I've played with a whole lot of musicians who learned to play in the 50s, 60s, 70s, etc. I think that if anything has changed, it's gotten better. Like, the B

I've played with a whole lot of musicians who learned to play in the 50s, 60s, 70s, etc. I think that if anything has changed, it's gotten better. Like, the Beatles on Sullivan was a turning point for most of the 70-year-olds I play with. They all quit their music lessons, got into a garage band, and started playing shitty 3-chord rock. That might setup a situation where "grit and passion" become, uh, marginally more important than the actual music. But making the posturing of the musician more important than the music isn't a big win for the general state of the art.