Well, as squeak, and several other younger (at heart!) members here keep pointing out, if the manufacturers don't wake up and start providing the styles and sounds in arrangers that younger americans want to hear, old age will gradually kill off the only people these keyboards are currently aimed at!

But seriously, the way our cities are built, with 'white flight' out of older neighborhoods, and suburbs springing up with no social center, the opportunities for us to get together to do ANYTHING of a communal nature gets smaller and smaller. Add to that the cult of individualism, of personal so-called 'freedom', of 'doing your own thing' and you can see a culture that puts little value on any group activity other than football and baseball and basketball.

And even those are primarily spectator sports, yet a town that can come up with several different softball leagues (well sponsored and supported) somehow cannot get a town band together. Pathetic... But you can't fault a people for doing what they want to, just infer from what they do where their priorities in life lie.

And it sure ain't music... At least in any communal sense.

On the other hand, they have little sports hooliganism, so perhaps it's a draw!

But it sure goes to demonstrate, despite having English as a semi-official language (soon to be Spanish if you listen to FOX - the network, not the Mexican politician!), it is as surely a foreign country in the States as Latvia, or Zimbabwe or Mongolia...! Strange people, with strange customs and strange priorities.... Not bad, just different.

But I wish they had it in their hearts to sing, and to gather together just for the joy of making music, rather than leave it up to those who chose music as a career. They don't know what they are missing....