What do you think Junior will be happier to see... A guy with karaoke tracks for him to sing over, or a professional rhythm section with taste and chops and ears?

Here's the deal, Donny... you are only one step of technology from feeling the same way that perhaps chas and I do. You see, at the moment, it is possible to basically replace, or at least marginalize the accompaniment for your singing. The audience has finally got to the point that they don't care whether it's being played or not. But your vocals are still important to them, your showmanship, whatever...

But imagine a world where they don't even care if you are singing, where anyone with 'the moves' can stand in front of them, lip synch to a CD, and they are just as oblivious to it as they are to whether you are actually playing anything or not...

Not such a pretty prospect, is it? When the skill level to provide this drops to the point where ANYONE can do it to the audience's satisfaction, the pool of potential competitors for your jobs increases exponentially. In fact, just as MTV has shown us over the last 30 years or so, as soon as you start to LOOK at musical acts, rather than just listen to them, the pretty ones and the ones with more image than substance pretty much drive out the talented... Of course, being the Adonis you are, this won't worry you, Donny, but none of us are getting any younger!

But, essentially, you are one step away from the technological scrap heap like the straight ahead musicians here that you dismiss as irrelevant. One piece of technology, one change more in the public's willingness to accept artifice over reality, and you'll be sitting here like the rest of us, wondering what happened, why are they willing to accept this, and who is to blame...