Recordville returns to Northampton with 70,000 albums for sale
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Cohen also DJs and sells records under the name Studebaker Hawk.
Lara Woolfson
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Last March's edition of the fair was 'by far our biggest one ever,' Cohen says. And the Recordville world is poised to keep growing, as his 16th Northampton fair comes to
'Even by 9 a.m. — when we open for early admission — there's probably at least 150, if not over 200 people, who are ready to come in,' Cohen says.
For everyone else, a bounty of sounds await in the afternoon, ranging from the most mainstream records — say, the latest release from Taylor Swift — to obscure finds tucked among dollar bins. From funk to punk, you'll be hard-pressed to name a genre that's not represented among the scores of vendors, although some businesses boast notable niches. Golden Music of New Hampshire is a 45s dealer, for instance, while Cambridge shop
'Searching online is just such a different journey than looking in person, digging in person, and getting recommendations,' Cohen says. 'You really don't know what you're going to find.'
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As guests browse wares from dealers who made the trek from Connecticut, New York, and New Hampshire, as well as selections from Massachusetts shops like Belmont's Want List Records and Purchase Street Records in New Bedford, DJs will soundtrack the afternoon with highlights from their own music collections. (Cohen, who DJs under the name
Cohen also intended to expand the fair Eastward this March, and booked a Somerville rendition of the fair at the
As it turns out, the expansion will have to wait a few more months. Following a fire on the hotel's ninth floor in February, the Holiday Inn has canceled all March events, although Cohen has plans to rebook the record fair there in late 2025.
'I was vocal about 'why doesn't someone restart [the Holiday Inn fairs]?' he says. 'I certainly have the experience and the network, and I'm happy to make it happen and turn it into a really great fair.'
GIG GUIDE
Folks eager to celebrate Mardi Gras can head to
and guest vocalist
will ring in the festivities.
Scullers Jazz Club will also host Mardi Gras events on
Saturday,
tapping Boston's
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Washington D.C. duo
Two shows involving Berklee College of Music will reimagine the catalog of rock icons this week, starting with the Berklee Ensemble Orchestra's renditions of Led Zeppelin classics at the
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The Burren welcomes the next generation of budding Massachusetts artists on
"Vroom Vroom, etc.", the new EP from Boston band Copilot, contains stomping roots and pop-rock radiance.
Yazi Ferrufino
NOW SPINNING
Copilot,
"Trilogy 3" captures the live magic of jazz greats Chick Corea, Christian McBride, and Brian Blade.
Jordin Jaz Pinkus/Chick Corea Productions
Chick Corea,
Cornelia Murr's first LP in six years, 'Run to the Center,' contains 10 tracks of lithe pop and balletic synths.
Laura-Lynn Petrick
Cornelia Murr,
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BONUS TRACK
Game on, chiptune fans.
Victoria Wasylak can be reached at vmwasylak@gmail.com. Follow her on Bluesky @VickiWasylak.bsky.social.
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3 days ago
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31st Mardi Gras celebration coming to downtown Sioux City
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CNET
3 days ago
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Inside Hollywood's AI Power Struggle: Where Does Human Creativity Go From Here?
