Letters to the Editor

Perhaps Mr. Sheehan should go back to working in the kitchen rather than claiming to be a "restaurant critic" and assuming all over the place...all over one man's success. Name withheld on request

You go, Nick DeCiccio. What a great letter in the April 26 issue about Jason Sheehan. Maybe you should take over for Jason, because although I like, even love, his writing, I wish I could say as much for his taste in food. Still, I keep trying the restaurants from his favorable reviews. Alas, with limited success.
Yvonne Barcewski
Littleton

Playlist, Tuyet Nguyen, April 19

Regarding the review of Thank God for Astronauts' new album, Bring Us Meat, I can only say that the next time you set out to review a record grounded in genres or styles not recently featured on TRL, you should assign it to someone who actually has a halfway decent frame of reference.

I don't know anyone who would even begin to make comparisons of this band to Sunny Day Real Estate or the Shins. Obviously, through their history on Best Friends -- who have truly been best friends to the twee set -- someone who's never bothered to listen to the band might make such poor assumptions. However, anyone who a) has heard Bring Us Meat all the way through, and b) has any sense of historical power pop that goes beyond last Tuesday would much more accurately draw comparisons between this record and, say, Bandwagonesque-era Teenage Fanclub, perhaps the Grip Weeds, and even Big Star songwriting (if not tone).

I don't bring this up to quibble with facts, but rather to point out that the reviewer really has no bloody basis on which to ascribe such venal commentary as "banal sing-along ditties" or "impressively bland," or even "mostly mediocre attempt at cutesy-yet-earnestly-indie pop." If your diet is a steady stream of My Chemical Romance, Lily Allen and Maroon 5, you're just...not...going... to...understand. (As an aside, I'm not here to dis Tuyet, who once wrote a not-unfavorable review of a former twee band of my own.) Power pop, in its purest form, isn't trying to break new ground, but rather to construct catchy, well-crafted, memorable pop in a guitar-rock construct. I'm not suggesting the reviewer needs to be deeply ensconced in everything in the canon. But when listening to Bring Us Meat, if you can't recognize sonic nods to bands as prominent as Teenage Fanclub, Material Issue or even the Knack, then you are wholly unqualified to judge such a record on its own merits.

While one may quibble with where the new Thank God for Astronauts record stands among its true peers -- both stylistic peers in its genre, as well as Denver bands generally -- I don't think there's any doubt that songs such as "Ghetto Flame," "Daggers in the Street" and "Danica" make for most pleasant listening at any time, and perhaps even have strong radio potential.
Dave Meyer
Longmont

"Sound Check," Michael Roberts, April 26

Michael Roberts's latest Message column provided some great insights into how Clear Channel is dealing -- or not -- with the issue of how its conservative talk-show hosts use the public airwaves. It's quite telling that even in speaking with a journalist, Mike Rosen and "Gunny" Bob Newman couldn't resist a little inaccurate spin about the critiques of their shows by Colorado Media Matters. While those two would like you to think that we differ with them mainly on points of ideology, the vast bulk of our research focuses on fact-based misinformation, not conservative vs. progressive interpretation. That is, we've documented the numerous times that Rosen, Newman, Peter Boyles and Dan Caplis have used factually inaccurate assertions to support their points of view. In many cases (with Boyles by far the worst offender), they do it repeatedly, using the same falsehoods over and over again even after we've sent them the facts showing that they are spouting inaccurate information. We don't call that "misleading," as Rosen would like people to believe; we call that "lying."

Clearly they don't like the fact that unlike in past years, someone on a regular basis is catching them in the act of lying to their listeners.
Bill Menezes, editorial director
Colorado Media Matters