John, I can relate to your thoughts of a bygone era. However, it is my thinking that people are sheep. They respond to what is given them. If we are given two philosphies one being the reminscence of the good old days and the other being, well read Mike's quote of today's music for a great description, we are in turn setting up a generation for failure.

Even in the good old days we were not doing things as our forefathers deemed "good ole days." So, change has always been a natural process. As for what we change into depends in my opinion on what we do to positiviely affect change. For example, in my home town where there are iPods galore, we have been working on a music institute where students not only come in to learn music theory and the history of music, but they are also learning technology such as audio recording and even going to introduce BIAB to them once I can get a handle of this "crazy horse" that is an awesome learning tool as well.

To me, I think there was a huge mistake made when those of the past refused to adapt their contributions with what was currently being created. Hence, we now have a form of music that is void of any talent. It is essentially the blind leading the blind. Instead, we can affect change by becoming more involved in engaging the new musicians not in the stoic attitude of "this is how it is to be done." But, if we approach it on a level where they can take what we show them to the next level then we will be onto something. Hence, the reason why I am trying to make our school a more dynamic environment where the students from age 5 and up are engaged in using the computer while writing music.

Just an encouragement to you, that you have breath in your lungs. Use it to take what you have learned and integrate it with what is out there and perhaps turn the tide. Thankfully, with internet, we do not need to rely upon the hose head record companies to feed the fat radio stations their pre-digested junk. We can open the net and hear awesome stuff today!