Sir, - John Waters was correct when he wrote that today's "boy bands" such as Westlife, are as embarrassing as the showbands of yesterday. But then the boy bands are directed at children. The incredible thing about the shownbands was that they were directed at adults. Children were not even allowed in the dancehalls. Waters is, as always, trying to construct some kind of post-modernist argument that all cultural expressions have equal value. But he shoots himself in the foot by conceding that, even in the lowest common denominator culture of modern pop music, the only thing as mindless as the showbands are teenybopper boy bands.
Waters admits that, like most of his contemporaries, he rebelled against the post-independence culture of Dev's Ireland. Out of some sense of guilt or out of hatred of revisionists, he now tries to prove that that culture had some merit. Forget it, Mr Waters. You were right first time: showband music was the expression of a stunted culture that allowed no one to grow up. - Yours, etc.,
Tim O'Halloran, Ferndale Road, Dublin 11.