emjej@uokvax.UUCP (01/21/84)
#N:uokvax:4000005:000:1001 uokvax!emjej Jan 19 09:36:00 1984 Perhaps this belongs in net.politics, but it concerns musicians, so... A while back on the BBC's *Rock Salad* program, I heard something about British musicians (being more accurate, acoustic instrumentalists) nattering and grommishing through their union about synthesizer players "taking away their jobs." I thought this was a put-on, until I saw the latest issue of *Keyboard*. It's sad to think that the Luddite spirit is so prevalent--let me see, now. I'm a calligrapher, and boy, am I mad about all these printing presses and typewriters taking away my job. No matter how good presses get, they'll never reproduce the nuances that a Fred Eager, Alfred Fairbanks, or Raymond de Boll displays in a true work of calligraphic art. They ought to be limited to things that a scribe can't do, or maybe books printed by mechanical means ought to be labeled "this work produced by inferior artificial methods." :-) (except that there's a large amount of disgust overlaying the humor) James Jones