Collaborative music project ?

The sad fact is that a lot of "musicians" out there... aren't. You get tied in to doing a collaborative piece with someone who can't play bass, can't keep time on drums, or has no imagination. I've done collaborative tracks with people who just add one repeating bassline throughout a five minute piece - same four bars over and over again - or just take a track, add some kind of totally inappropriate distortion filter to it and viola ! - that's their contribution. 

Then you have two options - either to say "Well, thanks very much" or "To be honest, I can't use that." Politeness means you end up using it in most cases. 

I'm a multi instrumentalist. Jack of all trades, master of none. Part of the reason I play so many instruments is that it's difficult to find other people who - really - think along the same lines that I do. Music works properly when you're all thinking along the same lines. This used to be possible when (I'm thinking 1970's) there were a lot of skilled and creative musicians around, but the bar has got lower and lower and it's very rare to find someone who can actually *play* nowadays. By *play* I mean actually improvise, come up with ideas and execute them to a high standard. When you've got that, the whole band bounces off each other and you create something special. Life is too short to just produce crap. 

Referring back to "talking shop" - whilst this thread has been going on, a friend of mine has released six full albums. All very good stuff. All of them have been solo efforts. 

Dave ... I'm gonna work on a small VISUAL piece ... and will post it here ... I might even film it with my small video camera if it develops good enough. Let's see if this helps a start ... however I can see a problem already .. if I go outside, I already do not see a loud guitar part ... though some crows bark a lot in the morning. Let's see if I can do this ... it is VERY backwards from the way I work, which is 100% intuitive and not influenced by anything else but what is with it at that very second. It has its own "continuity", story wise, for lack of a better word.