Ryan says:

 
Purely by accident, I recently stumbled across a 2001 Sound-On-Sound review of Korg's DDM-110 Super Drums, a circa '84 8-bit drum machine. This was my first drum machine love, and thanks to my well-toned lawn-mowing legs, was obtained for $200+ from a mailed Sam Ash newsletter. Power to the people, as this was by far and away the only affordable digital, programmable drum machine within the grasp of an independent, junior high geek. But even at the time, in the days of power ballads ala ZZ Top's 'Rough Boy', it felt incredibly thin, dry and awfully weak. Even though it taught me drum machine programming and found its way onto a million high-school bedroom demos [including my recalled first, 'Angie', which poorly rewrote Steve Winwood's 'Valerie'], I was more than ready to free it from my captivity and my memory when I lent it to classmate Chris Sterling, who had introduced me to another friend Casey and ultimately my first band, Big Swifty, which despite the name was not a Zappa cover band, which was fortunate for all involved.
 
Fast-forward to last year when I magically stumbled across the DDM-110 buried in a sealed box of needless junk which had been passed unopened from move to move. I swore I'd lent that permanently to Chris, but amazingly no, it was back, staring me in the face with its dinky buttons. So far, it has yet to be turned on, let alone used on a new recording - probably because I desperately want to be pleasantly surprised by it, but know it'll sound as cheap as it did 20 years ago. Granted, as time and instrument technology progresses, all gear somehow finds its own niche, a strangely comforting thought and studio aesthetic Eric & I live by almost too closely. So I guess I'm not surprised to find myself these days vaguely intrigued again in completing the Super Drums Yin-Yang by finding an DDM-220, which was the Ray Cooper to the 110's Phil Collins.
 
Upon reading that SOS retrospect, I got a big kick out of how incredibly complementary the review was towards that machine, then quickly realized I'm no different that the guys 10+ years older than me who, without batting an eye, traded their Minimoog's in for mere peanuts to be able to drool all over a Yamaha DX7 in order to be able to play Whitney Houston covers semi-accurately in their weekend wedding band. FWIW, these days, you can buy about 8 DX7's for the price of 1 original Minimoog. In fact, a few years ago, Nine Inch Nails supposedly used to buy these by the boatload whenever they could, just so they could use 'em a cheap-ass MIDI controllers and bash the hell out of 'em on stage, although I should note that with the fumbly comeback and misty-eyed nostalgia of electropop, DX7's are fetching increasing prices yet again.
 
That's where the 2024 Ryan steps in and sagely and quietly suggests that I should stop scoffing at the past and note that in the far-off future, there will be giant Japanese museums devoted to the DX-7 and its invaluable shaping of heralded music created from 1983 onwards. In fact, there's even supposedly one Tokyo apartment [construction start: 2011] with all furniture and wall-hangings made from DX-7's [141 of them, to be precise]. Fortunately, 2024 Ryan also advised me to give up creating music entirely and handed me a napkin with 25 stocks to invest in after the surprise US succession of California/Oregon/Washington in 2007.