I'm not going to grumph and humph about changing musical standards here, but there does seem to be a trend for people to get up and perform in public before they're really ready to do so. When I was learning to play and perform - a long time ago (when Pontius was a pilot) - we got together in each others' houses to make music, swap ideas and techniques, etc., before we ever thought of getting up to perform in public. And in my area (north-west Lancashire) in those far-off days, sessions as we know them now, or open mics, just didn't exist. To make communal music, it was either a sing-song round a piano in a pub, or playing together with friends in someone's house.

Added to that, cheap instruments of a reasonable quality were not as plentiful, and money wasn't as forthcoming for us youngsters, as now. My first guitar cost me £5 in 1964 and was total crap. My first decent guitar was a s/h 1964 Epiphone Texan, bought in 1967, which cost me £9 a month for 10 months to buy on the HP from a music shop in the Leeds County Arcade - a lot of money in those days. So I think we regarded persons performing on a stage using decent instruments with much more awe than we do now.

In short, there was a divide between individual public performance and communal music-making which has blurred since then. Shows like the "X-Factor" and "Britain's Got Talent" also promote the idea that everyone has some talent in them - which I think is true; and that it doesn't take much to get up and do something with it - which I don't think is true.