Pop Vs Orchestra

I know pop has been around for a while, but its appreciation still eludes me. I've been rockin out to Led Zeppelin for the past week (Rock on Tommy), and just thought to myself "I wonder how much influence producers had on this process." When I think of music production I immediately think of sound booths and mixing boards and seperate members of the band playing/singing their part of the song to the prerecorded base. Start out with the percussion track, guitarist records his part listening to the percerssion track, and go all the way down until you have a finished song.

Then I wondered "Do the seperate sections (percussion, violin, chello, etc)of the New York Symphony Orchestra record under the same method when they record albums?" Albums usually signify the "best" or completely unfettered ability of the artist, so would they seperate them to get the best results? Would they put their sound through synthesizers or pitch modulators, alter the song digitally to make up mistakes?

The live performance now becomes a show of how well a group can recreate this sound while completely pumping up the audience. Pop, with lip-synching and digital voice enhancements, pretty much eliminates the first half of this equation and transforms the live performance into a live album tasting with small people doing backflips on stage you have to squint at to see.

We really need a grunge-like revolution. More skill...less silicon.