Larry Glover Live 7-28-26

I'm fascinated with music and one of the most accomplished Lexington music figures is Michael Jonathan. Guys, I've been around for a long time. I met Michael. probably 30 years ago. He probably doesn't remember meeting me then, but I was, I shared an office with Tom Martin back in the day, and Michael was on Tom's show a lot back then when he was, I guess, on the rhythm and news program that Tom would do on this radio station. The actual timeslide, I think it's the same there. But folk singer, producer, author, playwright, which I didn't know. So we welcome Michael Jonathan to the program. Michael, welcome, as always. I appreciate your time. Thank you very much. I look forward to this conversation. Absolutely, Larry. Thank you so much for having me on. And I have to say, before we even start, I'm glad you mentioned Tom Martin. Central Kentucky is so lucky. It's one of the few communities in the nation that has a very healthy, proactive community-driven radio community. Jack Patty and you and Cruiser. I mean, you guys do such a great job. Thank you. And radio in general across central Kentucky is it's wonderful to see you. You really do a good job keeping the voice of the front porch alive and special. Well, I really appreciate that. You know, and Michael, I mean, this comes up a lot in our program about the same topics we're going to be talking about today about the AI and, you know, and radio going away. I think in many ways, local. local talk radio is really one of the very few that you really can't get rid of, that you can't replicate through artificial intelligence. You can have, you know, music stations just basically, you know, play like Spotify and Pandora, Apple Music. I mean, I can see why music stations might be in some trouble, but I think local talk radio is probably the safest among the formats in this medium just because how do you write algorithms to produce local talk radio? Well, you know, I hope your audience really takes note of what you're talking about. AM Radio. which WVLK is a powerful part of the WSM out of Nashville. They're trying to remove AM completely. New cars are being released with no AM on the dial, just like there's no CD players anymore. It's a wrecking of a format. And, you know, when it's snowing out and when there's bad weather, you know, where do the most people turn? Turns to you guys.

Yeah. You can see the streaming numbers in real time. Yeah. Well, you know, here recently, IHeart Radio canned hundreds of their on-air personnel. And I know one of the I-Heart executives, and they are toying, since we're talking about AI, you know, they can program. an algorithm where it could sound like Larry Glover's voice. It can read the local news. It could talk about what's happening with traffic and the time and temperature, but it's not real. Yeah. Yeah, it is, it is very, very concerning. I mean, do you feel like that we are 20 years from now, Michael, will even be entertained by real people any longer? You know, The music and the art of America's front porch is never going to go away. The music of neighbors and families and real organic, rustic, I mean, the front porch is the stage of rural America. It's not going to go anywhere. However, you look at the big guys like Christopher Nolan, who just came out with The Odyssey. And he said that AI is a Trojan horse, and everybody knows the Greeks are hiding inside. Yeah, ironically, is it? NBC News just had a story, like, one or two days ago, that computer bots outnumber humans on the Internet for the first time in history. That's amazing. You know, one of my listeners has told me just during the break, Michael, that they're making an AI version of The Odyssey, and it costs $80,000 to make, and the actress version was $2.50 million. It'll be interesting to kind of compare the two. I mean, and I know the AI is only going to get better, too, by the way. Well, I read that it's Elon Musk behind that. He just wants to prove AI can do it. but but you know to understand the effect of AI on the music industry you have to have a if I can let me give you a snapshot of what's actually happening in the music world years ago when streaming came on strong The idea of mechanical royalties, the CDs and LPs where artists, you know, make a third of their money on album sales went away. Nobody dreamed five years ago, Larry, that the biggest retailer of CDs in America was going to be Cracker Barrel. Best buys out. Walmart out. Barnes and Nobles out, there's not a single record store chain left in America. They're gone. Thank goodness for our little mom and pop stores, right? Our little local hometown. Cut corners. Yeah, exactly. But the chains are gone because nobody's buying CDs anymore. You ever hear the guitar player Joe Bonamasa?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's like, he played Rupp Arena for Pete's sake. He put out a post and a video the other day that he has completely given up on the idea of record sales. It's over. The record business is over, which is why, I want your audience to know this, that's why concert ticket prices are sky high. There's no doubt. Yeah, you're exactly right. We're talking with Michael Jonathan, a local performer, artist, producer, folk singer, and national radio host with over 500 stations that tune into Woodsongs every week. You're exactly right, Michael, because I've talked about this on my program a lot, is that the reason why, I mean, I'm a fan of, there's an up-and-coming rock band called Greta Van Fleet. I don't know if you've ever heard of them now. Yeah, they have little bit of a Led Zeppelin kind of sound. I like them. And my, my, ironically enough, it was the weekend. My daughter, my wife went to Chicago, Soldier Phyllisie Taylor Swift. I really glad they, she had a friend of hers that works at the Kentucky Center Louisville and they knew somebody in Chicago and got some tickets for face value for $250. So you're great seats. But that weekend, I was like, well, you're Gretaven Fleets in Nashville. I mean, I'll just run down to Nashville and see Gretaven Fleet. And this is a band that's coming up and coming band, not a huge following. I mean, come up a cult. The U.S. Soccer Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Klingeberg. And after interviewing so many dudes during this men's World Cup, I'm so happy. to be back with my U.S. women's national team players. I know the U.S. men's national team has changed how I think about myself, how I think about being an American, how I think about being on a team. It's one year out from that World Cup, and we're going to talk about the brightest prospects in U.S. soccer. You ready? I'm ready. Let's do it. The U.S. soccer podcast presented by Henko. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. Follow and ruling anything. And the tickets were $400. You know, but that's the only way they can make money now. Well, what it's doing, it's killing the market. You overpriced anything. If you overpriced apples, you kill the Apple market. And the audience is getting... bombarded with not just the number of concerts happening, but the price of those tickets. And it's because the music industry, the record business is so fractured, it technically doesn't exist anymore. Look, Fleetwood Mac, they were thinking of coming together, and they were like, why? Why? Why are we putting out a record? They decided not to do it. It wasn't worth it. That is amazing that it's not worth it to come up. It is amazing that it's for bands like that, it's not worth it to continue recording. There's no value in it. Well, that doesn't mean that they're still not writing songs or they don't love the music or they don't love being in front of the audience. It's the music industry has become executive driven, not artist driven.

