Dear Sir,

My brother and I are thinking of forming a band and we need your advice. We are both single, strikingly good looking, possess the full complement of limbs and have names that are easy to spell.

Someone we met in a pub mentioned a thing called 'music' to us, and we are now very worried. He said you had to sit down and work at it very hard until you got it right. We thought, first of all, he meant doing the thing where you waggle part of your mouth so the lip goes up one side, like dead pop stars used to do. My brother and I have worked very hard at that one, and now we can do this thing with the lip and talk at the same time, though whatever word we speak comes out 'Enff'.

But he said we were wrong. Where can we buy music, and will it leave an embarrassing stain on our teeth?

Yours, Senth Renf and Marenth Benth

No. It's nothing to worry about. We would normally recommend music for the solo artist to keep the audience occupied, but in your case it's unlikely that both of you are going to forget to breathe at the same time and as long as one of you is still making that funny hissing sound when the air goes up your nose, the fans should be happy enough.

Dear Sir,

I recently bought an electric guitar from a shop in London but am not very satisfied and do you think I should take it back? I asked them for a red one in the shape of a Stratocaster, but the guitar I have got is a sort of light brown and the body has been very badly cut. It is thick, almost triangular shaped, a bit like a bad Flying Arrow, I suppose, and the neck is very thick and almost impossible to play. Anyway, they did not provide any strings with the guitar and it looks as if the bridge has fallen off because I cannot find any saddles. Finally there are no strap buttons or controls, and when I pick the guitar up I can hear something heavy rattling around inside.

What should I do?

Yours, Worried

What you have is a cardboard box. If there is no guitar inside I recommend you return to the shop in question and give them all the money you have in the world as you are obviously very stupid and should not be trusted with things that have sharp edges, such as pound notes.

Dear Sir,

Please can you tell me what effects pedals are used by the Gllyngogoch Male Voice Choir.

Yours, Dyffed Jones

The Gllyngogoch Male Voice choir use a Boss CE-2 chorus (with mains adaptor), an original Marshall Supa Fuzz, two MXR 90 Phasers (one slow, one set fast), and a Yamaha D1500 MIDI syncable delay. The organist has a Pete Cornish effects board and they have recently changed to a Turbo PA: "It really blew our balls off," said lead grunter Ivan 'Bison Breath' Jones.

Dear Sir,

Is it true that Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings, and what were they called?

Yours, V. Lanasam

No.

Dear Sir,

Is it true that Simon Le Bon has been dead for the last three months. My friend says so because he's the only one on the new album who doesn't have half an inch of socks showing over the top of his shoes. My friend says that makes it definite. Please, I would kill myself and my entire family if this was true.

Yours, a worried Duran fan

No, Simon Le Bon is as bright and alive as he's ever been. And, taking a quick poll around the office, that means that your family have approximately 30 seconds to live.

Dear Sir,

I really must take issue with Philip Loganberry-Essence's shoddy dialectic of envy-raddled hypocrisy that laughingly passed as a serious critique of the lifework of Peruvian landscape composer Bernard Slatchez. Slatchez was surely the seminal influence in the use of rocks, gravel and small woodland glades as musical instruments, and to say he was predated in this endeavour by the Fieldists of the early 19th century is to completely ignore the efflorescent force of Slatchez...

Shut your face you verbose old sod.

Dear Sir,

I have a EMU Systems Emulator II, a CMI Fairlight with new 16 bit chips, two DX7s (MIDI linked), a Roland MSQ 700 and 100 synced into an Otari 8-track using the new SMPTE code SMPL system and triggered from a Linn 9000 with custom blown chips all driven by a Synclavier Rev 2 with additional Winchester double disc drive back up.

However, when I attempt to bias the top line DCOs from one of the ADA encoders (-5V with reference to earth), there's a distinct post EQ frequency feedback loop addressing itself to the least significant bits of the fundamental waveform and re-cursoring the original parameters.

What should I do?

