[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.

[A] I bought it, for big shekels, and played it several times without ever being moved to write about it. I may yet, of course. But its word-of-mouth in my tiny corner of the musical universe is nothing special. They don't call 'em B sides for nothing.

[A] That a few of what I presume is the usual phalanx of radical-right disinformation warriors have spread the news that the likes of Justice Kagan has been known to cite the same prominent 18th century British misogynist jurist Alito quotes in his barbaric abortion decision doesn't mean she was endorsing said misogynist. It means that Kagan is doing what debaters do: saying "See, even this famous 18th-century proto-ultracon agrees with me, so why don't apprentice proto-ultracons like Brett and Clarence do the same?" She's pretty sure it won't work, but anything is worth a try and maybe she'll even make them so mad they'll flash their dicks and she can snap a quick pic and get them in trouble. FWIW, as the boyfriend of organizer Ellen Willis I attended the inaugural March 1969 abortion speakout at Washington Square Methodist Church (without, you bet, opening my mouth). A month or so later I helped Willis sign out a young woman who'd recently had an abortion from Bellevue, where a young internist with an Italian surname fought to detain her, presumably until he could get her in trouble with the law. Willis prevailed--she was tough. The woman slept on our couch that night and was fine next morning. Researching Going Into the City, I found in my files a sheet of yellow paper listing doctors who'd do abortions in the Northeast. I know many women who've had abortions. As it happens, every one my wife and I could think of also raised children and did a great job of it too.

[A] "And it don't stop" was an early hip-hop usage--a rhythmic device, a kind of readymade early rappers used to pull out to keep the beat going until they figured out what should come next. Raquel Cepeda once called an anthology of hip-hop journalism she put together And It Don't Stop. Both those things said, however, "Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough" is very much my favorite Michael Jackson track and always has been--it's quite the thematic title, after all. So when Kit Rachlis, Tom Carson, and Jeff Salamon assembled a festschrift for my 60th birthday, that's what they called it. Still for sale at my site.

[A] When Carola told me she was going to write this I told her I had the perfect riposte: "Yes dear." But as usual she worked so hard on it she took the wise guy right out of me. So I'll just say that four years of piano lessons puts her well out of my league in itself--after all these years my formal knowledge of music is still approximately zero. And I'll add as well that that Esther Phillips piece is a winner. But then, they pretty much all are.

[A] I'm certainly aware of this issue. But that doesn't mean I feel any shame or guilt about what I wrote. My attitude in the '70s and '80s, after which I stopped writing as many pans as I had though the Turkey Shoots could be pretty insulting, was that it was my job to review all of popular music, including much more black music (which I'd now call Black because I recognize and affirm that that usage has changed) than any other generalist except Dave Marsh, because as I've written many times, almost all American pop music, especially post-1900, is part-African. But since I was often pointed and jocular about white rock, I saw no reason why I should treat Black music any differently--these too were commercially ambitious artists trying to sell their music to anyone with the shekels, and to protect them from barbs, to pretend that they were incapable of the same kind of failures of concept and execution that white musicians were, or that they didn't sometimes grind out ordinary or weak product in hopes of selling it anyway, would be more condescending than disrespectful. As I keep saying, we like what we like, period. These days, when the Consumer Guide no longer makes any pretense to completism, I'm free to ignore both self-importance (no point getting in trouble by naming any offender here) and offensive content (the sexism and brutality that continue to be currencies in some of the hip-hop I don't go for) of a lot of music I long ago might have felt obliged to pan. But I still think that Curtis Mayfield stretched himself way too thin and that Betty Davis was and remains overrated. I'm still bored by Hathaway and Flack. Nor are any of those judgments "casual"--they're examined and ear-tested and and thought through. And by the way, I make it a principle not to censor myself--or simply avoid criticism--by removing anything I've published from my site even if I have regrets about it in retrospect.

