Digital one man bands

 So with all the technology available to musicians these days, it's pretty easy for a guy to 'play' all the instruments on a track or album and call himself a 'band'. But to me, it's just a digital version of some lonely guy on a street corner somewhere with whistles and bells attached to him making semi-attractive noise for slightly amused pedestrians passing by. At least be honest and present yourself as a soloist. If not, it's like watching one of those early covid lockdown televised sporting events with fake crowd noise and AI images filling the seats. I would like to think that most people are not that dumb to fall for it.

Probably the first time that I ever became conscious of this recording artist phenomenon was when I heard and saw Peter Furler of Newsboys fame in his video, Reach. It's a great song and the acoustic version is even better but I scratched my head watching it because he was the only performer visible but the drummer and bassist had their faces hidden even though you could be pretty sure it was Pete himself. I felt somehow conned and cheated. It was like he was pulling his pants down without revealing his genitals. Awkward.

In the end, I think of music as a conversation between sentient beings using melody and harmonics, and if the spirit and lyrics praise God, then so much way better. Just as some people have the annoying habit of always talking to themselves in public, those who make music for the consumption and enjoyment of others should demonstrate to their listeners that they appreciate the social aspect of music by at least having one collaboration partner in my opinion. After all, who would attend a concert with a vocalist performing acapella alone for two hours or more? And now Facebook and other social media platforms are filled with these individualists who don't know how to (or maybe don't like) playing with others. How did they ever graduate kindergarten?