Dear Editor:

Ho hum and oh well. Daina Darzin's review of my Dragonfly show was like a visit to the Twilight Zone [Music Reviews, March 1-7]. There were 400 people out on a rainy night to hear the band and me perform songs from my new solo CD, "Black Diamond"—cheering, clapping, and asking for encores—but your reviewer must have been somewhere else, crying in her beer. Or was it a Prozac highball?

She is obviously very unhappy with her station in life to falsely paint me as some bitter, cold, and lonely figure, cynically lamenting my "loss." Is she okay? I mean, is everything all right with her? Is she depressed? Is she not where she'd like to be? I normally don't respond to reviews ("Don't look at the scoreboard"—Norman Mailer), but in this case, where a review totally distorts and misrepresents what was a "good time had by all," I feel I gotta set it straight.

For the record, I am not bitter or disappointed. On the contrary, my career so far has exceeded my wildest expectations, and I'm happier now than I've ever been. I guess I just don't open my wallet and show everybody.

Stan Ridgway
Los Angeles