A few days ago, I wrote about Living Things' recent South By Southwest sets, where the act burned dollar bills in the accompaniment of local Austin, Texas, homeless. It was not a glowing review.

Today, however, Living Things frontman Lillian Berlin e-mailed me, via his publicist, a lengthy riposte to that post.  It's a spirited defense of his cash-burning as metaphor, and he asked that we post it to Pop & Hiss. Below is the entire unedited letter.

Because we've been enjoying this tete-a-tete, Pop & Hiss is hoping to land a date with Berlin early next week to talk more about music's ability to both gain from and denounce Wall Street's dirty dollars.

In the meantime, here's his letter.

LIVING THINGS' RESPONSE TO THE L.A. TIMES POP & HISS BLOG, MARCH 23, 2009

"My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all." - John Lennon

Dear Mr. Brown,

A significant effort was made by you to bring attention to and critique the launch of our "Burn Wall Street's Dirty Dollar" campaign. For that we are grateful. You believe that we offended Perez Hilton. For that we are even more grateful. You purport that we offended liberals and plutocrats. We can buy that to a certain degree. But to say that we offended the homeless is, in our humble opinion, just mere ignorance. If you were so misled about our message and confused, we would have hoped that you would have done what any good journalist would do - and simply ask us. Bust since you didn't, we took the liberty of responding ourselves: