The guitarist and the end of oil....

We look sideways now at anyone who drives a Toorak tractor for their selfish use of increasingly limited and expensive oil resources. For non-Melbournians, Toorak is home to Melbourne's rich, and started the trend of having Four wheel drives (or SUV's for you yanks) for Mum's suburban runabout or for Dad to bully and agress other drivers.
As much as I love the electric guitar, in years to come electricity will become scarcer and more expensive and supplies will become intermittent and unreliable. (Sort of like what we've imposed on Iraq with our oil-hungry invasion).
Most dedicated musicians are idealists at heart, and will move on. We will still have our redneck heroes, who hopefully will deservedly be ostracised in the market place. This means goodbye to stacks and highpowered amps and stadium shows. Anyhow, everyone will be poorer and we won't be able to support jetsetting acts to bring out huge rigs with them, or to supply and run the rigs locally.
We will also be very resource concious as oil and fossil fuels will be kept for more important matters than for wasteful use of power. (Hmm, goodbye Friday and Saturday night footy under lights, and day-night cricket matches .)
The local muso will have his orchestral acoustic arch-top guitar that he can carry to the gig with his satchel of charts on the tram or train. The venue will probably have a piano set up on stage already. The percussionist will need to carry a large knapsack of tambourines, cowbells, maracas, and crash-together cymbals. And if he has muscles, perhaps a snare drum!
In the meantime, it may be realistic to give up the dream of owning an electrically hungry valve amp in preference for a solid state amp.