[A] EVERYBODY WHO'S READING THIS GO OUT AND VOTE IF YOU HAVEN'T AND FINISH MY RAMBLINGS LATER. NEW YORKERS TURN THE BALLOT OVER--IMPORTANT PROPOSITIONS THERE, YES ON ALL. First, Coco expects me to follow a link to a video like countless naive publicists before "her"--by the time I bothered it was blocked, so I don't know whose gams I was supposed to admire, though if it's Ocasio-Cortez's I definitely think she's cool and pray she survives the grotty compromises of lawmaking the way good pols do (only wait a second, she uses the s-word). I was all "Warren 2020" as of 11/9/16--Post-Ited that prophecy on the subway wall--and have no idea what she means by nanny-spanker even after Googling it. But as I began to calculate the sexism of the 2016 electorate, particularly its female component, my confidence wavered, and I settled on Sherrod Brown, who's old but not as old as Warren much less Feinstein but who also shows no sign of wanting the job, so here's hoping while doubting that he'll win in a landslide in Ohio, where voter suppression cost Kerry big in 2004 and makes the landslide part unlikely. Brown's ruggedly Middle American exterior makes his eloquence on the issues even more effective. But now to the "raffish" (??) Frump, a clod and a bully I despised from afar well before he put his trussed gut behind birtherism and never "relished" for a second -- and who "flattened" Clinton by minus three million votes. As for Sanders, right. John the Baptist. He did historically essential work and now should take care of his blood pressure. I stopped listening to him repeat himself the third time I heard him give a speech and as his NYC-raised contemporary soon grew to dislike him as a familiar type -- an egomaniac who could and should have worked a lot harder for Clinton and never denounced Jill Stein in the detail she so manifestly deserves. But until one of those he heralded undergoes the seasoning political effectiveness requires, we have to not only vote for the best we can do, which looks like Warren again to me but may not even be that good, we have to get behind it emotionally. In which connection see the pre- and post-election pieces I wrote for a Village Voice that still existed in 2016.

[A] Two major matters here. First, that blockage is temporary all the way to November 2020, should this nation last that long. "The Slim Shady Essay" is part of the 70 percent of my new Is It Still Good to Ya? collection that Duke University Press understandably required me to tuck away out of reach on my site to motivate readers to buy the book, which all of you should because it's a great read. Second, "persona" is something I've been writing about forever on the assumption that my readers understood what I meant. Like its close relative "authenticity," it can be explored endlessly, so I'll just be as brief as possible. When Bob Dylan or Aretha Franklin or Chuck Cleaver or Noname sings or raps, never assume that they are expressing their true selves, whatever that could even mean. Rather they are artists creating a character, sometimes a character that shifts or is continually adjusted in the course of an album and other times not. Especially in the singer-as-songwriter model that goes back to Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly but became pervasive as the folkies of the early '60s transmuted into the rockers of the late '60s, those personas are conflated with the singers' "true selves." One great thing about A Crow Looked at Me is how impossible it makes this distinction, because it's infused so deeply with Phil Elverum's raw autobiographical suffering. This degree of embeddedness is extremely rare. And that's all I'll say on this endless topic right now.

[A] First of all, Redding vs. Pickett doesn't seem like a hard choice to me. Pickett's albums hold up surprisingly well--they're unrelenting. But his emotional palette is very narrow, and not in an attractive way--what I once called in Rolling Stone his hard soul made him hard to like except on special occasions. Redding never worked up as fierce a groove. But to me it seems clear that he had more brains and heart than any of his soul-identified contemporaries except--as artists, once again--Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, and Marvin Gaye. And it's my biographically inexpert guess that as a person he reigned supreme in the heart department. Brains plus heart means that in principle he was well-equipped to keep making first-rate music. But bridging stylistic and historical shifts is difficult. Franklin floundered from 1974 until 1980; Al Green only managed by turning to gospel; even James Brown was winding down creatively by 1975. Whatever your personal opinion of quiet storm, Smokey did better. Redding might have found his own niche in that approach, and "Dock of the Bay" suggests he had places to go as a songwriter too. So my guess is that the Malaco fantasy sells him somewhat short, but that he was unlikely to retain all his '60s magic.

[A] This question came in a while ago and the imbroglio such as it was presumably breathed its last longer ago than that. Getting involved in social-media bustups breaks my never-read-the-comments rule, and I avoid it. But in this case allies informed me of the gist and I read the beginning of what she had to say, which included that I'd never refer to a man that way when in fact I've been writing about both marriage and age as regards both men and women for years--and, not by accident either, followed her review with a review of Jinx Lennon that led with his marriage and parenthood though it carelessly failed to mention that he was 52. (His review was written weeks before the Thorn. I was aware of the marriage parallel when I paired them, but should have underlined the similarities it by adding Lennon's age.) I don't know if you're aware of it and very much doubt she is--very much doubt, in fact, that as a good UK chauvinist she's more than dimly aware of me at all--but my major writing on Tracey Thorn was a memoir review in Barnes & Noble Review. I quite liked her book, albeit not as much as Ben Watt's astonishing Patient (his second memoir, Romany and Tom, is pretty good too, plus it came free in the mail; didn't even know about Thorn's Naked in the Albert Hall till I wrote this), and hence felt obliged to explain why I'd never warmed to her music even though I respected it. So it was a nice surprise to truly enjoy an album of hers. Which is running around forty in this year's Dean's List, though it'll sink some as other albums come in.

[A] I learned about Jinx Lennon from a generous Irish fan of mine named Liam Smith. I reckoned him a winner when my wife plus my daughter in the back seat got with Know Your Station Gouger Nation as we drove back to NYC from Connecticut--"Gobshyt in the House" and "Forgive the Cnts" both proved family favorites. As for the pulse of Ireland, glad you think so. I'm just a fairly well-informed person who probably did a little reading as I put the review together, though I remember more of that when I wrote my little Voice feature on Lennon. And by the way, ya think Tracey Thorn knows who he is?

[A] I always play music when I read, but I play music differently than most people, because so much of the listening I do is processing--relatively new and unfamiliar, because finding out what penetrates my concentration or sticks with me later is essential to how I work. That said, I also often read along with music I choose, say, to please Carola or people I'm visiting in the country. I have no problem with music being a background to other activities. Its ability to function that way is one of the reasons recorded music especially is such a gift.