Film festival directors Peter Isaac Alexander and Marisa Cohen said that when they first saw the film, they thought it was interesting, creative and unlike anything their review committee had seen before. The flick, a historical movie about an artist from an Italian director, met all the necessary criteria to be screened in front of a live audience and so it was, during last year's Portland Festival of Cinema, Animation and Technology. But after the film was over, some members of the audience started loudly booing. The reason? A disclosure in the credits that read the film was "a blend of artificial intelligence and human creativity." Out of the 180 or so films screened at last year's festival, only a few had generative AI elements -- many submissions didn't make the cut because it was clear that AI had been used to create the whole movie, which the festival doesn't allow. Despite Alexander and Cohen's personal reservations and serious concerns around generative AI, they know AI has become a popular tool for moviemakers. "It's hard to know what to do as a film festival director, because we want to be fair. We want to show interesting art. We want people to see what tools are available that they could use," Cohen said in an interview with CNET. "Some filmmakers don't have enough money to buy fancy software [or] have a team of animators, and if they want to tell their story, should they use AI?" This incident highlights how increasingly common generative AI is becoming in the creation of movies, despite AI provoking widespread fears and frustration about future job security, potential theft and the diminishment of human creativity and its intrinsic value. It has been two and a half years since ChatGPT exploded in popularity and set off a new race among tech companies to develop the most advanced generative AI. Like nearly every online service, creative software programs got major AI makeovers, including everything from Photoshop to video editors. AI image generators took off, needing only a simple text description called a prompt to create artistic visions ranging from worthy efforts to unmitigated slop. Despite the near ubiquity of AI in artistic computer programs, there is an intense power struggle raging behind the scenes. While some people brag about AI optimizing creation, others decry the tech as the end of human creativity. Nowhere is this struggle more evident than in the entertainment industry. The story of AI in Hollywood is less of the traditional "good versus evil" comic book story and more of a complicated, truly tangled mess. Some studios and networks are all-in on AI. Others have serious legal concerns. 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Studios, streamers and organizations like the Motion Picture Academy, Television Academy and labor unions are all exploring their options. For the rest of us, the power, money and influence of Hollywood means that those decisions about AI will undoubtedly have seismic consequences for every creative industry and creator going forward. It will also set a standard for what's normal and an acceptable amount of gen AI in movies and TV shows, which affects all of us as viewers. This is what you need to know to untangle the web of the biggest factors influencing Hollywood's experience and attitudes toward AI. Lights, camera, AI: How AI fits into filmmaking Computer-generated imagery isn't new. What makes generative AI different is that anyone can use it to make a lot of content very quickly. Old barriers, whether it be money, education or practical skill, are eroding as AI makes it easier and cheaper than ever to create digital content. The latest wave in this evolution is AI video generators, which create video clips using text-to-video and image-to-video technology. Most major tech companies and a number of AI startups have announced or released some version of an AI video model. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, released Sora at the end of 2024, followed by Adobe's Firefly and Google's Veo models. Each model has its own quirks, but in general, they all produce AI video clips between 5 and 10 seconds long. The next step for these companies will be focusing on creating longer and higher-resolution videos. Both of those upgrades will prove critical in determining whether AI video generators can be useful enough for professionals. Stuck in an AI Slop Bubble - Tech Therapy Stuck in an AI Slop Bubble - Tech Therapy Click to unmute Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Skip Backward Skip Forward Next playlist item Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration 10:16 Loaded : 3.86% 00:00 Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 10:16 Share Fullscreen This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Text Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Caption Area Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Drop shadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Close Modal Dialog This is a modal window. This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button. Close Modal Dialog This is a modal window. This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button. Stuck in an AI Slop Bubble - Tech Therapy Even pushing AI videos up to 30 seconds long, Alexander told me, would help "cover pretty much most of what you see in modern filmmaking," in terms of scene length. Only one video generator is able to produce audio, Google's Veo 3, but even that addition is new and often clunky. None of others can create audio natively in these clips, which is another thing making AI video models less useful for professionals. Not all generative AI tools are for wholesale creation. AI has also accelerated the evolution of video editing software. Adobe's Premiere Pro, considered one of the main professional video editing programs, got its first AI-powered tool, called generative extend, in April. 