[A] I was raised in a born-again Christian family in Queens, Republicans though never true conservatives who like most Americans came to think the Vietnam War was a mistake. I started moving away from Christianity in my early teens, explicitly espousing atheism at 17. Influenced by several women I cared for, prominently including the two referred to in the Canada question below, I became a leftist in the '60s and would now label myself a "left Democrat" because I believe the word "progressive" has lost most of its mojo. I thank you for giving me an excuse to remind And It Don't Stop readers that there are crucial elections taking place November 8, perhaps as crucial as any we've known, and to urge them to vote as soon as possible as well as donate to favored candidates, as I have to over a dozen since March or so. Never since World War II has democracy been in so much peril.

[A] Thanks for the tip, but wanted to make clear that because I generally open the Xgau Sez stuff only as deadline approaches that it was not your query that started me listening. It was my musically savvy daughter's enthusiasm, she bought tickets to more than one show, plus the imprimatur of Rob Sheffield at Rolling Stone and the general vibe--heard two different baseball announcers report on taking their daughters and expressing credible respect (although Michael Kay was careful to say that he was "no Bruce"). Despite my complete indifference to One Direction, it seemed to me I should at least Spotify him a little, and almost immediately--I started with the debut--I was impressed by the clarity and definition of the production as well as lyrical snatches here and there. I'd love to see him, and I'm rooting for him--for him to retain a modicum of sanity under such circumstances is next to impossible.

[A] First of all, I see where there's a mega-reissue of Sweetheart of the Radio, which I knew naught of, because I have just about zero interest in these everything-included retrospectives. They're the rawest kind of corporate profit-taking and collectoritis, plus I have more old music I love in my shelves than I'll ever hear again, plus I still enjoy a lot of new stuff. Second, the Byrds have not aged well. They were the true folk-rock, which means among other things devoid of groove--their drummer, Michael Clarke, was the most stationary of his time, and he had competition. And their best singer wasn't leader McGuinn but Lord help them David Crosby, who admittedly did end up making something of himself. They meant a lot in their time on the basis of "Eight Miles High" alone, I still like Notorious in particular, and Sweetheart is several tads more than OK, though if you want to hear somebody cover "You Ain't Going Nowhere" I suggest Maria Muldaur. Third, Gram Parsons was a genius and a superb singer and they weren't. If he says his vocals were better than McGuinn's I see no reason not to believe him because I'd be surprised if they weren't, though doing the compare-and-contrast mambo with a YouTube version of the mega-reissue got tiresome fast. The Flying Burrito Brothers' The Gilded Palace of Sin remains one of my favorite albums ever. In addition to being a genius, Parsons was clearly cursed, and I'm very sorry he's gone.

[A] I knew this going in. But I've come to feel so strongly about "bitch" that I believe all men, gay men included, should make it a rule to stay away from it except in direct and explicit quotation. That said, however, it's certainly reasonable for you to alert readers who never think about Britney to this wrinkle.

[A] Not without great difficulty except to say that whenever I go over to Joe Levy's place I notice how much better his is. All my stuff is of quality without approaching audiophile standards I have no use for and would probably fuck up quick. For me what's important is its reach. My sound man is Perry Brandston, who I've known since 1966, when he was nine. He does sound for a living and is renowned for his knowledgeable and original and for just that reason eccentric setups. I have speakers in the dining room (formerly the living room "good ones," still loud and clear but now 30 years old), which abuts our open-plan kitchen and is where I do most of my joint listening with Carola. Early this year I replaced the finally kaput single workaday speaker in the bedroom, which is now mostly mine because for insomnia reasons Carola and I seldom sleep in the same room anymore (and Lord do I miss it), with an expensive one Perry recommended when it crapped out--there I hear music in mono. I have a quality but far from high-end hi-fi setup in my office and own a very good turntable I seldom use. But I also have Bose desktop speakers where I often check out stuff on Spotify etc. because I don't fancy the bother of crossing the room to punch the right buttons on my pre-amp. This was true long before I hit 80.

