I don't know who invented the flight case, but I'd bet my last floppy disk it was a roadie. Think about it.

 They're rectangular, easy to stack and pack, with handles and wheels for rolling up ramps and into trucks. They can be hurled, dropped and thrown around without the slightest risk of damage to their contents. Flightcases make a roadie's life easy - and if they double the hassle for a musician who actually owns the damn things, well that's just too bad.

It may be annoying enough to spend hundreds of pounds on something completely non-musical instead of the new sequencer or delay pedal you promised yourself. But worse, the sheer effort of carrying & unpacking your gear soon discourages you from bringing it home at all on days off - the time when your most creative ideas usually occur.

In the end you keep old bits of duff gear for "mucking about" with in your bedroom, and leave your best equipment in some warehouse or garage with the rest of the group's instruments. You then require a large truck, two roadies and half a day's notice to make it reappear again for rehearsals, gigs or the odd recording session. We all go along with this because it's hard to suggest an alternative, and anyway - that's what all the famous bands do isn't it ?

The first thing any gigging band gets saddled with after getting a record deal is a set of flightcases: proof they've arrived in the Big League. The more succesful they become, the more flightcases they acquire. Roadies aren't daft: the more gear you have, the more crew you need to move it around. Later the band splits & ex-members are lumbered with cases too big to lift and too expensive to throw away.

The roadies of course go and work for some new bunch of mugs with more money.

But hold on. TV crews, surveyors, photographers - even classical & jazz musicians all have to schlep heavy, fragile instruments from place to place. None of them would dream of buying a case too heavy to carry or too big to fit in a car.

Most use lightweight cases in fibreglass or aluminium - or simply padded zipbags, replaced from time to time as they wear out. No jazz player I know would buy a flightcase for their trumpet or double bass: possibly because jazzers seldom employ roadies - a point not lost on your own crew.

Any bid to use unorthodox cases on your part will be firmly dealt with. Tell a roadie that your nice old Fender belongs in its nice old Fender case and he'll shake his head. "Wouldn't last two days on the road that wouldn't, squire". Insist, and it'll return a couple of days later with a few warning dents. If you're stubborn the case will come home at the end of the tour as matchwood with some lame excuse about "the humpers at Loughborough."

With gear in flight cases you'll always need roadies - and with roadies you'll always need flightcases to protect your gear. I don't deny the need for an experienced crew - nobody else in their right mind actually enjoys lugging bass bins in and out of trucks. Nor would I deny that musical equipment needs protective housing - I simply want my instruments left light enough to carry myself.

Just in case.
TOM ROBINSON