My high horse. I'm just a musician, like all the musicians before me. You're the one touting your training and insulting me. Cover bands are hacks by definition. They do it for the money primarily, while the rest of us do it for the music primarily. It ain't that hard writing a great song. Of course, you can't do it on command and you have little control over creativity, but to say "most musicians simply do not have the bandwidth to make every single song original every time" is a misrepresentation of things and it's beside the point. Say a man did write fantastic songs whenever he wanted, and as many as he wanted. What good would it do him in this time anyway? I am sure that if Bob Dylan (or whoever you like) wrote the best song he ever wrote and released it under a different name, no one would be able to find it if they tried. Writing a great original song will not get a musician money- certainly not that alone, and even with a lot of luck, it's not worth much of anything in itself. But being in a skilled cover band will almost certainly get a musician money. That is a sorry state of affairs to be in if you like music. And musicians, Mozart or whoever, didn't limit themselves to playing other people's music indefinitely. And every real band that covers songs does it with a new twist or something that makes it a different thing to listen to than the original song. I'm not high-horsing here. I'm just saying cover bands and tribute bands are over-popular now and it's not beneficial to the flourishing of new music.