[A] I value the Atlantic because it does some of the best political reporting and analysis in America, not because I pay much mind to its music coverage. Ted Gioia, who wrote the article you refer to, is a music historian of impressive breadth and appetite whose intellectual acuity is nothing special and whose heart is with jazz--see this review of one of his recent books that I wrote for the LA Times. To me it seems as if the stats he cites have a much simpler and less momentous explanation. First, people listen to more older music because every year there's more of it. In addition, the way these things are categorized relatively recent albums are classified as catalog -- almost all of all of streaming champ Taylor Swift's 12 albums qualify as old music. Electrical recording is now just under a century old; what we might call hi-fi dates back to the rise of the LP circa 1948; pop became a "billion-dollar business" with the profusion of new product that boom generated circa 1971; crucially, digitization and then streaming made more music more available early in this century. There's no question that recording artists' revenues are down and will probably stay that way, so that most musicians will need to make their living on the road as they did through most of history. Whether that means that young consumers are hearing or indeed caring about less new music now than in say 2000 is another question altogether. Moreover, that older consumers are still listening to the music they grew up loving seems completely natural even if I get more sustenance myself by mixing in a lot of new stuff. And two more things. One, Gioia pays almost no attention whatsoever to hip-hop or dance music, both of which tend more innovative. And while he is especially interested in the venture capital the major labels put into new music, what I find significant is that music can now be recorded so cheaply and distributed so freely that a substantial chunk of what shows up in the Consumer Guide is DIY or close to it--stuff I learn about via various grapevines and online journalism.

[A] I've been playing TCQ a fair amount since reading Dan Charnas's J. Dilla bio and certainly agree that Low End Theory is more than an Honorable Mention, but back to back I still prefer their de facto postscript cum summum, the relatively slept-on 2016 We Got It From Here. So let's just make it an A for the time being, OK?

[A] Actually, I did review two recent Nas albums in February, subscriber-only of course. There was a third I thought negligible and skipped, as I have many others--thinks a lot of himself, does Nas. As for Illmatic, A not A plus for me pretty sure. Since getting into the Wu-Tang Clan due to their Hulu bioseries I've been meaning to replay their debut album. Would be surprised if it didn't sound like a full A. Would also be surprised if I thought it was an A plus.

Nas: King's Disease (Mass Appeal '20) Showcasing the powers, pleasures, responsibilities, contradictions, and elephantiasis of the ego that accrue to so many hip-hop tycoons ("Car #85," "10 Points") *

Nas: King's Disease II (Mass Appeal) Many hip-hop fans of a certain age consider Nasir Jones's 1994 debut Illmatic hip-hop's greatest album, and for sure the Honorable Mention I gave it in 1994 was way low. There was a leanness to his flow and timbre back then that the Pete Rock/Large Professor/Premier production honored and enhanced, and I admire how matter-of-factly unmoralistic lyrics from the Queensbridge Houses come to a proper climax with "Represent" and "It Ain't Hard to Tell." But that honest broker went what we'll call conscious gangsta with the thuggier I Am . . . and didn't regain his more humane voice until the mid 2000s trilogy Street's Disciple/Hip Hop Is Dead/Untitled--a voice that hasn't been approached again till this follow-up to its crasser namesake. I know I'm showing my age when I say EPMD, Lauryn Hill, and Eminem make it better and Lil Baby doesn't. But if you suspect I could be right let me remind you that backloading the humane stuff is an old hip-hop trick: "Composure," "My Bible," and "Nas Is Good" provide relief at the end. And oh yeah--the bottom falls out on the so-called Magic he released just four months later, summed up by this Insecure Verse: "You're top three, I'm number one, how could you say that?" B PLUS

[A] I'm Still in Love With You is certainly an A not an A minus, and I can see making it an A plus. But note that the closing tracks that expand the CD version, "I Think It's for the Feeling" and "Up Above My Head," are both weak.

[A] Billy Joel reading or reciting a portion of my measured pan of I don't remember what from the Madison Square Garden stage, assuming it actually happened that way--eyewitness accounts vary and memories do fade. Maybe he just named me, which would also be cool, but less so. Having my prose trumpeted to his masses would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. (BTW, I gave his GH 1 & 2 an A minus. What a crybaby.)

