Rock Vocabulary

Jonathan Gold’s April 21 review of Mind Over Four was an education for me. First, I learned how to spell the rock guitar sound “NNNGAOOOWWww- wee- wee-wee!” (But I’ll never remember the italics on that first wee .)

And there were so many clever juxtapositions: “crunching riff,” “swirlly Siouxsie drone,” “keening wail” (that sent me to the dictionary) and last but not least, “a pan-tonal Brecht-Weill beat.”

Gosh, Gold’s writing makes the work of that British critic who, in prehistoric times, was ridiculed for writing of “Aeolian cadences” in the Beatles’ “Things We Said Today” seem very feeble, indeed.

CHARLES GRIMES, Van Nuys