[A] Can't be sure but I doubt it, because while Hayes's professional skills have long been a matter of bizwise critical consensus, it's more the pro in me than the fan in me who's signed off on his rep. Also, I don't exactly know what that "pop faith" remark means exactly. But on the other hand, my personal loyalty to Swamp Dogg, real name Jerry Williams, has never flagged—pretty sure I was the first reviewer to note his existence on his 1969 debut. And the documentary, one of whose producers is the now Austin-based Paul Lovelace, an old friend who did a student documentary on me when he was at NYU circa 2000, is both a hoot—it really is about his swimming pool—and a revealing look at the world of r&b studio musicians.

[A] The simple fact is that I quickly came to prefer CDs. For decades I used a changer all the time, often but by no means always stacking LPs and listening half-album by half-album, though for sure I carefully and pretty much punctually I stacked the B sides of anything with an A side that caught my fancy (while never again hearing many albums that failed to grab me). For a long time I thought a 20/25-minute running time was more "natural" than 45-60, and for sure one's attention does flag over the near-hour or more so many CDs last. But I've learned to adjust in various ways. And I'm not the kind of audiophile who claims vinyl still sounds "warmer" or however that cavil is worded.

[A] Unfortunately, the details of this project, which involved a trip to LA when Nina was so young my fondest memory of the entire enterprise is walking her to sleep on the plane, and then rather later a trip to Minneapolis with different principals, has faded from my memory. There was always something screwy about the whole deal. Expect that some sort of physical pilot survives on a shelf somewhere. The producer didn't really seem to know what he was doing. I liked meeting Pond though.

[A] Especially in the wake of Brian Wilson's death, it's conceivable that were I to replay the Beach Boys' by all means likable albums of the early '60s, I'd admire them more enthusiastically than I did back when I was just starting out in rock criticism in 1967. But they were definitely what we called a singles band until the Beatles and the Stones reset the goalposts, whereupon they upped the ante with Pet Sounds and the glorious "Good Vibrations," which I can remember stopping the car for on 10th Street driving home from Brooklyn so I could concentrate first time I heard it. In my opinion their peak will always be 1967's Wild Honey, which at some point (don't really remember the details) I slotted an A plus. Still love it, not least because in the summer of 1972 my new girlfriend Carola, who had never given the Beach Boys a moment's thought, fell head over heels for it. Hadn't played it in a while when I put it on at dinner tonight, when "Darlin'" and "I'd Love Just Once to See You" and the rest sounded as great as ever to both of us. But if you'd like to explore the band more thoroughly I suggest you find a copy of Beach Boys fanatic and recent And It Don't Stop contributor Tom Smucker's Why the Beach Boys Matter, which I helped edit.

[A] I own 10 Leadbelly CDs on such labels as Rounder, RCA, Columbia Legacy, and especially Smithsonian Folkways. The two I'm most likely to play occasionally are still in jewel boxes (with shelf space at a premium around here, most are in plastic slipcases): Where Did You Sleep Last Night and Shout On, both on Smithsonian. I also reviewed Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell's recommended although somewhat partial 1993 The Life and Legend of Leadbelly for the NYTBR. Let me thank my first girlfriend, ID'd as Miriam Meyer in Going Into the City to protect her privacy, for introducing me to both Leadbelly and the Weavers, crucial figures in my early musical development. She was an enthusiastic jazz fan as well, but also more of a folkie than I ever was.

[A] That list was coughed up, with some checking around I'm sure, for an end-of-decade special edition of the Voice. If you're that interested, and I'm flattered that you are, I see where new and used copies of Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s are available at Amazon and hopefully less exploitative sellers. The after-matter does provide A Lists for every year of the '80s; London Calling tops the 1980 A List. No longer remember my reasoning as to that omission from my end-of-decade list, but it was, after all, 35 years ago that I published that book, whose dedication reads "Nina—I'm done. Wanna go to the park?" My nephew Julian Dibbell, no longer a rock critic and now a legal partner in Chicago, helped a lot organizing that book (his early explorations of the digital world My Tiny Life and Play Money are still available). Those were the days.