[A] First of all, how did you know she liked Aztec Camera? Did she write about them and I lost it? But you're right, she does, and definitely still did when your note gave me the idea of pulling it out recently. The biggest difference between us, I guess, is that her formal knowledge of music exceeds mine, which is one reason I respond more readily to singer-songwriters than she does--music as mere accompaniment to words she's not necessarily focusing on doesn't grab her. The other big difference, critically, is that she writes very, very slowly--that Go-Betweens review may look casual, but I guarantee without recalling any details that it was hard to write. One reason I assigned her Riffs is that I figured correctly that deadline pressure would speed her up. But one reason my successors in the editor's chair assigned her pieces is that the results were invariably great and sui generis. A lot of her best music writing--cf. Go-Betweens, right, but also Cornershop, Latin Playboys, Fleetwood Mac, Guinness Fleadh, Reed/Smith, Steely Dan, Oumou Sangare, "Inside Was Us," just to name stuff off the top of my head--was done post-1990. (All can be found on her site.) And then she got her teeth into The Only Ones and that was that for rock criticism except insofar as she remains my chief musical advisor, ahead even of Joe Levy. Usually I play archival stuff at meals, including a lot of jazz, though after I got her to read Charles Shaar Murray's John Lee Hooker bio Boogie Man blues also became a deal--she was a bigger Hanging Tree Guitars fan than I was. But as deadline approaches I have permission to play "work music" and often sneak in stuff I want to know if she notices, whereupon I pick her brain and invariably learn something, often musical angles or details I hadn't brought to the surface.

[A] An interesting question that within a minute alerted me to two key facts. One, I write as a New Yorker, the best music city in the world during my lifetime. Second, ultimately I'm a record man, not a scene man. I'm intensely grateful I got to witness NYC punk close up plus been here for the very dawn of hip-hop plus disco at a distance and indeed the Monk-and-Coltrane jazz of the early '60s. And I'm also grateful to have covered other "scenes" journalistically: Monterey and the Summer of Love, Kingston in 1973 for Newsday, punk England for the Voice 1977, Akron for Pete's sake. Resided for eight months or so in both Chicago (Muddy Waters 1963!) and L.A. But I'm glad I'm such a New Yorker--it grounds me. And I'm glad too I've made album reviews my specialty, because strictly aural immersion in various regional musics has situated me virtually in Soweto and Dakar (though I'm also glad I've visited Africa twice), New Orleans and Seattle (both of which I've also visited more than once). I'm glad I've been so spread out. Because that spread is the most enlarging thing about music of all.

[A] Sure, but what else is new? I'm always pleased when my paper or a pal or even acquaintance gets a Pulitzer or comes close, as has happened a few times--it's good for their professional autonomy and their pocketbooks. Sometimes too a Pulitzer will have a progressive political effect. But the kind of journalists I hang out with don't take the Pulitzer that seriously--it's quintessential stuffed-shirt stuff. (I notice Pauline Kael got shut out, which is disgraceful even though the '70s weren't her best decade.) In my world the critic most unfairly shut out would have to be the great jazz-plus specialist (and my longtime colleague and friend) Gary Giddins, a dynamo of enormous range and productivity.

[A] I only reprint this benighted question--"consistently negative and demeaning" for reviews that include three A's and two more A minuses, for instance--to highlight the benighted notion that bad reviews ruined MJ's life. Reviews very seldom ruin artists' lives, and don't believe they have without plenty of corroborating evidence. Fact is, I very much doubt MJ ever read a word of mine in his life. Instead his ruin began with his abusive father, systematic mistreatment that was likely transmogrified into his own fucked up and very likely abusive sex life. None of which in my opinion diminishes the artistic value of his music, though it does make it harder to get with emotionally.

