[A] I am a white male heterosexual who has identified publicly as a feminist since 1970. Since then I have written thousands of positive reviews of bands consisting entirely of straight white guys with guitars. So far in 2018 I've added albums by Idles, Pedro the Lion, Todd Snider (solo, true), Robert Forster, Jason Ringenberg, and, er, Bruce Springsteen (also solo, hmm), not one of whom is stupid enough to think "pussy-whipped" a striking or witty term. Facts: African-Americans have always been the prime creative motor of American music, I've had an active interest in African music since it began to become more available in the mid-'80s, and most of today's interesting younger guitar bands are led by women, freed up by the confidence that they won't attract ginks like you to their shows.

[A] Not yet.

[A] Of novels I've read twice--I keep a record of sorts, believe it or not--the ones that make me laugh are Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo and Roddy Doyle's The Commitments. But that's not why I look them over again. I do that because they loom large in my life. So after reading your note I got on a stepladder and pulled down George Ade's Fable in Slang and More Fables in Slang, which I have in one volume that cost me a buck in 1962 or so. That made me laugh yet again. And when I reread Dave Hickey's Air Guitar, which I do often, in bits and pieces, I always laugh. A hilarious as well as a brilliant critic. His slept-on 2017 Perfect Wave is recommended.

[A] I thought the subtitle was cute, precise, and bracingly unorthodox, end of story--certainly not a literary reference, in case that question wasn't an obscure joke. As for university presses, the Stanford story you link to is utterly unsurprising in a political environment where profit maximization at all costs is assumed almost everywhere to increasingly disastrous effect--including the book industry, natch, where "midlist" authors like me can no longer get decent advances. This is not to imply that I've ever made much money off any of my books. I publish books because I love books and read as many as I can--somewhere in the Jonathan Lethem piece in Book Reports the permanently book-mad Lethem puts this motivation better than I ever could. And into the midlist vacuum have stepped various university presses. Robert Gipe, who's published two terrific novels set in Kentucky coal country that I like a lot, did it with Ohio University. The Why TK Matters series to which my friends Donna Gaines and Tom Smucker have contributed 40,000-worders on the Ramones and the Beach Boys was dropped by a disintegrating University of New England Press and picked up by University of Texas. And my Duke editor Ken Wissoker published collections by Chuck Eddy (two) and Greg Tate before he did my two. As I'm telling audiences on my far-flung promotional tour, which will bring me to all the way to Word Books in Greenpoint May 23, Ken and I made literary history. Never before, to my knowledge, have two journalism collections by the same author appeared within the same six-month span, or indeed in successive years.

[A] I did do an hour-long show briefly in 2001 when some genius at the Voice thought maybe we could right the ship by getting into internet radio. To the paper's dismay, I insisted on being paid for it, only $100 as I recall but I earned it and then some. Doing radio right is work--fun, interesting, sometimes even exciting work, but work. (Doing playlists at Rhapsody was work too, and that I did for free as part of my licensing deal there, 2007-2009 if I recall. Much less fun, too.) Eighteen years later, I'd probably accept a job offer were one offered but wouldn't consider doing it for nothing. I'm a writer and not getting any younger or more energetic. I love writing. And writing is HARD work.

[A] Not enough. Probably not even five percent. More when we go out of town, from the iPod 160 whose battery I just had replaced. Looking over my to-shelve nook, where there are currently 36 CDs, I see the Beach Boys' Smiley Smile/Wild Honey, Best of the Chantels, the Coathangers' Nosebleed Weekend, The Very Best of the 5 Royales, the Go-Betweens' Oceans Apart, Skip James' Blues From the Delta, the Mekons' Ancient and Modern, Mast's Thelonious, Nicki Minaj's Pink Friday, Noname's Room 25, The Very Best of Bud Powell, Homeboy Sandman's Kindness for Weakness, Billie Joe Shaver's Long in the Tooth, Sleater-Kinney's One Love, Sneaks' Gymnastics, David Toop's Sugar and Poison comp, Big Mama Thornton's Hound Dog: The Peacock Recordings, and Tierra Whack's Whack World. But several of these are 2018s, a bunch more put on (enjoyably) to contextualize stuff I may review. On the other hand, I also listen from my iTunes for convenience sake, and that's almost all stuff I've got in my shelves.

[A] This is not exactly a mystery in a world where inspiration waxes and wanes in every art form. And were you aware of what a strange list you'd concocted? Murphy made one fine album almost 40 years ago and parlayed that into a well-supported career as he blew through the record-company advances that ensued throughout the '70s and then faded from view because he just couldn't duplicate Aquashow ever again. Elmore was a supersmart indie-rocker who never had even an indie-scale commercial breakthrough. Archibald was a working mom with a music hobby that generated several fine early-'00s albums too straightforwardly rockish for the indie circuit that I don't recall any critic but me noticing. (Google suggests that her band name, Wide Right, has since been adopted by several other bands, at least one from Buffalo like Archibald.) And Boots Riley is a long and widely renowned alt-Marxist rapper whose career leading the Coup dates back to the early '90s so what he's doing on this list I have no idea. There's no mystery here. In every field of artistic endeavor there are flashes in the pan, people whose ideas are exciting for a while and then tucker out or start repeating themselves at a lesser order of inspiration, people with more rewarding things to do like Elmore (and I don't just mean economically rewarding, although sticking with the indie circuit when you have other personally stimulating skills makes sense to me, which doesn't stop me from I hoping she comes up with a surprise album some year). Creativity tends to arc, and in pop music two different patterns are common--the skyrocket that burns out fast and the craftperson who gradually gets better (but may well peter out after that). In three of the four cases you've named--Riley was always plainly a dynamo, though he's also so political I can imagine him going into politics fulltime as well--three different kinds of natural creative cycles were clearly at play. Nothing strange about it at all.

