This year’s Adobe MAX conference briefly turned into the strangest hair metal show of the year. Adobe’s principal worldwide evangelist of video Jason Levine stepped on stage to tell people about Adobe After Effects CC – but he gave us so much more than we ever expected.
“Before I show you my last bit, a little audience participation,” he said to anxious audience waiting to learn more about company’s software. “It’s eight words: Gather the crowd. Shout it aloud. Creative Cloud.”
Wait, what? Is this dude really trying to get the audience to join a singalong about Adobe software? Before the audience even has time to process how incredibly bad the lyrics are, Levine starts belting the words without them clapping. Then – in his final moments on stage – he cranks it up to 11.
Damn – this guy has some golden pipes. I guess it makes sense considering Jason Levine currently has seven albums on Spotify. He even has a full version of the song he performed, “Gather The Crowd“, so if you’re dying to hear more verses, he’s got you covered. The longer version includes even better lyrics than the ones belted out at the conference. “So you call yourself designer, there’s no occupation finer, make us proud,” he says in the full version of the song. “Working illustrator, is there no profession greater, it’s allowed.”
Amazingly, this isn’t even close Jason Levine’s best work. He also has a song called “Retouch Me” that has a positive message that’s also kind of opposed Adobe’s software. The lyrics of the chorus go like this: “Remove the lines, remove all of the signs, remove any signs of life from my expression (retouch me). They want to see the way I used to be before age caught up with me, just make me pretty (retouch me).”
Get it? It’s a song about the artificial look of photos touched-up by Adobe programs like Photoshop. So how deep does this rabbit hole go? To be quite honest, way too deep. Levine has recorded hours of glorious audio inspired by the Adobe Creative Suite, and if that’s not enough, you can check out a similar stunt he pulled at Adobe MAX 2015. Enjoy!