[A] I love Canada. I had a long-distance romance with a Canadian woman I remember with great fondness and respect that I broke off when I fell for Ellen Willis in early 1966. But before then I visited her every few months in Toronto, Quebec City, and Montreal, where I first saw the Rolling Stones live in November 1964 and was amazed to walk past the bus station afterward and see more male longhairs than had yet materialized in the East Village waiting to return to the boonies. I covered the big Toronto rock and roll festival in September 1969, also the Stones there in 1975. I've vacationed with my family in Canada several times. And to my way of thinking I've also loved plenty of Canadian music, particularly Neil Young and (early) Joni Mitchell but going all the way back to the Guess Who's "Undun," one of the linchpins of my 1969 "In Memory of the Dave Clark Five." I'd assume that among the 14 acts named not in my recall memory there are one or two worth an Honorable Mention and zero worth an A, because I have a pretty good network. I would assume these would be "indie" or "punk," because most rock bands I like these days are. I would brag that I'd read Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers before he released his first album and point out that I've said very nice things about such alt-rock as Tokyo Police Club, Pony, and especially the New Pornographers, fourth on the Dean's List in 2017. I would note that I've given A's to such rappers as Shad, K'naan, Backxwash, and the great Buck 65. I would note as well that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation requires that its outlets promote Canadian music with disproportionate airplay. And I would wonder if, as I suspect, your hurt feelings go back to my disdain for the neither tragic nor hip Tragically Hip, the Great Mythic Unjustly Ignored Canadian Rock Band. Worse than Kansas, my sole review reported, and it doesn't get much worse than that.

[A] Since I receive very few promo CDs or DLs, Spotify is how I get to hear all the albums I don't have in my possession--a tiny proportion of the total available, of course, but hundreds a month. After multiple plays I decide which ones sound good enough to review and eventually buy, preferably as physicals, because for various reasons technological, psychological, and journalistic I prefer to review physicals--those I'm compelled to merely download I then burn. The Spotify songs included with the CG, which play at full length for readers who are Spotify subscribers and 30 seconds for those who aren't, leaves what readers then do with these albums up to them. I hope they buy some themselves, which is why I almost never publish pre-release reviews. But I have no control over that.

[A] Just what I've always wanted--a stupid feud between two public figures I'm supposed to care about and don't. As I explained several years ago when a question alerted me to Fantano's existence, I'm too busy listening to music--an oldish hip-hop album that seems destined for a CG review as I write, but definitely not one by Drake, who's bored me for many years now--to listen to podcasts much less album reviews much less Fantano's album reviews. Instead I read, and from what I read Drake's DMs are considerably less than hateful while his need to call attention to a reviewer he doesn't like is considerably more than stupid because it enhances the critic's fame. Fantano is right to make this point while milking Drake's attention for all it's worth. But he's not anything close to right to call correspondents he doesn't like "thirsty bitches" because it's vile to use "bitch" as an insult unless you're female yourself, at which point my male judgment becomes pretty much irrelevant.

[A] There are no parlor games anymore because there are no parlors. Instead there are internet timesucks, a category that includes neither your musical musings nor, I hope, my response. And for sure I've got one. Much as I admire Sly and Robbie especially, your first impulse was your best impulse. The winner is Motown's Funk Brothers hands down, though it must be said that they benefited immeasurably from their workmates: not just world-class vocalists the Temptations, Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson, to reference just the top tier, but extraordinary songwriters and producers, starting with Holland-Dozier-Holland of course but much as you might want to don't forget Berry Gordy, and I could go on. In my opinion none of the others you name are quite in their league, although Hi Rhythm with Al Green on board come close and L.A.'s Wrecking Crew also belongs in the mix (as indeed might the mid-'60s Rolling Stones). In this connection I highly recommend the 2019 Showtime documentary Hitsville: The Making of Motown, where I learned not only that drummer Benny Benjamin OD'd in 1968 and that nonpareil bassist James Jamerson, whose every lick Paul McCartney committed to memory and good for him, moved to L.A. in 1972 but never found his footing there. Race couldn't have helped, although the wondrous New Orleans drummer Earl Palmer did more than OK on the same scene. Neither could alcohol: Jamerson died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1983.

