"If Amos has spent his time making his own music, he would have had less time to stick his nose into other people's business."

Doug, I've often thought the same thing when Mudcatters spend time wrangling when they could be making music.

But to be fair to Amos, he had a different situation than we do. He criticizes "improvising on stringed instruments." Keep in mind that the scale had not been invented in his time. We know that the fifth was known to the ancients, but which ancients? And how ancient? Nobody knows. So maybe Amos had the fifth, but that was probably all in the way of harmony.

(The third, they say, wasn't established until 1100 or 1200 in England. It was considered pretty wild at first.)

So if anybody was improvising in Amos' day, the results may have been pretty painful to hear. Either painful or just plain tiresome.