[A] In the Queens where I grew up in the '50s and '60s the Chinese people who have long dominated the Main Street area of my native Flushing were still exotic and Chinese restaurants rare although fairly busy on Sundays. My beloved grandfather Tom Snyder lived a few miles closer to Manhattan in Forest Hills, already a relatively Jewish neighborhood, and in his open minded way explored the culinary offerings of Queens Boulevard, which is how he came to take me to the place he called "the Chinese." I have no doubt I ordered what he recommended when he did. Hong Fat, however, was another story. I was introduced to it by the great editor Clay Felker, who gave me my start in magazine journalism, when circa 1967 I gave him a lift in my car from the downtown offices of what I think was called the World Journal Tribune to his snazzy 57th Street apartment and he suggested we stop for a bite in Chinatown, which was then almost entirely south of Canal Street. That I should a) own a car in NYC (whence I commuted to Newark so I could work for the Star-Ledger there) and b) be able to find a place to park it in Chinatown (those streets were short and narrow) was highly atypical even for the time. But Clay knew his restaurants and directed me to the now long-gone Cantonese Hong Fat, 63 Mott Street. Hong Fat definitely had a rep as both cheap and good and I subsequently ate there many times. There are now Chinese restaurants all over Manhattan, although we're still scrounging around for a first-rate one in our nabe. But there are few as mythic as Hong Fat.

[A] I was aware of his passing early and was in fact interviewed about him by a mag connected to my New Hampshire-based alma mater Dartmouth College. Check him out on my site, where I make clear enough that his late work is a lot creakier if still often fun than the masterful Have Moicy! On the other hand, much of the early music was pretty damn good.

[A] I don't really expect amateurs to fully grok my grading "system," but let me make two points. First, much better to say "at least an A minus," because "at least an A" implies "maybe even an A plus," and A pluses are too rare to make unlikely claims for. Second, that little face next to the album you have every right to adore because your taste is your own, doesn't indicate Dud, it indicates what I like to call Neither. The little bomb next to Learning to Flinch indicates Dud. Under these circumstances I feel no obligation to relisten to these albums unless you get the Warren Zevon Fan Club on the job and maybe not then either—though I did appreciate your putting the effort into those somewhat obscure beer and cement metaphors.

[A] I've written about plenty of gospel music over the years, but—call it the lapsed Christian in me—nowhere near as comprehensively as I have blues, where I'm not a completist either. I no longer recall how my Tharpe review came to pass, though it was only five years ago, but for sure there's plenty of guitar on that album. Were I to make a project of it I'm sure I'd find more of her music I liked but not therefore music that demanded coverage or was right down my alley. Plus serious gospel delving would probably unbalance my music coverage in general. As for throwing herself a Griffith Stadium wedding, a story I don't recall ever running across, I say good for her. For one thing, there's no doubting the strength of her religious commitment as there is with Sly and Tiny.

[A] That one never came in the mail, although I do have some social connections to Lurie that to the best of my faltering recollection do not touch on Carola. If somebody were to send me a copy I promise I'd take a look at Chapter 1 after checking out Chapter 23. But not therefore to finish the thing. That would have to be on narrative merit alone, though for sure Lurie is a very smart guy.

[A] For quite a while I counteracted the Voice's annual Thanksgiving things-to-be-thankful-for guff, which I found ickily liberal, by writing an annual all-pans November CG I dubbed the Turkey Shoot, plus for a while there every CG included one highly unrecommended album I dubbed the Must to Avoid, a label inspired by the Herman's Hermits hit "(She's) A Must to Avoid." I once did an EMP lecture about these devices in which I explained that the basic reason I did this over and above broadening my coverage was that it's easier to be funny when you're putting something down. The lecture also reported to the assembled academics that while this ploy may have looked easy in fact I found it intellectually and spiritually exhausting.

[A] For reasons of physical convenience I don't play much vinyl or I'd add Attempted Mustache to the sole album you named that made me think it might be a good idea to put on right now: the Coup's Party Music. Without checking back I'm also pretty sure that one's the only full A. OTOH, were any of those albums to be requested by a guest (or maybe in the highly unlikely event that Nina, who turns 40 in June and has her own pantheon that enabled me to warm to Queen, belatedly became interested in alt-rock) of course I'd pull them out. And I bet they'd sound more than OK. But there are obviously countless alt-rock acts and other artists of some quality too that I'll never hear again.