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Feeding all of that content into an AI image or video generator runs the risk of anyone being able to mimic it. This isn't theoretical; it's something we've already seen. When OpenAI launched its native image generator in ChatGPT earlier this year, people started churning out anime-looking images in the style of Studio Ghibli. Studio Ghibli is one of the most popular animation studios, the maker of hits like Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro. It was a depressingly ironic trend, as many critics pointed out that the founder of Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki, had said in a 2017 interview that AI is "an insult to life itself." This is a troubling possibility for studios. "Say you're Lionsgate. You don't want the world that the LLM has been able to create, [like] the John Wick world, to all of a sudden show up in somebody else's storyboard, right?" said Rosenberg. "So I think there's a security issue above all… giving away of your trade secrets, your intellectual property, is really first and foremost in the minds of the studios and networks." Many AI generators have guardrails around creating images of specific people, like celebrities and politicians. But these guardrails can be flimsy, and even if you don't use a director's or actor's name, you can describe the look and feel until the AI content is essentially indistinguishable. Lionsgate's AI models should be exclusive to the company, but it highlights how the same concern hits different for studios and individual creators. Studios need to protect their IP; creators don't want anyone to be able to copy their style. There's also the risk of reputational harm from these uses. For example, if you didn't know about the Ghibli ChatGPT trend, it could appear as though Studio Ghibli made a cartoon of a crying woman being deported, as shown in one AI image shared by the White House's official X/Twitter account. These big-picture concerns help explain why it's been hard for tech companies to sell their AIs to entertainment leaders en masse. As entertainment leaders investigate and begin to implement AI, creators' concerns are elevated by labor unions. Most people affected by AI aren't celebrities. That's where labor unions come in While some celebrities have been able to fight back against AI encroaching on their work and likeness, like Scarlett Johansson and Keanu Reeves, the majority of people don't have the resources of a celebrity. That's why union protections are so important when it comes to AI, said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA national executive director and chief negotiator, in an interview with CNET. AI was a key issue during the 2023 strikes by unions representing writers, screen actors, directors and stage performers. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA contracts that emerged from those strikes outlined specific guidelines around the use of AI. In the SAG-AFTRA contract, one of those protections concern digital replicas, the process of scanning people's faces and bodies so that moviemakers can insert synthetic versions of actors into a scene after it's been filmed. Before the contract was enacted, actors were worried that if they chose to sell their likeness, studios could pay actors once for use of their replicas ad infinitum, which could ultimately limit future job opportunities. Without the guardrails against that set in the contract, that process would be "akin to digital indentured servitude," said Crabtree-Ireland. "We're not trying to stop people from allowing others to create digital replicas of them. 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The power they wield can be used to help industry titans navigate new AI, but more importantly, unions can help guide corporations away from abusive, disastrous or straight-up dumb uses of AI. Union contracts can set important precedents. Not everyone who works in entertainment is eligible for union membership, but by raising the bar and setting limits around AI use, unions can still ensure a healthier work environment and stabilize the future of the industry for current and future creators. Can AI make an emotional connection? There's no shortage of hype surrounding AI in Hollywood, though technical limitations, legal uncertainties and ethical concerns have held it back from a full-throttle invasion some technologists might have envisioned. But continued innovation and evolving legal postures might entice studios and networks to start exploring AI more aggressively and more loudly. For Alexander and Cohen, generative AI will continue to be an issue to grapple with on the festival circuit. But for their own work, a sci-fi miniseries called The Cloaked Realm, the duo said they spent thousands of hours over several years hand-drawing and animating the show. "We didn't even really consider [using AI] because we really care about the depth, the nuance, all these things that we feel like come organically with 2D animation," said Cohen. "I think it emotionally hits people at a different level, and then intellectually, also, people appreciate knowing a human created everything." "Human touch can be replicated, but I often wonder, will the feel, the emotion that gets produced in someone, is that going to be replicated?" said Alexander. "You know the old saying, no plan survives contact with the enemy? I wonder when these AI models, even as they get extremely polished and perfected, will touch people's souls the way that something that's created by humans can."
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4 days ago
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The Making of Henry Pollock
