“Real men do it unplugged.” The concluding sentence of classical music critic Michael Church’s grumpy review of Pat Metheny’s Barbican gig last week from today’s Independent (newspaper)should probably not be allowed to go unchallenged.

Here for the record is Rod Fogg’s review of Metheny

I find the unreconstructed machismo of the remark is curious, to say the least.

But, get real. Electronic amplification has now been around for nearly a century. So surely the day has passed when musicians producing acoustic music were deemed to be intrinsically oh-so superior to those producing music using any kind of electronics?

Hasn’t it?