Can I give you a perfect example? Yeah. There's something in music that your audience may not have heard of called sync licensing. This is where if Larry Glover puts out an album and you decide to do a Gordon Lightfoot song on your album, you have to pay Gordon Lightfoot's publisher a license fee in order to record the song. The problem is Larry Glover is not permitted to perform that song. anywhere unless that broadcaster or venue is licensed yet again and and and this is what's killing a lot of the music business because artists can't play other people songs anymore cost too much we had a little a little 11 year old boy on Wood songs. We love to present kids that come from all over the nation beyond Wood songs. They get to play one song. He was going to play a medley on his little fiddle, 11 years old, of two traditional public domain songs. Didn't cost anything. It was public domain. Nobody owned them. He got excited. The TV cameras, radio, lights, big audience, on a stage, surrounded by artists, all the excitement. he decided to play nine seconds of the theme from the Flintstones in between his two public domain songs. The publishers now use AI-driven listening machines, and they listen to these, AI listens to everything, and the minute they find a broadcast using one of their property, the lawyers get engaged. Yeah. And it just ruins it for everything. It's only vibrating air, people. It's the most litigious art form in the world now, and it's killing it. We're talking with Michael Jonathan, a local musician, artist, and songwriter and radio host performer about the impact of artificial intelligence on music specifically, but also entertainment in general. Do you feel like that the fact that there's no ability to really make any money? There's no ability to make money on... you know, recording music and recording new music and CD sales and those kinds of things, that it's making it difficult for new artists to define footing. I mean, you know, if you had a hit song, if you wrote one song that just took off, you could, you could probably get a record label to front you some money and to get you into a studio to record a full album and maybe even get like a two-album deal, something like that. But if there's no money to be made in recordings, what happens to record labels and how? How do people get discovered? How do people make a living touring if nobody's ever heard them before? Well, it even goes deeper than that, Larry. And you're making a very good point. As the music business changes and record sales go away and the economy of music disintegrates, we're losing the engineers that know how to create pet sounds.

