It's was interesting to follow the controversy recently after Derrin Richard used these pages to take a stick to the dull preponderance of interchangeable covers bands infesting The Strand each weekend.

Many good points were made and I thought it was time to weigh in, though I find my attitude a little more relaxed than when I was a younger Watusi. And while the odd occasion I'm accidentally trapped into listening to Downtown Friday Night Music brings on the urge to dismember myself, I don't think it's the bars or bands that are at fault. They're the easy visible targets, but not necessarily the right ones.
It's apparent that people play music for many different reasons. While some aspire to reaching new heights of creativity there are others who just – in musical terms – like to play a nice tune. Or want to use the musical skills they have acquired to pay the rent.
As with many arts, a curious snobbishness can develop amongst those who regard originality and self-expression as the highest goal for practitioners of that artform, an attitude which views simply using the learned technical skills to make money as somehow degrading the artform itself. To that add a little closet resentment that pandering to the lowest common denominator and ignoring creativity is, in general, considerably more financially rewarding.
But these days I tend to think 'live and let live”.
Legendary guitarist Robert Fripp has always said he regards playing the guitar as a craft not an art. That makes sense to me. Just because the end product – the music - may turn out to be art, doesn't mean that the skill required to make that end product is itself more than just plying a craft.
Compare a musician to a potter. Just because one potter creates beautiful works of art does not invalidate a potter who just wants to make identical-looking coffee mugs.
This goes way back. Think of those of those nineteenth century artists and sculptors who had huge workshops and a considerable workforce on call. The vast canvasses you see hanging in the Louvre, or Rodin's massive sculptures, were not the work of one person; there was a team of craftsmen sculpting the minor details, junior artists painting secondary characters in scenes.
In general these workers would not regard themselves as artists. They were tradesmen, though what they contributed to was definitely art. But the majority had no ambition to be artists in their own right, they were happy to ply their trade, do their bit and get paid. Their technical skills might even have been as great as those of the artist they worked for, but they were – proudly – tradesmen. Just because you have a set of technically creative skills does not mean that you have the desire or drive, much less obligation, to be original or even especially creative.
And that's kinda how I regard musicians playing covers in duos, trios, whatevers, along The Strand. This isn't music as art; it isn't intended to be. It is, rather, tradesmen plying their trade.
It seems obvious that the bars along The Strand don't want original music. Of course they don't. They exist in a world where the quality of music is judged by bar sales – big turnover, the music is great, small turnover, get a new band. The function of the musician there is not to challenge anyone, it's to be a human jukebox, an 'entertainer”, it's to sell beer. Actually, it could just as easily be original music – as long as it generated the same turnover.
Fair enough. You can't blame bars for wanting to make money. And just because music happens to be a trade that is also an artform I don't think you can blame someone for using the skills of that trade to make money. After all, it's a helluva lot more fun way to make some dosh than digging ditches or stocking shelves. And you can drink at the same time and pick up chicks.
I do, however, think that the original music scene in Tauranga has huge – possibly insurmountable – problems. It's just that I don't see the cover bands or bars along The Strand as being the problem. They are symptoms. Next week I'll examine where I think the real difficulties lie.
watusi@thesun.co.nz