I hereby petition everyone to stop using “musician” as a term to define people who get up on stage and pantomime to other people’s musical talents. That may be entertainment to some, but it has nothing to do with musicianship. There are multiple entertainment acts marketing themselves especially to kids that do this, I need not mention any names ahemjonasbrothers, coughmileycyrus, but you know who you are. Calling an entertainment act a musical act is lying, and it confuses the audience as well as the industry as to which groups are legitimately creating and performing their own music. The Rolling Stones are a musical act. Dream Theater is a musical act. If you are on stage and the music people hear in the crowd is not coming from you, you are not a musical act.

I am not saying that you can’t be an entertainer, or that entertainers “suck” or anything like that.  I am merely pointing out that the world of music does not need people calling themselves musicians who are not putting on an actual music show, but rather a carefully coreographed performance either to tape or to backup musicians (i.e. someone else is playing the guitar you hear vs. the celebrity on stage with a guitar).  I also think any show with lip sync should have to bill those shows as such, including American Idol (for shame!), but that’s phase two I suppose.