It started with a text message. Jim signed up for a 24-hour songwriting contest, stalled out, and then said something that stuck: it shouldn’t be a problem. That offhand comment turned into a season finale conversation about why talented people feel obligated to perform their hobbies at full throttle, and what happens when that obligation quietly becomes the whole point. Glen and Jim dig into the guilt spiral of the instrument in the corner, the sketchbook you haven’t touched, the thing you love that you’re somehow failing. Spoiler: you’re not. Season Four ends the way it probably should—talking about why we do any of this in the first place.

If that guilt spiral sounds familiar, we’d love to hear about it. Find us at show.backstage.link or drop us a line at show@backstage.link — and if you’ve been with us this season, a rating wherever you listen goes a long way. Season Five is coming. We’re just not obligated to say exactly when.

A name got stuck in Glen’s head. He was pretty sure he hadn’t made it up. What he found when he looked it up was one of the most ambitious mythologies in pop music history—heroes, villains, a creation story, a spaceship, and more—built across a series of funk albums by George Clinton in the late 1970s and largely sitting untouched ever since. This solo minisode is your introduction to the P-Funk universe. The Mothership is waiting.

Thanks as always for listening, and don’t forget you can send us a message at show@backstage.link and see everything The Backstage Group is up to at https://backstage.link.

In this episode, Glen and Jim wade back into the world of AI, attempting to see how far its creative work has come in the last year or so. We gloss over the ethical issues and dive right back in where we left off in episode 32, last season. But now, instead of pitting Jim against AI, we give AI more info on Jim’s music and see if it can replicate his sound.

Got comments, questions, or want to share your own take on AI music? Email us at show@backstage.link or visit show.backstage.link to connect.