I find it nauseating. There you have it. Mike Longworth became a friend via the Winfield, KS Festival. This crap dilutes his memory and his legacy at Martin every time another travesty like this is shipped to a music store. Guess it just presses my buttons---and begs for a heartfelt disappointed spewing polemic.

I once made a "panjo"---a banjo neck on a bedpan I'd brought home after using it for 2 months in the hospital. I gave it to Cathy Fink and she played it during her hospital stay a while back. All the doctors and nurses thought it was pretty hilarious. (I have a photo of Pete Seeger playing it on my folk photos website at htttp://rudegnu.com/art_thieme.html)

Hilarious? Yes it pretty much was/is that!! But so are these monstrosity instrument creations of Martin & Co. I did what I did as a joke. But friends, Martin must be serious, right?. This is bad dream-nightmare stuff----like Edith Piaf and John McCormick and Roscoe Holcomb donning striped Ivy League shirts and doing a revival in black-face of folk nostalgia singing Tom Dooley and other Kingston Trio and Brothers Four hits with Carmen
Miranda fruit bowl headdresses on their heads.

That Felix thing, and the like, being part of Martin's catalogue, doesn't negate the years of great guitars from this company, but it demeans and dilutes every good and honest feeling and emotion I ever had about the Martin guitars I owned over the years. And I resent that!!!-------

---- Well, what the hell. The more things change, the more they get different. It's the way of the world. But the existence of these charicature guitars is one of those things I really wish I'd been totally ignorant of before I shuffle off this mortal coil completely.

It's not just the changes I see as I look around now. It's the serious dumbing down that's everywhere. And the amazing mind-boggling acceptance of shit -- and calling it diamonds. Then the old mantra is again heard in the land-------- Forgive them lord. They know not what they do! What new religion is gonna come out of this to divide us even further---if that is possible??

And please forgive my little diatribe tonight. I usually know better than to get so touchy-Felix. ;-)

Art Thieme