[A] If you suffer from depression and this record braces you, by all means stick with it. Me, I've never liked a screamo record in my life and see no reason to try and make an exception for this one.

[A] Robinson is just about my favorite contemporary novelist although the more aesthetically daring Jonathan Lethem is in the running, and while I regretfully doubt that Swedish socialism will ever catch on here I'd be delighted if it did.

[A] David was one of my first assistants, recommended as I recall by Riffs contributor and NYU prof Perry Meisel. He had a very good brain and was a pleasure to be around. I learned of his death, which as I recall was heart-related and took place when he was pursuing a graduate degree in English in Texas, via the earliest iteration of the commenting community that grew up back when the Expert Witness blog generated a de facto discussion group that dubbed itself the Witnesses. He was mourned; it was a shock for all of us.

[A] Anyone who's really interested in my take on Eminem should find what The Believer called "The Slim Shady Essay," which is available on my site and also collected in Is It Still Good to Ya? It was assigned and paid for and then left hanging as a minibook by someone who'd been led to believe by the late Dave Hickey that I might write something worthy of his recommendation. But there was only one Dave Hickey, and it definitely wasn't me.

[A] I have tried to get into that admittedly beloved Neutral Milk Hotel album on at least three separate occasions. Many love it and are free to do so, yourself included. Not me. I'm older than you and would at this point in my life would almost always rather devote my ever-fleeting hours to something I like already.

[A] I do like Rogers but have never explored him. The only incidentally Chess Elmore James's The Sky Is Crying, assembled by the late Robert Palmer for Rhino, is one of the great single-artist compilations, and see my other James reviews as well. I play Sonny Boy Williamson as much as Wolf or Waters myself. And original Alligator Records mainstay Hound Dog Taylor, who did do a few Chess singles as well.

[A] But I do count best-ofs. Why not? So pin The Shirelles' Greatest Hits up in there. And Tom Ze's Brazil Classics IV. Definitely Franco's Francophonic, both volumes. And note that when Blender did a GOAT thing, sometime in the '00s as I recall, it put none other than Madonna's Immaculate Collection at the top of the list. Plus, absolutely, the James Brown box Star Time.

[A] Just to check, I dug out and put on the Stones' 2017 On Air (Deluxe Edition) which collects mostly blues/r&b/ covers from their irrepressible youth. Stands in as a pretty good live album. Otherwise, point taken. For me, that's a so what. For . . . Allman Brothers fans, perhaps? . . . not necessarily.

[A] I dealt with these somewhat confusing options the way I did basically because Hot House is at the moment the most readily accessible version of this extraordinary night of music and I thought it sounded great. I saw little advantage in A&B-ing Mingus's willful revisions and the much more than adequate bass parts on the "live" Hot House. To me Hot House is clearly, for the nonce, the fullest sounding, the most coherent, and the most readily available version of this music. I'm really not interested in the kind of nitpicking in which so many jazz adepts love to indulge. Both records I've reviewed are fine. If you already have a Massey Hall album you can probably stick with it. If you're in the market for one now, Hot House is almost certain to be the most readily available, with the bass parts far more than adequate. Distinguishing among/between bass parts that seem fine to me just isn't my idea of what aesthetic acuity is for. The CD, which is what I have, goes for around 25 bucks at Amazon from what I can see.

[A] Just reread my OK Computer CG brief as well as listening to the thing again and failed to register the anti-computer preachments to which you refer, which doesn't mean they're not there--I've never found the band's lyrics compelling enough to follow religiously--but does likely mean that they're more pretentiously subtle than "heavily preached." My guess is that Thom Yorke, whose political activism and general sense of principle I very much admire, didn't intend anything as blatantly ideological as you suggest. I believe the band's popularity, which these days is better designated "status," is based much more on its prog aesthetic than on its progressive politics. To my way of thinking this is one of the pitfalls of what I'll just call art-rock, which actively rejects both the catchy hooks and the compelling groove of the rock and roll aesthetic I've championed for most of my life. Moreover, I believe that the band's rejection of that aesthetic in favor of more cerebral songwriting and subtle execution is, together with their enthusiastically received live shows, why their fans love them so--insofar as they still do, since their productivity has definitely flattened out in recent years.

[A] In the wake of Minaj's confusingly variegated 2023 output I've made an executive decision that when an artist releases a new album in multiple versions, I'm only obliged to review one. In this case I did what I usually do--buy, with my own money, a physical from Amazon. The one that came in the mail and I wrote about didn't even have a booklet--just a square, almost info-free 4.7"X4.7" slip of paper. It got the level of attention I estimated it had earned. The album was good, but definitely an A minus rather than full A. My working assumption is that the "full 22-track version" is longer and quite possibly as good but very unlikely to be substantially better. I don't think Minaj is so iconic she merits the extra attention.

