HOW GOOD’S MADONNA?

I read Calendar’s Madonna critic with gloom and foreboding (“It’s True: Madonna Is Really Good,” by Robert Hilburn’s, June 29). Hilburn was not disappointed: “Madonna is good. Honest.”

It seems that Hilburn’s broken-down old-man’s libido is leading him astray on this one. I recommend that he go home and listen, one time only, to Janis Joplin singing “Ball and Chain,” so he can begin, again, to remember what “good” means.

Madonna has never, nor will ever, perform a single note of a single song anywhere near Joplin. In fact, forget the arrangements and all the fancy sound tricks done with studio mixers and listen to Janis sing, “Oh, Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz” . . . a cappella.

Madonna is a great Las Vegas stage act, but she is not rock . . . and she never will be. Maybe it is time Hilburn retired to the Palm Springs/Las Vegas junket set and leave rock ‘n’ roll to the rockers.

DAWN DIRKSEN

Palm Desert