It can drive itself. It can power itself. It can think for itself. It can change human nature on its own. You know, there's a good, and we have to understand, there's a good part, Larry, to AI. When you go to Google and you want to find out who is Larry Glover and his wonderful career, well, that's AI telling you the information. That's pretty accurate. You know, but AI is replacing the need for legal counsel, medical counsel, arborists. You go research something about trees. You don't need a real arborist anymore. It's right there. Yeah. Yeah, I have a friend of mine that he works in finance and he's on with me every other Wednesday. And he and I had an interesting conversation one day that we're getting to the point now where whether you like it or not, universal basic income may be necessary because AI will eliminate so many jobs. There just won't be enough jobs for people to earn a living. And you'll have to create a universal basic income for people to be able to survive. They will basically just wait for the, I guess, the digital currency to drop it our. in our digital account and we'll just be entertained by bots all day long. I mean, just, you do wonder if you get to a point where you sort of, you just become detached to reality of what, what real life is like and communicating with people and having that, that personal touch was my wife, my wife works with kids a lot and she sees kids texting each other sitting three feet away rather than talk. Exactly. Well, and you're quoting Elon Musk right now. Elon Musk said exactly what you're saying. That, you know, he said that by 2030, the need for physical money will be obsolete. Have you ever heard of a guy named Jeffrey Hinton? Jeffrey Hinton? They call his nickname. He's the godfather of AI. He recently wrote a thing that said that AI can rewrite its own code now and completely devoid of human control in just the next couple of years. I do think we need a master switch to throw the breaker switch, so to speak, on it all. But the thing, Michael, and I'll let you go, is that if we become so reliant on it, though, If it went away suddenly, if there was some cataclysmic event where it lost all that energy and AI all went away, you know, would we be able to survive? If we stop teaching kids basic functions, stop teaching ourselves basic things to survive. If we just become so reliant on our computer that we can no longer add. We can no longer, I mean, I mean, like I had to teach my father-in-law passed away recently and he had wonderful penmanship and he and I were very close. He gave me his favorite fountain pen. And I've been dedicated to teach myself how to write in cursive again. again because i'd forgotten how to do it you know i mean people can kids can kids do basic math to make change if if you're selling something and you know can he can he can

Mike Drop, hosted by former Navy SEAL Mike Ridland. How would you characterize your prowess? I'd say my style is that I just kind of outwork everybody until I get there because I'm not a quitter. It's just you. It's yourself. Everything else is team-oriented. The motivation, it was a sort of anger at myself for being weak. That ends up being the driving factor. That anger, that pride, that ego, I think it's a muscle. It gets stronger. When you take that voice seriously, you start to change your life. Mike Drop, follow and listen on your favorite platform. It crack at 10. You know what I mean? I think these are legitimate concerns if we become so reliant computers to do everything for us. Well, Larry, we are living among the first generation in human history that gets all of its art and music as ones and zeros rapid scroll phone cell phone scrolling digital tsunami. You know, their attention, you know, it's a generation that grew up on 140 character tweets. You know, they don't read books or they don't, you know, you know, and we need to retrain our kids the value of working in a garden and sitting with grandpa and learning the guitar and that the spirit of America's front porch, you know, you know, Jesse Stewart a long time ago said that if America was a body, Kentucky would be its heart. You know, Kentucky is very much the comfortable rocking chair of America's front porch. And we get surrounded by these data centers wrecking the spirit of that front porch, we're in danger of losing something precious. Michael, I got to go. I listen. I really enjoyed the conversation. We're going to do this again. And we're going to have you on a lot more often. I just really enjoy the conversation. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Larry, you're a champion. Thanks for having me on. Welcome back to our program here on Lering Lever Live here on 97.3 FM, WV, okay? Like AI could create a song this good. I mean, it couldn't feel the passion of I melt with you, right? I thought that was really interesting interview. I think Michael's an interesting guy to talk to. I really enjoyed it. And we're getting really, really good feedback from the interview from people listening. And he's just an interesting guy. I really enjoyed it. Hope you did as well. We're going to have him back again soon if he's willing. Hopefully he will. He'll be willing to come back on. A.L. K.C. in the Sunshine Band. Could AI recreate this? I mean, think about that. AI could create a fictional guitarist that would blow Eddie Van Halen away. A.I. could basically have a guitar that's faster than anybody could ever, faster than any human being could actually ever be. Larry, that in conversation with Montana was just about to get interesting. I mean, I just, I mean, I'm not going to allow something to get said like that that can't be verified. That's, you know, they're kind of rumoring like that. I'm just, I'm not a fan of. 253-595. The Stuttgart Motors text line 253-595, then we'll get to your calls, questions, and comments.

