WEILLENCE

Lou Reed and Tom Waits would not be associated with Kurt Weill (“Record Rack,” Nov. 17)?

That’s news to me, as well as almost anyone else familiar with these artists: Reed’s “Berlin,” like most of his music, is the “pop” equivalent of Weill and Brecht’s works and Waits’ whole musical career is directly in line with a lot of the ideas, musical and otherwise, of those famous Germans.

If you had allowed someone to review the album who was familiar with “popular” music (as a pop critic should be), instead of Dan Sullivan, perhaps that reviewer could have understood that the choice of artists for this album, other than Sting, I’ll admit, was very appropriate.

MARK SMITH

Studio City