[A] Since you live in Romania, it's no surprise that you're not familiar with what a joke the Grammys are to most critics--much more than the Oscars, which is saying something. "Technical prowess"--sure, to an extent. Respectable, undisruptive aesthetic with a patina of creativity and BIG SALES--really the point. Also, the voters are mostly white and old in an art form still commercially dependent on the young and beholden artistically to over a century of disgracefully, scandalously, exploitatively under-rewarded black creativity. As it happens, I've written two 21st-century pieces on the Grammys, the first of which I might have crammed into Is It Still Good to Ya? if I'd had a good place to put it (toward the end of the first section might have worked fine). Here's a 2001 Voice one. And here's a live-blogged 2009 thing I did for the ARTicles blog of the National Arts Journalism Program.

[A] Here the distinction between "listened to" and "heard" comes into play. My hours are far more impressive if we equate hearing, which requires little or no mindfulness, with listening to, which requires concentration and engagement. I'm willing to guess that I've heard more different albums than any other person on Earth, but that's a far more limited claim. Anyway, people in radio and at record companies also hear a tremendous quantity of music. And never underestimate how much music musicians hear in their lives. Classical musicians practice for hours a day and hear every note they play, but pop and jazz musicians' lives are soaked in music as well. Obviously I'm unusually voracious, and I've probably reviewed more albums than anyone. (There are about 15,000 reviews on the site.) And yes, I'm proud of these things. But musicians live music, and consumers like me and you are in debt to their dedication.

[A] First, all musicians these days are underemployed, with the decline of studio recording more than the live scene the key reason by me; for that matter, musicians have been underemployed approximately forever. Second, having written one fine Thelonious Monk essay and some good briefs does not render me an expert (and btw, I couldn't have written my description of that Johnny Griffin solo, which I've recently learned is more legendary than I'd dreamed--there are jazz musicians who've committed it to memory, I'm told--without detailed coaching from my trumpet-playing brother-in-law, a retired attorney who plays out frequently in a variety of styles and makes little or no money doing so). Third, I never believe anything Terry Teachout says, for reasons I explain in the Armstrong piece which (like the Monk) is in Is It Still Good to Ya? and go into further in an NAJP ARTicles blog diatribe findable on my site. Fourth, Nate Chinen has a new book on 21st-century jazz that you should probably read. Fifth, I don't think there's a fallacy in any kind of public-school arts instruction (work for musicians, after all) and see no reason not to believe that it will plant a few seeds, but I also very much doubt it will reverse larger historical tendencies--such as, just as an instance, the decline of the jazz audience.

[A] What an interesting question. My first thought was Spanish, and that might be best--vast quantities of major music (albeit also dreck) in that tongue, from Los Van Van to Ruben Blades to Victor Jara. But then I thought Portuguese even though I'm not a big samba guy. I'd get my beloved Tom Zé to start, and finally connect to Veloso, and many of the other tropicalia legends were renowned lyricists. And hey, how about Lingala? Or French, which I supposedly speak but actually only read (some). So I say . . . Portuguese! (I think.)

[A] I greatly prefer medium-fi to lo-fi and think the fetishization of certain lo-fi recordings--Beatles in Hamburg is my usual example--is for obsessives and professionals only. On the other hand, Ramones cost $6400 to record, Have Moicy! less than that, and both sound great. As for early Mountain Goats, I delved around in there a fair amount and never found anything as compelling as John Darnielle's later work. I love the guy, but not quite that much.

[A] Lucidity signifies clarity as a transcendent ideal, which like most transcendent ideals ain't for me. But I do believe I'm clear while both cracking wise, sometimes via jokes those who don't share my context or grok my sensibility won't get, and exploring complex ideas that are nevertheless far more accessible than those of "theory," in which clarity is regarded as a lie by definition, because the world truly understood is such a recondite place. Also, I deploy a rather large vocabulary, which insofar as clarity requires precision and entertainment thrives on variety, as I believe they do, can be daunting for some but doesn't in my opinion make me less clear.

[A] This is both an impossible question to answer and a dangerous question to answer, and I can say right now that in the case of Michael Jackson I'm just gonna have to wait and see, while in the cases of R. Kelly and Ryan Adams the abuse was something I already heard or at least sensed in their art, which I never much cared for much anyway, in part for that reason. (My Kelly piece in Is It Still Good to Ya?, written in 2005 and selected for that book long before he finally got a small portion of what he deserves, addresses this question.) But I will say this. James Brown and George Jones both abused women, as I've specified in critical appreciations of each. That did not and does not stop me from admiring and indeed loving their music. For that matter, John Lennon wasn't always so great to women either.