Yours, Trevor Oboe

A 12 inch mix and keep the worst takes for the album.

Dear Siring,

I am from Scandinavian and would wish to write to about the rock music. We have the many good bands in Scandinavia but what we say is this. Why no Heevy Metal?? Why no Monster Rocks bands are coming to Scandinavia from your England. Let us know. Please.

Hungry Metal Fanns

Dear Sir,

I have been informed that your magazine has recently carried a series of letters — fabricated by your own staff — that purport to be from readers in Scandinavia. This letters make our countrymen out to be illiterate heavy metal fans who write in comic book English. This is just not the true. We are educated country not needing your smelly snides. Be good to stop, please.

Yours, Scandinavian Cultural Attache

Dear Sir,

Please be good enough to ignore any correspondence proclaiming to be from Scandinavian heavy metal fans, the Scandinavian Cultural Attache, or the Minister of Scandinavian Affairs. It is counterfeit and fallacious.

Yours, the Minister of Scandin... oh shi...

Dear Sir,

As a road safety officer with special responsibility for the young and newly mobile, I wonder if I might take a few paragraphs in your August publication to pass on some safety tips to your readers.

1) Never, never crash your car. This can be extremely dangerous and we have found that many of the injuries arising from road accidents have a lot to do with people getting hurt.

2) If you are in any doubt at all about crossing the road, remember this; the road is the black bit that goes from as far as you can see on the left to as far as you can see on the right. If, instead, the black bit stretches out in front of you and behind you, then you are standing in the middle (centre) of the road. This may involve you in a traffic violation. Several pieces of traffic may violate your body rather severely, I am afraid. The first sign of this is often cold ears, the drop in temperature brought about by air passing over them at an increased rate due to your head travelling through the atmosphere somewhat faster than the remainder of your body.

3) Scientists have now found that fog has a very unsettling effect on motorists. Not only does it limit visibility, it limits any use whatsoever of the front, back, left, right and middle sections of the brain. The immediate reaction of the motorist on being able to see nothing more than three yards in front of him, is to drive very quickly up to the bumper of the car in front, until he can see something. His confidence now restored, the happy automobile owner can continue at the regulation 73 mph.

4) Policemen are there to help you, but some of them are a bit weak on modern history and Nuffield Physics so you may have to go to a butcher to complete the syllabus.

Yours, Major Contri Butiontoo (Road Safety)

...tell me to shut up. Slatchez had a grasp of the sonic value of granite that has never since been witnessed in landscape composition. What that man could do with three splinters of slate and a mossy pebble would leave you gasping. These so called, modern day, Agri-culturists and their Concertos for a Wheat Pasture. Music by ear, ha, the monsoon of emotion Slatchez unleashed...

Bog off.

Dear Sir,

I act on behalf of Miss Tracey Ullman.

Someone should.

Dear Sir,

I recently bought a four track cassette recorder and have read the instruction manual which refers to a 'pan pot'. I am none the wiser. Can you explain how this is used.

Yours, T. Cut.

The pan pot was developed by early studio engineers who were so busy, they had no time to go home for a proper cooked meal. They would heat up old plectrums, strings and Les Paul shavings in a disused tape cannister, and eat them straight from the tin.

...leave grown feminist aligned male-humans weeping into their straggley beards. Slatchez felt the diurnal tug of all iambic pentametery, and dined on the genius of his own soul to produce the rough hewn masterpieces of adamantine thought couched in his music. The cathedrals of tone in which he made his home were wrought from...

Bite on your own ribs.

Dear Sir,

I have an EMU Systems Emulator II, a CMI Fairlight with new 16 bit chips, two DX7s (MIDI linked), a Roland MSQ 700 and 100 synced into an Otari 8 track using the new SMPTE code SMPL system and triggered from a Linn 9000 with custom blown chips all driven by a Synclavier Rev 2 with additional Winchester double disc drive back up.

Will swap for a BMX or Raleigh with mudguards.

Yours, Trevor Oboe.