Our Boy Answers His Many Fan Letters. By Tom Danehy LETTERS...BOY, DO we get letters. In fact, sometimes we get so many letters, they don't all fit in the Mail Bag section. Or maybe there's just one BIG letter from Renz Jennings about God knows what, like somebody's actually gonna take the time to read it. I've been getting a lot of mail lately myself, of which a majority...all right, some...all right, none, was positive. First off, y'all can stop writing letters which "correct" the answers to the music trivia quiz. It's over. We've moved on. I will acknowledge this: • I did know that Chuck Berry's "My Ding-A-Ling" was from 1972, not 1969. It was a mistake which I kindly asked my editor, A. Bradley Dongass III, to correct before it was printed. But he got drunk and tore up some poor snowbird couple's $100,000 RV and got sentenced to six weeks of community service as a non-violence counselor for youths convicted of felonies. So it didn't happen. OK? • I realize I said the charter members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included five white acts and five black acts, when in fact there were four white and six black. What can I say? My possible excuses are: a. Really?! All this time I thought Little Richard was white! b. Me not good in math. I went to a school where Vicki Cox-Golder was on the school board. c. I was protesting the fact that Bill Haley & The Comets weren't included in the charter group, so I unilaterally put them in and bumped Fats Domino out. • In response to Mr. Kevin Keresey, Buddy Holly's last hit song, "It Doesn't Matter Anymore," was written by Paul Anka. Which makes me wonder: If Buddy Holly was reduced to singing Paul Anka songs, maybe the plane crash was suicide. • I never said "American Pie" was mentioned in "Killing Me Softly." Only that the latter song was about the former. And it was. • And yes, I guess I did mention prizes for second and third places. I'm still trying to wrangle the first prize for Mike Adkins out of our promotions guy. The second prize winner, Amy Rod, will receive the next two CDs which come through our doors from record companies (unless it's something cool, like Al Green's Greatest Hits or something, which would then mean she would get two other CDs). The third-prize winner, Kevin Keresey his ownself, gets one CD, mostly for having admitted he's read this rag since it was The Coyote. (I'm hoping that Kevin's will be a collection of disco remixes of Alanis Morisette songs.) Of course, either of you could have the cheese which Mr. Dongass mentioned as a prize. • Finally, my favorite letter of all comes from a guy I just have to meet someday. Gabe Molina writes me the most incredibly nasty hate letters, but he never puts his phone number or address on them so we can contact him to verify that he wrote the letter. That's why your letters don't get printed, Gabe, not because you call me an "ignorant little bitch." 'Course, where I come from, somebody calls you that, you have to puff up and kick their punk ass. Fortunately, I'm not from there any more. I was never into kicking ass, punk or otherwise. Fighting is for sissies. Besides, I don't think Gabe is a punk, anyway. He's just someone who's passionate about music, and that's a good thing. Gabe was really upset with my parting shot (if you'll pardon the expression) on Tupac Shakur. He wrote a long letter defending Shakur and some of it was printable. I agree Shakur got a bum rap with that shooting incident in Atlanta involving two off-duty cops. I admit I had the wrong reaction at first, but when the facts came out, I was glad the charges were dropped. The cops were wrong. However, I disagree with Gabe's contention Shakur "did what anybody would do that had a gun pointed at them--he shot both men." I'm sorry, Gabe, but that's not what everybody would do. Every time I've had a gun pointed at me, I've run in the opposite direction as fast as my pudgy white legs would carry me. If fighting is for sissies, gunplay is for industrial-strength sissies. He said Shakur had sex with the woman he was convicted of raping earlier in the evening, and then added that it "sounds like shades of Mike Tyson." I agree completely. The problem is that a lot of guys don't understand that if a woman performs a sex act with a guy 1,000 times and then says "no" when the guy takes her up to a room and invites his crew in for some, that still means "no." The inability or unwillingness to understand that most simple of words, "no," is what caused Tupac and Mike Tyson to become guests of the state. Oh yeah, Gabe, you think a man who beats up women and then writes tender lyrics like on "Dear Mama" is just multi-faceted and misunderstood: I think he's a hypocrite. We'll just have to agree to disagree on that one. Finally, you can't really think Tupac was a great rapper. He was average, leaning toward mediocre. He couldn't rap like Treach, his lyrics were often petty and vengeful, and his beats were largely uninspired. He was more of a star than a talent. He might have turned out to be a movie star, although anytime someone says the words "Poetic Justice," his ashes probably swirl in the urn. I think he was special, but misguided. This will be my last word on the departed Mr. Shakur, unless his new album, Don Killuminati, turns out to be prophetic. See, he raps as "Makaveli," apparently based on the character in The Prince who had the idea to fake his own death so that he could sneak up on his enemies. Real subtle marketing there, guys. Anyway Gabe, give me a call. We'll get together, maybe play some ball. I'll bring along my Parliament-Funkadelic collection so you can hear what great music used to sound like before people started rapping over it. Peace.

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