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'I've got a great family unit around me and I always look to them and friends whenever I'm on my own or in a dark space. Advertisement 'I'm just working hard and giving everything to my rugby now, no distractions. I'm trying to put more muscle on, working on attack and defence, and across my whole game. I'm definitely not the finished article, so there's definitely more to come. 'I'm here to play Test rugby, that's what I'm pushing for, but I'm also trying to enjoy the journey and just take in all the moments that come with being a Lion.' Those who played a part in Pollock's journey universally speak of his single-mindedness to improve, pushing himself in every training session, beyond the limits of most team-mates. Andrew Porter, Pierre Schoeman and Henry Pollock (©INPHO/Ben Brady) His strength and conditioning coach at Northampton, Jason Sivil, has witnessed the 20-year-old's hard work with awe. Advertisement He has bulked up to over 100kg, can squat 230kg for three reps and bench press 140kg. His aerobic capacity means he can cover the lung-burning 'broncho' – a 1200-metre shuttle run dreaded at clubs up and down the country – in just four minutes and 25 seconds. 'He always wants more, always wants another challenge. All Henry wants to do is push himself further and harder,' said Sivil. Pollock's memories of the last Lions tour to Australia in 2013 are sketchy – though in fairness, he'd only just started playing for the minis at Buckingham Swans, where his first coach, Nick Glister, was quick to identify his raw promise. 'I just remember how strong he was, and super-fit too,' he recalls. 'He was confident, a bit cheeky and very local, but a great team-mate. You could see he was a natural leader.' Advertisement Former Northampton player Grant Seely helped take Pollock's game to the next level at rugby institution Stowe School, while he joined the academy at Saints in his early teens, crediting coach Will Parkin as his biggest influence. However, it wasn't until his sixth form that those guiding his career realised his potential to become a generational player for club, country and – though perhaps a little quicker than even they thought – the Lions. Pollock, like the Wallabies' brilliant rugby league convert Joseph Sua'ali'i, will arrive in Australia as one of the most talked-about players in the game, such has been his rapid ascent. Some might label him a 'bolter' – but in truth, when his name was revealed to fans by Andy Farrell at London's O2, there were universal nods of approval and not a single arched eyebrow of surprise. Advertisement His last 12 months have seen him win the Under-20 World Cup and score two tries on his England debut against Wales, quickly glossing over the fact that, with two Scottish parents, he grew up preferring a thistle to a rose. Henry Pollock is the youngeset player in the Lions squad. (©INPHO/Billy Stickland) He has forced his way into Farrell's selection thoughts not just on the strength of his personality, but the power of his play. Players may be tracked to the inch by their GPS data, but Pollock's game is about more than just those cold, hard metrics – which is perhaps why Maro Itoje, when asked to describe him in one word, couldn't decide between 'annoying' and 'pest', while being quick to add it was meant as a compliment. Advertisement 'I'm going to be the nuisance, I'm going to get up in your face because I'm at my best when I'm confrontational, that's just key to my game,' adds Pollock. 'I'm aggressive – it's been that way since my brother and I were in the back garden and we both liked to win. I'm not looking for trouble, but I'm not shying away from it either. I'm still grafting and still really learning my game.' This is more than just fighting talk, as anyone among the 6,000 at the Stoop for his England A debut last November will testify. Towering Aussie flanker Tom Hooper had given the then-teenager a couple of cheeky digs in an attempt to assert some authority, and Pollock wasn't having it. Advertisement Despite the height, weight, age and experience difference, he stood up to the Exeter-bound blindside flanker, hurling his scrum cap across the pitch as a scuffle ensued. Following a stern word from the referee, Pollock jogged back to his team-mates with a broad grin – mission accomplished. And then there are the celebrations: the basketball lob, or now-trademark 'pulse' – two fingers held to the neck as if to check for signs of life. Australian rugby has a proud history of showmen, including current star Nick Frost, arguably the Wallabies' most athletically gifted lock forward since the great John Eales. Pollock might be from half a world away, but he is cut from similar cloth. Advertisement Hard work has got Pollock to this point, but genetics have helped too – he credits his mum, Hester, with instilling his love of sport, with swimming and triathlon taking equal focus alongside rugby in his early teens. 'My brother, sister and I just all lived for sports – there was no pressure on us, we just played without fear or commitment,' he added. Of course, being the youngest tourist brings additional responsibilities. Pollock will have sole guardianship of the stuffed toy Lion, aptly named 'BIL', and there are serious consequences should it go missing – not easy when more experienced hands have been known to steal and hide him at every available opportunity. Pollock will be in charge of mascot BIL. (©INPHO/Billy Stickland) 'I'm thinking of sewing an AirTag in him,' joked Pollock – a very Gen Z solution to a tradition that started in 1950, with now-captain Itoje taking the role eight years ago in New Zealand, a challenge he jokingly described as more stressful than battling the All Blacks. Advertisement Pollock isn't sure he's going to get much support from Northampton team-mates Tommy Freeman, Alex Mitchell and Fin Smith in his quest to keep 'BIL' safe, but there is no doubt about the tight bond between the four Saints. 'It's so nice to have the boys with me – they're some of my best mates,' he added. 'It's so special to do this with them. They're amazing players and they deserve this. I'm just so happy for them and so happy to be there with their journey, and just looking forward to seeing them rip in.' Rip in? He just might be an Aussie after all. Tap into the Lions Clubhouse App. All you need to do is tap the Smart Tag on your new Lions jersey to access content and join a community of passionate fans for the 2025 Tour of Australia.
