GREAT RACE

EDITOR: Your recent Taxicab Olympics piece ["The (Less Than) Amazing Race," Dan Savage, Amy Kate Horn, Ari Spool, and Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, May 10] was yet another example of the crack investigative reportage that assures The Stranger's reign atop the steaming dung heap that is Seattle's local news cartel. I laughed, I cried, I thrilled to the epic human drama of iguana-green taxis, fickle dispatchers, and Team Orange's heartbreaking arrival at a just-closed Pilot House. Thanks for another instant classic.

Erik Huber

LESS THAN IMPRESSED

DEAR EDITOR: As someone who tapes live music in this town, I was disappointed to see the story concerning Jayney Wallick and her "lifework" to preserve live music in Seattle ["Recorded History," Ari Spool, May 3].

For one, Wallick states, "I don't distribute them..." and that, to me, is the direct antithesis of what recording live shows is all about. If the band in question has reservations about live recordings being traded, then that is one thing. But the majority of bands who allow taping encourage people to trade and spread the recordings so everyone can listen. The fact that getting a tape from Wallick is about as easy as building a working public transit system in this town is disheartening to me. Even members of local bands say it's difficult to get a tape of their OWN SHOW from her.

Secondly, she claims that recording shows is her "lifework." You'd think that after spending so many hours of her time recording live shows she would invest in some better recording equipment than a Shure VP88 single-point stereo microphone and a Mackie six-channel mixing console. That might be a little bit too "nerd taper talk" for some people, but rest assured, there is far better equipment she could and should be using that performs WAY better. Even I, a recent college grad with a crappy-paying job, have better equipment and I've only been taping shows for a year and a half. Never mind the fact that she mixes her microphone source with her soundboard source on the fly without accounting for signal drift (which leaves the recording sounding like an echo chamber).

Finally, claiming to be an archivist for a band when the band in question doesn't even know who you are speaks volumes to me. As a taper, you're supposed to try to contact the band if they don't have an explicit, known taping policy to make sure that it's okay if you record the show. It's just proper etiquette.

I've seen her at shows where she just shows up with her eight tons of gear and folding card table, taking up about 10 square feet of space when any other taper only needs a quarter of that. And the whole time I watch her tape shows I just think to myself, "No one but her will ever hear that recording. What is the fucking point?"

There are so many tapers in this town who do so much to record shows in the highest quality possible that to run a story on Ms. Wallick seems like you missed the point of taping live shows. It's not about having 1,700 recordings that no one but you has ever heard. It's about recording concerts and spreading them around so everyone can listen again and again.

Brian Connolly

SUPERB BULLSHIT DETECTOR

EDITOR: That was an outstanding column by Josh Feit [CounterIntel, May 10]. Feit's calling BS on the P-I's Kenneth Bunting for his usual hypocritical slop was a glimpse of old-school journalism at its best. Bunting, on the other hand, routinely typifies what passes for mainstream flakiness today. The Community Development Roundtable has long been Seattle's shameless sham of incestuous collusion on monolithic, corrupt conformity. The high standard of old-school, reality-based journalism is still alive and thriving at The Stranger. Carry on, Mr. Feit, carry on.

James Woolley

AND A GOOD SCOLDING

DEAR EDITOR: In the documentary The Hip Hop Project, the protagonist Chris "Kazi" Rolle clearly states that he was born in the Bahamas. Then, he takes the audience on a trip to revisit his birthplace. Finally, we meet his Bahamian mother who lives in New York City. So why does Lindy West write that Rolle is "a Jamaican immigrant" ["On Screen," May 10]? That would be like referring to Lindy as a Canadian when she hails from the U.S. But that's not all that Lindy missed.

Personally, I was touched by Kazi confronting his cold-blooded mother and emotionally breaking down in the process. As for Princess, the young lady who rapped about her abortion, the scenes where she visits her father in prison were overwhelming for both her and the audience. Unlike Lindy's experience, the images that stayed with me were not of the youngsters' fundraising for their Art Start project, but of the struggles the three main rappers overcame in their personal lives.

Next time, Lindy, please take notes.

Yayoi Lena Winfrey

EDITORS NOTE: It's true: Lindy mistakenly jotted down "Jamaican" instead of "Bahamian" and sincerely regrets the error.