Tony, I humbly beg you to read Mark's LAST post in which he pretty much supports my position. While you're at it, PLEASE re-read MY last post. Doesn't that count for anything - the part where I've never criticized ANYONE's performance. Hey, I always thought you were 'my guy', a 'peacemaker', 'straight shooter', 'fair and balanced' (ok, that was a little over the top ). So I must say I'm a little surprised that you'd uh, take this position; even more surprised that you'd 'cherry-pick' a couple of phrases, mostly out of context, and ignore the gist of what I was saying. Sounds like that "self-playing" comment really got under your skin; don't know why it should. Anything with a built-in MP3 or WAV or SMF player certainly CAN be a "self-playing" instrument. My VP770 which I love to death, has this capability and can take my creaky voice and replace it with 4 or 5 pretty nice sounding voices. Fun, fun, fun, (2000,00 worth, in fact) but I still won't take it on a gig, why, because it would just sound weird with the type of music I do when playing out. That doesn't mean I hate it. In fact, as a non-singer, it's one of my favorite toys. It makes me sound much better than I actually do.

Hey, we're only talking about a piece of equipment here. To listen to the 'hate' in some of these posts, you'd think I was starting a petition to allow Obama to run for a third term (or join Synthzone). Mark made a post and asked for comments; I commented and he concurred with my comments; others didn't. That's called DISCOURSE or discussion. We need to chill out and not go nutso anytime someone says something that goes against the party line. If I've 'demeaned' anyone it was not intentional. As a third-rate hack musician, I'm not in a position to demean anyone. We make way too much over the little, inconsequential things in life. We'll live a lot longer if we just buy what we want, play what we want, like what we like, and pay less attention to what other people think. Getting stressed out is usually just a reflection of our own insecurities.

So Tony, stop cherry-picking my posts, let's get back to being friends, and put a Big Mac on your bucket list.

Peace,

chas