[A] It's all too catch-as-catch-can. I'm on plenty of PR lists and always check my email, still get things in the mail (the Americana business remains very CD-oriented, also jazz and world), and regularly get tips from a few friends who know my tastes. The way Pitchfork organizes its reviews render it a useful source--I regularly check 'em out, locate anything that sounds vaguely promising on Spotify, playlist it, and then listen either on my phone at the gym etc. or when I don't feel like getting up and loading and programming my wonky changer. Fewer than half of these get more than one play, but the Diana Gordon EP in this week's Expert Witness, for instance, started that way (the Amber Mark was a friend's tip). Nonetheless, I miss a lot of stuff, and Carola's illness in 2018 had a distracting effect. Just from the most recent batch of Xgau Sez questions, for instance, I found out that not only did the Cloud Nothings have a 2018 album but that--somehow, some way--I missed Nicki Minaj's Queen. I'm streaming it as I write.

[A] Thank you three ways. One, for the compliment. Two, for an exceptionally well-written query sans question mark--I deleted one unnecessary word but otherwise ran it as is. Three, for your advice, which I hope to try whenever I have the time and gumption to extract my changer from under the preamp I never turn off and the tuner I never use. I also expect to enlist an advisor who can instruct me on laser location and access.

[A] In the Subjects for Further Research appendix to the '70s Consumer Guide book, findable on my site, appears the following entry: "Nick Drake: I'm not inclined to revere suicides. But Drake's jazzy folk-pop is admired by a lot of people who have no use for Kenny Rankin, and I prefer to leave open the possibility that he's yet another English mystic (romantic?) I'm too set in my ways to hear." This was fairly audacious in 1980 and I'm certainly aware that it's a lot more unconventional now. Drake is admired and beloved by many, so many that I'm sure he was an artist of real originality and, for many, appeal. Last time I tried to improve my attitude was when he was reissued to some fanfare I think in the '90s, but to no avail. Although there've been a few exceptions, I've never been attracted to hypersensitives or depressives, and Drake is both. I make no claim for the objective aesthetic value of these tastes. If you enjoy and admire him, go to it with my blessings--you have lots of intelligent company. Just not me.

[A] It's a long list. I'd put Rakim first to this day, but there are so many others--off the top of my head, Chuck D, Biggie, Jay-Z although it took me a while to hear how brilliant his offhandedness is, both members of OutKast, Eminem, Lil Wayne in his highly unregal way, probably both Nicki Minaj and Jean Grae (although she's faded in recent years), for a while I would have said Mr. Lif but he's faded too, the highly unregal ODB. Most regal would be the early masters, Rakim and Chuck. What makes Kendrick's unregality so striking is that, unlike Wayne or ODB, there's nothing weird or goofy about him--not close. Both his accent and his timbre are so unprepossessing--he always sounds like an ordinary guy with a knack for rapping. Getting more specific would take hours of straight listening and lots of comparison--the kind of thing I reduce to a sentence or two or maybe a graf after most of a day's listening and checking with my gifted vocal consultant Carola Dibbell.

[A] For sure where you grow up affects your tastes, as do all kinds of other biographical details. The South seems especially sticky musically. Moreover, I'm very much a New Yorker. But the thing about New York in particular is that the city's culture isn't just strong, it's broad--multicultural, both Hispanic and, especially, Jewish long before the post-1965 immigration wave that has gradually been making white people a minority here. And not only is it broad, it's aggressively cosmopolitan. For that reason especially, it's a magnet. Lou Reed and the Dolls were native New Yorkers, but Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell were not. They were arty rebels from cultured families who were drawn to New York and made their own New York music from what they found here. Ditto for Kim and Thurston and Sonic Youth. Would I have come here if I'd been brought up elsewhere? Who knows--as I explain in Going Into the City, being stuck in a class full of smart Jewish kids in 1953 was a revelation for me. Then again, one reason it was so earthshaking is that I was the rare white New Yorker who was brought up in a fundamentalist Christian church. Which in turn probably attunes me to non-cosmopolitan American musics as other New Yorkers are not. And so it goes.

[A] You and me are lucky fellows, David Springer, because you give me the chance to simply quote a few sentences about Kael's 1965 I Lost It at the Movies from the introduction to my forthcoming Book Reports, due from Duke mid-April. Ahem. "Not yet at The New Yorker when it was published, Pauline Kael was deeply into movies for love alone. I met her once at the Algonquin and didn't dig her queen bee act. But her secular intellect and honed prose, her brassy candor and democratic gusto, her nose for the laugh line and love affair with American English, her ideas as juicy as her descriptions, and her enthusiasm for artworks from The Grand Illusion to The Sugarland Express all rendered her an earthshaking critic. And except for Raising Kane, initially a very long New Yorker essay, every one of the dozen-plus books she published was a collection. I'm no Kael--nobody is. But I've always figured that if collections were good enough for her, they're good enough for me."