The following is Roelf's response to a friend regarding the use of effects in music: Guitar Takes Off Its Effect Suit... to reveal itself naked. There are no rules. a purist once told me that people who only like to hear instruments with effects really don't like that instrument. The technology is there to tap into synthesizers even if you don't feel comfortable fondling the ebonies and ivories. You can do it through your violin or whatever. So why not? Purists could use a little opening up with a mind shoe horn. But I wouldn't want to do anything like that by force. That might be like slipping them a hit of acid against their will and I'l leave that to the true iconoclasts who have guts and not knots imprisoning their hearts. Don't just stop over here. Let's get back to nature and go to the caves for natural reverberation or be dropped down into a watertank with accoustic instruments and battery powered instruments so we can become completely engulfed in eternal reverb. Pauline Oliveros did that once and documented the results. I'm all for indulgence. Old analog boards tempt me into overindulgence. D-F grade art rock. Simple brass Emerson riffs. A guilty pleasure. I have to go to confession afterwards and that still doesn't take away the guilt. How unfair. I never heard of rock guitarists going through the same dilemma, but their overindulgences hold up much better. Right? The keyboard eggheads are an embarrassment better left forgotten. I got warped by it all and I have a very hard time purging it completely from my system. I know the analog noise of Psychic TV and Pere Ubu is much cooler. By the way whatever happened to Ted. I heard he's riding upside down on a levitating penny farthing with Joan of Art towards a moonset. And the Captain he doesn't leave his trailer anymore. Getting old and paranoid with that beef in his heat against society festering even more to the point of a halo of flies. This is the kind of talk that got a psychonik kerouac sympathizer hot on my trail. Nord case with a wide assortment of nuts that he had collected in his head. Looking for a new religion. Thought that I was going to be the one to lead him there but HAH! You can dangle on the precipice like the rest of us Dantes and go over if you like even though that would be redundant in your case. Oh was I writing to you? I got lost in my mad hatter and tripped backwards into an illusion. I don't take the funny little pills anymore. I don't live on the funny farm anymore. I do compost the funny people and grow jokes because laughs are the only thing that still keep my wits about myself and every other mannikin in my neighborhood. Wearing granny's dress and wigs. I don't look up the grandmother's of inventions dresses anymore, because they no longer have any more tricks up their sleeves to suprise me. Living the life of Riley when I should be living the life of Terry Riley. Baba O Riley asked me what I wanted to be in a next life if I could be anything and I said I wanted to come back as the tape loop in Reich's Come Out. I'll be happy if I can attain that state in meditation. If not then you can take all your new age flakes and place them back on your scalp where they belong and tie your fingers up so you can't itch. I'd like to pause and reflect on my guru and mentor John Fahey. May he be getting ripped on some good rotgut in the afterlife and here's some industrial noise for ya pal. By the way where the hell is Dorothy Gootch and whatever happened to the evil devil hoodoo woman? This John Adams is maddening. I could unleash all the crazies from the psycho ward if their earboxes ever got wind of this. John is exhilirating. I love how he can take an orchestra and make it sound so abstract and even ambient like in Common Tones in Simple Time. Check out www.earbox.com for the official John Adams site. It's not anywhere as visually interesting as the Riley site but you'll find some interesting info there. The Fresh Air Interview from '99 was interesting. You got me messing around with playing the keyboard and recording you perverse subverse luniversal instigator, you. Now if I can only kidnap the midgets and big black mamas to help me in my musical hoedown. – Roelf