These mainstream "musicians" that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on stage setups, big show productions, dancers, whathaveyou are basically over compensating for a lack of real musicianship. Whatever happened to just playing an instrument and feeling an emotional connection to the music? What happened to plain MUSIC? Music is a hollowshell of what it used to be.

Actually I think it's a lot easier for good musicians to be heard than it was say 20 or more years ago before the intenet. Back then if a band wanted to be heard, they'd play at their local club to a local audience and if they could afford it they could record a single which they'd also sell locally unless a recording studio thought they could be marketed then would take control of their sound (see the movie The Wonders). But now, they can make a youtube video and be heard around the world. If they get popular from that, national breakfast shows and midday talk shows might give them some free air time. They can easily record their song themselves and put it up for sale on itunes. None of this was possible a few years ago and great musicians were at the mercy of recording execs that would turn them down if they didn't see a marketing avenue for them. This is still the case but musicians have other avenues now. I must say I struggle to understand the appeal of most rap. When I've found one I've liked, someone's' told me it's hip hop lol, shows you what I know I find the radio the worst method of finding good music these days.

I liked the Monkeeys, the way they were put together for the show makes interesting reading. Their own musical contributions and also the production contribution from Boyce and Hart, those two guys were great. The guys in the Monkeeys had talent though, they were just part of a bigger collaboration. That's the thing even these days, very few individuals, write their own material, play all the instruments and produce and engineer their creation, it's a collaboration. I don't see anything wrong with that. I think people see a person singing a song and expect that they've done everything but there's only a few in history that have done that, Prince was one and had to be encouraged when he got famous that he didn't have to play every instrument in his recordings. I worked in a recording studio as a session guitarist in the late 80's and it was amazing to see how someone with an idea for a song and an acoustic guitar would play it for the producer and then he'd start to put a production together fix some issues with the middle eight, get one of us to come up with some ideas for a solo, try out different bass players until one had the sound he was looking for etc. The original artist had the original idea and sound, but the way it become an actual song was a collaboration directed by the producer with at times, a random collaboration of musicians. I felt privilaged to take part in some great music sometimes. There were some failures though and some frustrated musicians who didn't like the direction the song was being taken.