[A] With an artist as gifted as Rodrigo, predicting the future is difficult to impossible, although it is worth noting, as she does in the notes to Guts, that she works with an experienced collaborator named Daniel Nigro who it's safe to assume transformed at least a few good songs into great ones. Also worth remembering is that thus far she's been free to write as something approaching what she is: a remarkable young woman whose professional life and love life are both bound to become more complicated, with who knows what effect on the songs she writes except that just because the writing has been so consistent up till now a few unresolved twists and complication or for that matter some sort of satisfactory resolution or turmoil in her romantic interpersonals likely awaits her, with unpredictable effects on her art itself--although just because she's so talented it's not at all impossible that her next bunch of songs at least will be more complex and unexpected than is within our power to anticipate.

[A] As a general matter, there's nothing morally wrong about cannibalizing a great song for a commercial, and yes I said cannibalizing. A lot of musicians feel they don't get paid enough for their work, and many of them have a point. So I don't even think twice about it, which may be why I can't even cite a relatively offensive example. A gravity knife? A Kid Rock Trump anthem? A conspicuously pricey timepiece? An AK-47? Some oxygen-sucking SUV I can't even name?

[A] Critics do not make meaningful money from their books if they're lucky enough to have a few, and this applies especially to criticism per se--bios and to a lesser extent historical studies are somewhat different. Also, like all writers critics want to be read, to have their carefully honed analyses and opinions be a part of public discourse so that guys like you can share them or elaborate them. Hence I didn't think twice when my old friend and in some respects protege Tom Hull made the tremendously generous offer to create a website for me back in 2001, which I should mention now includes 24 years of Consumer Guides that have never achieved book form. If he hadn't, and if Wikipedia hadn't gleefully cited and sometimes cannibalized it, I wouldn't be making a remarkably decent living on Substack, which at least for the nonce I am. A fulltime writer at 81. I'm very fortunate.

[A] I think my most important gift as a critic is how intensely, variously, and most important voraciously I respond to music. That said, it's far more common for such responses to be enhanced and intensified by analyzing and listening critically, a process generally jump-started by what begins as more casual or incidental enjoyment. But the opposite certainly happens sometimes--I come to realize that I've been attracted only to a single song or two, or even that I've gotten tired of or seen through the track that initially pulled me in.

[A] This is a hypothetical so implausible--forget Trump, what about "formed a committee"?--that it's not worth answering except to point that out. I suppose you could posit a situation in which his opponent was heinous in some way, but whatever the Dems' limitations that's not plausible either. And in any case, my politics are my own, which doesn't mean they won't inevitably be affected by the neverending flow of new information that can come from anyone. I read more about politics online than I do about music.

[A] Only occasionally do I even listen to rerecordings or remasters, and almost never do I write about them. These niceties may well matter to the artists, but they're also profit-takers pure and simple that tend so marginal aesthetically that except in jazz, where improvisation counts for so much, I just feel like I have better things to do with ears that work 12-18 hours a day. Maybe what I assume about Swift is obvious; maybe it's even public knowledge. I just haven't cared enough to poke around about it. But I assume that her primary reason for those rerecordings is economic, not artistic--a way to combat the sale of her catalog out from under her nose. But I will also say that having raved about her as long ago as 2008's Fearless, I personally have found Swift's recent songs of solid quality but at the same time somewhat more predictable and/or fame-specific, hence less than compelling.

[A] I've streamed the new PJ maybe four-five times, which isn't to claim front-to-back by the way, without feeling inclined to forget about it quite yet. But that's mainly because I respect the artist as much as I do. This is PJ Harvey, after all. That said, so far it hasn't passed either of my two tests: 1) Do I want to play it again just to hear it? 2) Am I ever actively and consciously enjoying what I'm hearing on some purely aesthetic level? Not as of now. The Simon, which I purchased on the grounds that it was Paul Simon after all, failed both tests, so I'm not reviewing it. I'm giving PJ the month off and will check it out again before January is over.

[A] I read a lot of reviews and hear many more albums than I write about. I also have advisors de facto or otherwise--my editor Joe Levy most of all, after that my sister Georgia and my daughter Nina and my webmaster Tom Hull. But I talk music with most of the people I know and will take a likely-sounding tip from anyone.

[A] Louis Armstrong's 16 Most Requested Songs. Later, Kind of Blue. Maybe Dave Brubeck's Jazz Goes to College. And jazz aside, by all means get him started on the Beatles. Sgt. Pepper, why not?