[A] If you've really become a rap atheist then you've bowed out of the game. I mean, I have my doubts about most trap-identified contemporary hip-hop myself, but none whatsoever about Jay-Z, Eminem, pre-megalomaniac Kanye West, or Kendrick Lamar: unmistakably great and singular artists all, with many lessers making excellent and individually distinguished music in their wake, often off on the alt side (Homeboy Sandman, R.A.P. Ferreira). In alt-rock, meanwhile, the rise of the female factor has been a tremendous shot in the arm: Big Thief, Sad13, Chai, Illuminati Hotties, the Paranoid Style, Dry Cleaning, Wet Leg, I could go on, not always formally sui generis (though the first three sure are) but each markedly different and each imbued with a sense of destiny that comes out in the sound. Plus stuff that's going on in dance music that for a record nerd like me and perhaps you is too, as I like to say, site-specific, but as Beyonce likes to say is grist for the mill. Meanwhile try Phelimuncasi or DJ Maphorisa over in South Africa. Never heard anything much like 'em before.

[A] The Essential Britney Spears is a three-CD set that came out during a twixt-CGs hiatus in 2014. I don't own it and have no desire ever to hear it; I mean, it's three CDs. As elsewhere noted, I seldom think the word "bitch" is funny or cool or ironic or whatever you believe it to be in this context. I suggest abjuring it in perpetuity. [Correction: it seems to be a two-CD set. I still don't feel I need to hear it.]

[A] Because Johnny himself was a right-winger and right-wingers lie about everything. Obviously the vast majority of punks who had politics were lefties--to choose the most obvious, the Clash, the Dead Kennedys, riot grrrl, on and on and on. You are aware, right, that Joey wrote "The KKK Took My Baby Away" about Johnny?

[A] Believe me, I know it's a compliment, and I always thank an internet for which I'm by no means always grateful when readers from a far-off culture tell me I've hipped them to some music that's brightened and deepened their lives. As you're not obliged to be aware though it's no secret, my tastes in jazz--which I've enjoyed since I was a teenager without ever developing anything remotely approaching the encyclopedic knowledge of my old colleague and longtime friend Giddins, in my opinion the greatest jazz critic who ever lived--run almost exclusively small-group. I like the interactive spontaneous multi-individuality of quartets and quintets especially. This One's for Blanton is of course a duet record featuring Ellington and the great bassist Ray Brown. It offers a rare chance to enjoy the spontaneous "understatement" and "extravagance" of the greatest jazz composer as a player.

[A] Zappa was a highly intelligent but even more egotistical motherfucker who I enjoyed mostly for his comedy/satire when he surfaced during the hippie era. It was bracing amid all that air pudding. But spiritually, let's call it, his aversion to air pudding bespoke an emotionally stunted person whose cultural utility shrunk drastically once the fatuous side of the hippie dream turned into a sick joke that didn't need him. I enjoyed Ruben and the Jets' simultaneously fond and satirical doowop, but relistening find its affection imperfectly realized and its satire shallow and racially suspect, in part because my respect for doowop itself has only deepened with the years. Similarly, I know many jazz-prone rock fans who adore his guitar, especially on Hot Rats. Me, I much prefer Stevie Ray Vaughan and Tom Verlaine, not to mention the inexhaustible Hendrix, and cannot offhand name a single jazz guitarist including George Benson and Jim Hall who means anything to me.

[A] I don't know about Friends but sure Pet Sounds is at least an A minus. That said, it sounded better on Joe Levy's superb sound system after he cooked us dinner Sunday night (great editor, great cook) than it did on my good one at breakfast--as he pointed out, the Spector-inflected production meshes thrillingly with Wilson's rather less grand proclivities. But Joe was a teenager when he caught up with Pet Sounds, and therefore responded with more excitement than I could have to its aurally-enhanced emotional complexity. At 23, I found such complexities elsewhere--in both Thelonious Monk and the Rolling Stones, for starters. The Beach Boys I love are the surf-oriented adolescent hedonists of Endless Summer and also the low-Brian Wild Honey, which I can at least claim to have been on much earlier than most critics and which also featured prominently in the early weeks of my lifetime with Carola Dibbell.

