I really like the analogy of Frank Sinatra using arrangers!

A great musician, a great entertainer, but someone else wrote the songs, someone else wrote the arrangement, and a whole heap of someone else's played ALL the parts except for the lead vocal......

Technology has increased the APPARENT number of parts we can play at one time (Hammonds virtually killed the big bands), but the truth of it is, we still only have ten digits, what we do with them is our calling card. The more you let the arranger do, the less your audience is going to associate you with the music.....

Arranger keyboards are a revenue device (for professionals)..... If you were TRULY interested in the music above all else, there is no choice but to play in a real band, with all it's disadvantages to your bank balance, or be a solo pianist and hope there is a decent piano at the gig. Arrangers merely allow you to work cheaper than a full band, and give the illusion, sonically, that you still are one, but they provide none of the day-to-day inspiration that working with others provide.

As to educating the public....... I don't think you give them enough credit. Most of them KNOW it's not real, it's just that their focus and tastes have changed. MTV changed everything. The nature of TV always emphasizes the pretty over the talented. Look at all the good, ugly bands that died out when MTV started in the early 80's, and the rise of Duran Duran type pretty boys. We moan about it, but seldom realize that it came about because videos are an entirely different medium to music.

In many ways, music has returned to a very Broadway-ish mentality, where the staging and the dancing is as important as the music (many an average musical survived because of great choreography and sets!). Few of us will criticize Broadway musicals, yet happily slander Brittney Spears, or Madonna, who are their logical successor. And nowadays, you are hard pressed to find a Broadway show that doesn't use tapes to replace the full orchestra and sometimes even the chorus!

As corporate America forces us to be as bottom-line as possible, and fewer and fewer of the middle and lower classes can afford entertainment with a high labor cost, what we see in the music industry only reflects what is being done to the workers as a whole - the musical equivalent of outsourcing and downsizing...... For those of us that have chosen music as a profession, we have as little choice to go along with it as the unemployed tech support guy in California.

Maybe Europe is showing us the way with the huge popularity of arrangers over there...... $9 a gallon gasoline makes for a very expensive band cost, singles are far more cost effective. Guitarists will always get by, but I pity the drummers and bass players in the next ten years.....

Educate the public......... Nah! Might as well tell them to stop driving and buy a bicycle - global warming is upon us! They are always going to do what they want to do, and no Hammond player ever got famous for telling his audience that he was playing the big band parts...... he just played them, and let his audience dance (which is all they wanted to do in the first place)!