted, back when you typed a question and got an answer, not three screens of paid placements and businesses elbowing each other for your attention. AI feels like that early version. Useful. Honest-ish. Not yet fully eaten by the people trying to squeeze a dollar out of every click. I know there’s a lot of noise about data centers going up to power all of this, and I won’t pretend I have that part figured out. I just know that, for now, the tool helped me when the system didn’t.

So I lean on it. Not to make my art, but to clear space for it.

I built myself a website that hosts my own streaming platform. Then I built band sites for a friend’s musical projects. A site for a dog behaviorist. And a genuinely big one, a sports analytics platform that turned into real, paid work. None of that is stuff I went to school for. I just described what I wanted, kept iterating, and built it. Time I would’ve spent grinding through things I don’t know, I spent shipping things that matter.

But here’s where I want to be clear about what I don’t automate.

I make music the old-fashioned way. From my life, my experiences, my own two hands, and sometimes with close human friends. No AI writing my songs, no AI standing in for the part of this that is actually me. I see artists online saying they won’t go to a show if a band used AI to make the flyer, and I get it. I prefer human-made art too. I’ve been lucky enough to have one of my favorite illustrators handle most of the Cookie Rabinowitz album artwork over the years. Real art, from a real artist.

But it’s not always easy to find the right artist. Same as it’s not always easy to find a reliable mechanic with integrity. I experimented with AI illustration on a couple of singles, my own prompting, as a test, because it was the only option I had with no budget and, more importantly, with the one artist I trust not available. In the end? I didn’t love it. I used it anyway, because it was the door that was open. But I didn’t love it.

So going forward, I’m not wrapping my music in AI art. Not on principle, exactly. I just don’t think it’s that good. It’s homogenized. And homogenized is the one thing I’m not. Maybe the next cover is me writing the song title on a napkin. Maybe there’s no artwork at all. After all, I make music, not drawings. Maybe I’ll get into photography and shoot a couple of nude selfies for my next album covers. Who knows. Ha.

But one thing I can promise you. I’ll always make the music myself. From my life. For the simple reason of connecting to someone who feels the way I do, or who at least understands it, and maybe shaking their booty to one of my tunes.

Let the machines handle the busywork. The car, the websites, the grind. I’ll keep the part that’s actually me.

Oh, and full disclosure: I didn’t sit down and write this like a real essayist. I just ripped these thoughts out loud, talking, and had AI turn the rambling into something you could actually read without getting a headache. After all, I write SONG lyrics, not articles. B )

Life is beautiful. Change is exciting.

I love you.