PART FOUR : EXCERPTS FROM IFC CORRESPONDENCE SPECIFICALLY RELATING TO THE VOT.
· Can you imagine the IFC around a table at a pub talking like this?
· Yes, and I can imagine people at nearby tables drinking up and leaving with nervous looks behind as they overhear "No, that was the one without the Tibetan Monks!" "Gamelan Gongs were never on the Black Label version!!" "I think you're wrong on that one, let me check my copy..." "What's that you got there, a Green Label edition...Green????" Etc Etc.
· I also imagine the IFC round a table in a pub with Fahey. We each whack down onto the table all the different editions of VOT and say "Now then, Fahey, you're not leaving until you've explained all this - and it better be good." First he blusters - "C'mon guys, my memory ain't what it usta be, whatsa sense in digging up all this anyway..." But the IFC have posted a burly henchman at each exit. "It was all a big joke…" moans Fahey. But the IFC aren't laughing.
· My money is on at least 3 VOT, although I wonder about possibly a 4th and/or 5th, minor pressings that were slipped into the racks in small music stores during travels stateside and abroad, unbeknownst to the poor shopkeeper who then had to contend with irate Faheyites who discovered that Johnny got a different VOT than me.

· The whole thing is like that Jorge Luis Borges story "Tlon, Uqbar,Orbis Tertius". Also, I think the musical members of the IFC and their immediate friends and family, should record a parody of VOT replete with hideous discographical problems, backward masking, hidden tracks, missattributed titles, stolen songs, and so forth, and force Fahey to listen to it and figure it all out.
· This was the break in the case we'd all been waiting for. We'd been sweating it out for weeks, months, and finally it looked as if the chief suspect, the big man himself, was going to cough. We had to think how we were gonna play it. One wrong move and we knew he'd skip for sure. We hadda figure all the angles...


The Voice of the Turtle