[A] Of course I'm materially the same critic. As you understand, people change. But it doesn't seem to me that my critical sensibility has done any sort of about-face, just as I wouldn't say Pauline Kael's or Andrew Sarris's or even the latish, structuralism-friendly Raymond Williams's did. It's just broadened and gathered detail. Moreover, my enthusiasm for the music I liked 40 and 50 years ago hasn't for the most part diminished. Of course it's been diluted by all the great music that's followed. But doing a little pleasure listening off the iPod on the only brief getaway Carola and I have managed this summer, we found ourselves digging Hound Dog Taylor, who's come up before on such jaunts, and the Roches, who haven't, and Donald Fagen's The Nightfly, an old fave of Carola's she recognized instantly but took longer to name--it's been 36 years, after all. What should also be said about this, however, is that with the significant exception of jazz only with more verbal content, no pre-rock music has ever produced anything like the late-life efflorescences of not just Elza Soares and Willie Nelson but of those strange Boz Scaggs and Ray Wylie Hubbard keepers that seem to arise from nowhere. I say this is partly just a function of the same increasing longevity that enables me to do what I do at 76. But despite the fact that most rockers do start repeating themselves all too soon, some do it rather well--the amazing Jon Langford, or that fine Pere Ubu album following a bunch of willful eccentricity (which some, my pal Greil for instance, insist is great, and from another perspective they could be right). I've long said that a music that began by fetishizing adolescence is liable to ponder the aging process in more detail than the kind of earlier pop that aspired to maturity from the git. There's probably a book here, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone was writing it or already did only it sucked so I didn't notice. But for the nonce let me stop.

[A] Of course I give up on people--a lot of them. Often I don't "lose hope" either--in the case of these two guys there was little or no hope to begin with. Edie Brickell, as it happens, is a different matter--I put in some time on her Steve Martin collabs, one of which as I recall was nearly a *. And since someone in your vicinity asked why I stopped reviewing Nils Petter Molvaer, that to me seems like a similar question. I bet Molvaer's later albums are pretty good--he was very consistent when I was writing about him. But all those albums serviced a rather narrow sliver of my earscape and, I suspect, weren't for most of my readers. So when they stopped coming free in the mail I didn't miss them. Plus he's the kind of artist I find even harder to review conveniently via streaming, which is never the way to go if you can avoid it. Too abstract, unsegmented, ambient.

[A] Basically, I succumbed--it is what the format would seem to insist upon, after all, and has led to adjusted pacing aesthetics and strategies. But I often program my changer to play three tracks apiece from CDs I haven't heard, then go back and play more of the ones I think might be worth the time. And the brute fact is that when I do a final pre-review listen complete with following the lyrics more assiduously, as I usually do before writing a full review, I often run out of gas midway through and go back a little later to finish, which is kind of the same thing as playing one side at a time.

[A] Not that I can't imagine devoting my eighties to writing that isn't for an audience. But basically, I write for two reasons: participating in a discourse I've devoted my creative life to and money. Were the right venue to offer me the right word rate, as Rolling Stone just barely did with those retrospective 1967 reviews I shared with David Fricke, I might take the gig, although that one was a lot of work if also considerable fun. But until that highly unlikely event occurs I can tell you from memory that A Quick One is worth your time.

[A] Actually, a couple of positive, finally-he-fulfilled-his-potential reviews plus one or two Spotify headphone streams inspired me to buy Flowerboy, so thanks to this question I didn't quite throw the money away. Three-four more plays in I decided it wasn't worth reviewing--exactly why my current grading structure doesn't oblige me to articulate or try now to recall, except that it was more in the territory of bleh than of the usual fuck you asshole. Tyler shares with Van Morrison the honor of inspiring two different pieces in Jessica Hopper's recommended The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic. Both the Morrisons are raves, a bit over the top I'd say. Both the Tylers are mean, totally convincing pans. Yay.

[A] The historians' polls I've missed are without number, but the word "influential" is a typical non-normative academic/journalistic evasion--"most humane" is so ideological, and "best," fageddaboutit. Of course Reagan was influential. But he was also the most evil of 20th-century presidents. He began the evolution of the Republican Party into the amoral pack of Ayn Rand-worshipping, Jesus-perverting Repuglican empathy deniers it is today. He used the air traffic controllers strike to kick into gear an ongoing attack on the union movement that has done untold harm to most Americans. He empowered the entire Oliver North school of rightwing dark-op specialists who infest both government and the ever vaster private security infrastructure. He wasn't as bad as Trump because Trump is truly a special case--a barely sane megalomaniac who is among other things immensely more dangerous than Christianist hypocrite Mike Pence. And though I could go on, I have other things to do, so I'll stop except to say that rooted in racism though its promise will always be, I still believe in America too.