[A] Writing about Déjà Vu, a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young doc about Neil's CSNY Living With War documentary, for Film Comment, I found all three fifth wheels more likable than I once had. I was especially impressed by Stills, who electioneered for the Dems in his spare time. But I was also impressed by Crosby: "Older, wiser, and off crack, Crosby explains: 'CSNY is not a democracy. It's a dictatorship, a benevolent dictatorship. Neil is in charge not because he demands it. It's not because he bosses people around. It's because he thinks about this stuff All. The. Time.'" And in general Crosby too has been vocal politically, which I admire. But his supposed comeback album, 2021's For Free, lost me after one-and-a-half plays. Feel better. (P.S. I am highly unlikely to recall any response to second-rate jokes I concocted half a century ago.)

[A] Not a bad top 10, though any truly accurate good one on my part would require more relistening than I will ever have time for--for business or pleasure, there's just too much other music to listen to and will be till the day I die. Which goes approximately tenfold for the vault releases, about which I have a far less indulgent attitude than you do. Egomaniacal profit takers is the short of it, and the same goes for all the Stones outtakes digging and Dylan arcana and to a lesser extent Beatles remasters and for that matter reconstituted jazz geniuses. If mad fans and specialists care so much about an individual artist they want to delve into one or more of these options, they're welcome to do so. I did it with that fine Monk in Palo Alto thing myself. But what I treasure most about the music I've devoted my life to is its abundance and multiplicity, not its marginally differentiatable manifestations of individual genius. Will there be an exception or two sometime in my future? Perhaps a serendipitous one, like via some especially compelling word-of-mouth or special request. But in principle I don't care.

[A] The best songs for any wedding playlist, assuming music has been an important part of the couple's lives, are those they arrive at themselves. Brainstorm; replay stuff; keep a list. That said, however, I can name a few that seem relatively universal to me: Chuck Berry's "You Never Can Tell," Al Green's "Let's Get Married," and the Beach Boys' "Darlin'," although that's a more subjective call. Listen hard to Brad Paisley's "Then," as good a marriage lyric as I've ever heard, and see if it moves you. Others that come to mind are chancier. Etta James's version of Otis Redding's "Cigarettes and Coffee," for instance, has become a favorite in this household, but cigarettes being the noxious things they are could well seem beyond the pale in your case. Thelonious Monk's take on "Tea for Two" is great only if you're familiar with the simplistic "Tea for two/And me for you" ditty it simultaneously celebrates and deconstructs. And Kate & Anna McGarrigle's "Walking Song" carries with it the pall of the marriage it references, which is a major reason it's the only love song Kate ever wrote.

[A] That is not the way it works for me. I decided Beggars Banquet was worth a full A because I sat there with Carola with both of us saying, "Holy shit, that one" as familiar classic we hadn't heard in a while followed familiar classic we hadn't heard in a while. Context and oeuvre had nothing to do with these responses and in principle never should. For the same reason there is no A plus album I think better subtracted from the world than any A album. But to be clear that's the world and this response is mine and mine alone, so instead of "the" world it should probably be "my" world. Moreover, there pretty much have to be some albums currently graded A that should be A plus--quite a few, conceivably. The one I always think of is Wussy's Funeral Dress. Nor is it impossible to imagine hearing an A plus and deciding it's only an A. But only insofar as it's a good use of ear time to make such judgments every time you play something. I try not to. Makes the fun too much like work.

[A] Many times, although not when Simone--who suffered from mental illness for most if not all of her life--sent me what amounted to a death threat after I gave Baltimore a B minus in 1977, my only review of her ever. When I signed on at NYU in 2005 I taught the Simone chapter of Daphne Brooks's terrific Jeff Buckley 33 1/3 book on the grounds that I ought to teach something I didn't like--two somethings, actually, since I don't like Buckley either. In both cases it's about what I hear as self-aggrandizing expressionism--she overdoes everything. So I tried to like her more then, with encouragement from Carola, a somewhat bigger fan although undying love it ain't. Tried again a few years later too. Nah. I should mention, though, that in 2014 one of my best students ever, an Anglo-Nigerian woman, wrote a Simone paper I admired with reservations I explained and came back with a rewrite so all-encompassing I gave it an A plus and sent it to none other than Daphne Brooks.