[A] There are plenty of A and A minus records—all of them, to be precise—that achieve a measure of "excellence." If they didn't I would't give them A's of any sort. Those A plus albums (and quite a few full A's as well), however, are at a different level of excellence. In general they prove to be not just really good but actively thrilling, enthralling, uplifting, renewing. They make you feel better about being a human being, which these days the entire anti-Trump cohort needs (and if you don't belong to that cohort get out of here.)

[A] That film came to pass when a young NYU student named Paul Lovelace proposed it. Films and especially student films being the somewhat crude and iffy and time-consuming propositions they tend to be, I had my doubts, but I liked the kid a lot and figured what the hell. I thought the results were fine—think often of the final shot of my riding up Fourth Avenue on my bike from the Voice offices—and became full-fledged friends with Paul. Carola and I attended his marriage to Jessica Wolfson and as unremitting baby fans went to visit them uptown more than once after they became parents. Then they moved to Austin, where they became successful filmmakers; recently Paul was brought on board to help make a much larger-budget feature-length documentary directed by bizwise tech entrepreneur Matty Wishnow and focused on none other than uxorious rock critic Robert Christgau. Working with Paul on that film has been somewhere between a pleasure and a joy. In case you hadn't guessed, I can't wait to see it. Let me add that Paul was an producer, writer, and editor on the now-in-theaters documentary Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted, which I've recommended here before and recommend again.

[A] Joel Whitburn's guides to the Billboard charts have always been valuable. I still keep them on my desk's bookshelf, although I see that the unbound, stapled, pamphlet-style first edition without which I couldn't have written the '70s CG book that made me slightly famous, is missing its first and final pages, so tattered it now starts with Avalon and ends with Welch. The Whitburn I still use is The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits. I also keep The Trouser Press Record Guide close at hand.

[A] This New York chauvinist gibe was concocted by Village Voice fashion writer Blair Sabol. As an unbowed NYC chauvinist I couldn't resist it but will note that this was well before the flowering of such (note spelling) L.A. punk-era bands as X, the Minutemen, L7, Black Flag, NOFX, and my special faves the Descendents. El Lay is or should I say was about the biz, which I always made room for as well despite my continuing skepticism about the Laurel Canyon folkie-virtuoso sensibility, which helped generate plenty of good music even so.

[A] Pure oversight, obviously—an oversight reflecting the inconvenient fact that I've always respected them more than I've liked them, although I do have a dim memory of being surprised at how much I enjoyed hearing them after seeing a movie featuring them that's also a dim memory. One reason is that I've never found even one of them a remarkable singer, another that I've never thought either their songwriting or their groove all that either. The only album of theirs I actively liked was never Consumer Guided, at least in part because it came out precisely when I was breaking up with Ellen Willis, an all too engrossing endeavor: 1969's eponymous, as they like to say, The Band. If this answer hasn't perturbed you I suggest you look over the Consumer Guide reviews they inspired. The corrective to this disinterest is Greil Marcus's Mystery Train, where the Band plays a major role. After which you might take a look at Barney Hoskyns's considerably less idyllic Woodstock book Small Town Talk. Not exactly a utopia, that town.

[A] For starters, de gustibus non disputandum est. Like what you like. But prog is pretentious by proud self-definition and too often utterly devoid of anything I would call groove. If you actively enjoy its style of full-of-itself and have managed to reside in the Groove Capitol of the Universe without developing a deep-seated craving for groove itself, a peculiarity you clearly share with millions of others who prefer the technical skills of such prog drummers as Yes's Bill Bruford, none other than Genesis's Phil Collins, ELP's Carl Palmer himself, and Lord help you Kansas's Phil Ehart, enjoy if enjoyment is what that feeling is. This major Ziggy Modeliste fan would much rather feel his lungs expand as his mind taps its foot and his favorite person in the world dances around the dining room.

[A] I own a fair amount of classical music that came in the mail but just about never play it. I could say I like Stravinsky and Bach and Vivaldi and it would be true enough, but that's memory at best, although when I took it upon myself to read Proust at 17 my professor, a terrific old poet named Ramon Guthrie, told our little seminar that Proust was inspired by Beethoven's C sharp minor quartet, which I listened to on earphones in the library and liked so much I bought it as an adult and have even played it a few times.