The Reds and Cleveland playing in Cincinnati doubleheader today, a day night double header, the old Twy-night doubleheader. And it got Chase Burns in the opening game for the Red Legs. It looks like Cleveland might have scored in the first on a two-up bases loaded situation. Maybe a little bit of a tough jam for Chase to get out of. Dave writes, Oh, What a Life. Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels, Daily Schedule when he was at Golden Eye, his house in Jamaica. 7.30 a.m. Get up with the birds and bathe in the ocean, then back for breakfast. Scrambled eggs and sit in the garden until 10 a.m. Sit down, write 1,500 words without looking back. 12.15. Snorkel around the bay looking for lobsters, and then come back. I have a couple of pink gins with lunch. 2.30 to 4. Ciesta. 4 o'clock. Sit in the garden for an hour and then go for another swim. 5 p.m. write another 500 words. Number the pages. Put them in a folder and have a couple of powerful drinks. 7 p.m. dinner and scrabble with his wife. And 10 p.m. go to bed. That does sound like a pretty good day. I'm like I like I'm just, yeah, get up. I mean, that sounds like the life, does it not? Amazing. Amazing. Actually, I think the Indians, a grand slam in the first inning. 4-0 Cleveland. Four Grand Slam off Chase Burns. Wow. Didn't see that coming. All right. We'll get to your calls, questions, and comments. We've got Wilford Riley coming up at the top of our three. We'll talk with Wilford a little bit about the Zohran Mamdani situation, about any issues with the database that list the people that are on the hook. for that tax on a second home. Some people are saying that it's every home listed for $5 million is listed, and it's up to you to prove it's your own home. It's your only home versus a second home. Maybe. We'll talk to him about that. Maybe about the Dr. Anthony Fauci testimony, which is coming up tomorrow at 10 a.m. on Capitol Hill. And Wilford is a journalist now and political science professor, also a lawyer. Is he under any legal jeopardy because of what his diary say contradicting things he's testified on? We'll talk about that coming up with Wilford Riley here and about 10 minutes from right now. She'll be an interesting conversation. Todd writes, Larry, you can have that life right now if you wanted. Could I?

Could I own a home in Jamaica, right on the water? I guess I could, I could, I could, I could, I could, I could, I could, I could, I could, I could, I could, I could have a couple of pink gins for lunch for a one of the air. Um, well, I work in radio, so I wouldn't be able to afford to live that way, first and foremost, um, but admittedly my hours. But hours are unusual. I think people sometimes falsely assume that I only work from 12 to 3 or maybe like 11 to 3. I mean, I don't sit down at a desk from 9 to 5. That's true. But the hours I work are, it's kind of hard to calculate how many hours I work. I spend a lot of time at night early in the mornings working at 6 o'clock when I get up to see breaking news working on. I mean, I mean, if I go to like a doctor's office with my daughter, for instance, I'll sit in the lobby and work. You know, so it's kind of hard to count. And people say, well, it's not really work. Well, yes and no. I mean, you're right, reading news stories. I may not seem like work to you, but it's specific to my job. But I'm not sure I could have that life now. But I mean, I'd be okay with it. I've had, I've had that life briefly for like a week here, week there, when we're on vacation where I'm working while we're on vacation. That's true. I get up and go for a walk along the water in the morning and come back and have a little lunch, do the show, and then maybe go by the pool in the evening. So I guess, but I mean, I couldn't do that. I couldn't do that full time. Start your day with the morning jolt of Drake C. Toll. See, now it's on demand. My podcast is kind of a radio thing, I think, but also it's a bit of a TV show, and it's about whatever I want it to be. It's listening live as it happened, when it happened, with the instant reaction. You're home for talking sports. We go back, the Great Toll Show, Westwood One Sports Network, and there will be on demand on your radio. Anywhere in the country, I'll see you there. Westwood One Sports Talk, your home for Drake C. Toll. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. platform.