Acoustic guitars. Think of the range of different kinds of music they can fuck up:

- Segovia demonstrating why Bach preferred to write for just about *anything* else rather than have his melodic lines reduced to a blurry confused mess

- innumerable Russians playing technical studies with a phenomenal number of notes per second, half of them using harmonics and none of which contribute to any sense of tonal direction

- almost every solo folksinger demonstrating that wrapping yourself in haze of chordal rumbling like an acoustic security blanket is a great way to fool yourself that the mumbling monody you're coming out with is really a tune

- people like Renbourn demonstrating that there is a damn good reason why traditional British Isles dance music was developed on instruments that can play it in a danceable rhythm

- people accompanying traditional music with bizarre jazz harmonies and pseudo-African rhythms that have nothing recognizably to do with the tune

- people like Leo Kottke developing whole new genres of such consciousness-annihilating tedium that their only conceivable purpose is tranquillizing large predators when you don't have a fentanyl gun handy

It's got a real purpose in flamenco. That's *it*.