[A] I think it's great--well-known artists publicly calling attention to the internet's capacity for evil, while obviously of limited practical utility, automatically enriches the conversation and sours by just a miniquantum their admirers' trust of and tolerance for online information. Me, I can't do my work without Spotify, so I continue to use it. Can't do my work without Amazon Prime's overnight delivery either. But I do what I can to purchase books and meds and other stuff elsewhere.

[A] Funny you should ask, because my editor tried to get me to omit it. Answer's simple, as I can't imagine you didn't guess. I remember that his surname was Italian because to me that indicated Roman Catholic, which in 1969 was the religion most ardently opposed to what I'll just call family planning. Indeed, not even Pope Francis, who I admire enormously, has lifted the RC ban on contraception that increasingly few Catholics obey. I mean, this doctor (presumably an intern) was a menace, claiming that his refusal to release the young woman was medical while at the same time actively hostile to both the patient and the two hippies who were trying to spring her before he could summon not senior medical advice but the law. And he was clearly appalled by Ellen Willis, who was formidable and unyielding in argument as for many men at that time and quite a few today no woman should have the temerity to be. I no longer recall how we brazened our way out, but the verbal battle was pretty brutal. These days, of course, Christian nationalists are the fiercest bullies on this subject, passing more and more sadistic, misogynistic anti-abortion laws in state legislatures, and if you'd told us in 1969 that Roe v Wade would change American law in a few years we wouldn't have believed it.

[A] Since a substantial proportion of the music I write about is created by Black people, this is clearly a question loaded with worms. Books can be written on such subjects, and many have been. But just for starters let me make a few points. Most important, "black music" is gross if often unavoidable shorthand. Is all music created by Black people "black music" no matter the intentions of its creators? Is it all "black" in the same way? Is that way the music's sole aim and total meaning? In creating it is a Black musician intending to define or express Black culture or merely expressing his or her own vision of the world and formal relationship to music, which is probably inflected by his or her Blackness but presumably not limited to it because he or she is also a human individual not all of whose uniqueness is bound up with experiences he or she shares with other Black people--and not all of whom have ever lived in a food desert or worked on the killing floor. Moreover, the vast majority of those musicians would just as soon sell their music to humans of every racial orientation. In listening to this music is a white person pretending to "understand" Black culture? As indicated, I could go on for pages; many have, not all of them Black. But instead I suggest you make an effort to clarify your thinking while you continue to listen to "black music" whatever your own racial heritage and/or orientation.

[A] It's not your Belgian bias, it's your Francophone bias, only calling it a bias would diminish it egregiously--that's not a bias, it's a power or capability. You speak French, but though I can read a little French when necessary, I can't hear it. So while my wife's great ear extends to foreign languages, not just French but also Spanish and even once when we were lost south of Rome Italian, I can't begin to hear Brel's lyrics. Hence I've never even played her Brel because I've tried a few times and know I don't get him. In French chanson especially, this is a major deficit, because French chanson is more logocentric than any other popular music I'm aware of. I have little doubt he's the titan you say he is--certainly his reputation is absolutely tops. But not in my physical and hence intellectual experience.

[A] I certainly don't hate early '90s music. Skipping hip-hop and for purposes of argument overlooking snobby New Yorkers like Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo, how about Pavement, PJ Harvey, Archers of Loaf, Los Lobos/Latin Playboys, Liz Phair, L7, the Chills, My Bloody Valentine, Hole, the Pixies? True, there are many wimmin in there, not to mention, ulp, Latinos. "Early '90s" they all were, however. As for grunge, I don't hate it, I just don't like it that much, which is different--it tends too dark, too melodramatic, and even so I was always OK with the grunge-adjacent Pearl Jam. But as I put it in my Lenny Kaye review a few months ago: Seattle was "an overcast burg with a 'metal undercurrent' and more heroin ODs than a primal animal can stand." I had many good times there when it was the home of the pop conference. But I'll never love the Melvins.