I don't write the headlines here. That's not a philosophical statement, just a matter of fact. So I was as surprised as anyone to read when I checked out the column last week and it was headed ‘Conservative Tunes'.

But, fair enough. Tauranga is a musically conservative place and – in all reality – most of what is put out on CD from here is fairly conservative (barring the odd crunchingly over the top heavy metal band, but it's been a while since a release of that sort).

A few people wrote emails of complaint. That's cool. It's always stimulating to engage in intelligent discussion with other followers of the music scene. And some of those emails stirred up the odd thought in my generally mouldering brain.

Originality. That was a big theme, though slightly off-topic perhaps. Does making music that is relatively safe (and conservative) mean that originality is off the table?

Rhetorical question of course, but it's an interesting point and I was amused by the synchronicity of reports that boy band wonders One Direction have been accused (though not by their coterie of thirteen year old fans) of ripping off The Clash on their new single. The riff on their latest, ‘Live While We're Young', sounds remarkably like that of ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go'. But, rather than deny the connection or claim coincidence as the cause, the band have taken a different approach, insisting – presumably to the consternation of their team of copyright lawyers – that the similarities were deliberate.
One Direction's Louis Tomlinson put it this way: ‘I assume it must be quite difficult to do a unique riff now because there have been so many songs - surely there's only so many riffs you can pull out?' Hmmmmm....

He is, I guess, espousing a variation on the ‘End of Music' theory. That music has been made for so long that everything has been done so all we can do now is repeat things from the past. It's a theory that has been doing the rounds for some centuries now. When JS Bach wrote his remarkable volumes of keyboard music (a while back) many expressed the same opinion. He'd covered everything so that was it really for keyboards. No more tunes, just variations on Bach.

Clearly, since then, a few people have managed to whip out the occasional novel bit on the piano (though Bach only wrote for the organ and harpsichord, disadvantaged by the fact that nobody had yet thought to invent the piano).

Perhaps it's just the sheer volume of people making music that has led to – following the hallowed wisdom of One Direction – all riffs being exhausted. There are certainly a lot more musicians out there than there used to be. Some people blame the welfare state, some the availability of computers in bedrooms. Whichever is the case, there are, without a doubt, a whole lot more people out there making music than possibly ever before.

Actually that's not true. Even vaguely. These are no longer the times when every home had a piano, where everyone sang in the church choir, where every party ended in a sing-a-long, where everyone had an after-dinner piece they could whip out for the aunts.

But, these days there are more people recording music, and even releasing it, than ever before, because the technology is now here and affordable for all.

By complete coincidence, I happened upon this quote, which seems to have a certain relevance: ‘Never, in all our history of popular music, has there been such a plethora of composers - professional, amateur, alleged - as we have today. Responsible, of course, are those two fresh hotbeds, the coniferous cinema and the radio. The merciless ether - by unceasing plugging - has cut down the life of a popular song to but a few weeks, with the result that anyone who thinks he can carry a tune - even if it's nowhere in particular - nowadays takes a ‘shot' at music-making.'

It neglects to mention the internet, which has taken everything – in the parlance of our times – to another level. But then George Gershwin didn't know much about the internet when he wrote that in 1930.