[A] If those are my only choices, socialism of course. But as you seem suspiciously unaware in your anonymous way, perhaps because you think capitalism is the only right answer and want to provoke me, they're not. I refer you to "Dark Night of the Quants," a 2011 Barnes & Noble Review column conveniently collected in my 2018 Duke University Press Book Reports, where I report on 10 books about the 2008 financial crisis, one of them summed up thusly: "Ha-Joon Chang, 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism. South Korean-born British economist loves Swedish capitalism and hates the free-market kind. Like most liberal economists, not much use on political implementation of his sane proposals. A−" Which is to respond, there is a middle ground, and Chang explains it very well.

[A] I don't find lyrics distracting except when they are, which is usually a sign of quality, although not necessarily a decisive one. For over 50 years I've run music through my head at every opportunity while almost never finding it a distraction, lyrics or no lyrics. Professionally and going back to when I was a teenager with the radio on, the whole point of nonstop music for me is to find out what insists on closer attention, on being consciously heard, which needn't be lyrics by any means but when it is matters big-time, so that I often go back to concentrate harder on a second pass at a verse or chorus. Admittedly, however, this happens more often when I'm cleaning up the kitchen than when I'm trying to eke out my next sentence.

[A] I've barely listened to Kanye since determining that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy belonged in my best-of-decade list a few years ago, which was before he lost his musical mojo whilst shoving his cruel and clueless current politics in our collective face. Couldn't get through Donda, by which time I felt no obligation to. The early records remain great; I'm not even sure they'd hint at his madness were I to try to go back and find it there, which I won't because fuck him. His presidential run appalled me even before one of his electoral votaries ruined the lives of two hard-working black and female south Georgia election officials on top of everything else. Delusory Trumpy paranoia with anti-Semitism on top is not a forgivable personality quirk--as it's often said in his defense, it's a sign of mental illness. There are those who believe this illness deserves our attentive compassion in part because he was and in some respects may still remain a genius. Not me. Having lost interest in his "personality" at least a decade ago, I suppose it's possible he'll become sane or anyway saner again. But I never identified personally with his genius--just enjoyed the musical consequences and hoped he'd make something socially useful of it, which he never did. And Jesus is in no position to help him now because Jesus never was.

[A] I don't know what you're talking about. What "hip critics"? Do "hip" people even say "hip" anymore? For that matter, do they say "rock"? I count maybe seven what I'd call "rock" records among my provisional 2022 A albums so far: Gogol Bordello, Drive-By Truckers, Superchunk, Derek Senn, Terry Klein, Amyl and the Sniffers, Paranoid Style, arguably Emperor X, how about Craig Finn or Bonnie Raitt, maybe Wet Leg or the Beths or the Mammoth Penguins although perhaps you think the last three are too femme and/or "pop" to make the cut, although how anyone could think Paranoid Style much less Amyl and the Sniffers aren't "rock" I can't imagine. So right, Archers of Loaf was a disappointment. Then what? Did the lamentable Foo Fighters put out a record I forgot about in 2022? The even duller 1975 did, right? Do "hip" people really apply the so self-evident they verge on stupid racial points to newer bands? Do they now disallow let's say the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin altogether on those grounds, which in those cases and many others have been explicitly understood for half a century without meaningfully diminishing their aesthetic originality or bohemian-progressive stature in a history that has of all things moved on with the years? If "the kids" can't hear that originality am I supposed to waste my time explaining it for the umpteenth time, almost certainly to no avail? Like what you like and don't worry about being "hip." Hip is a snake pit.

[A] Though I can't find it in myself to blame Nelson for trying his hand at that immemorial American folksong subgenre the murder ballad, a mode I've never had much use for myself, I will note that "Time of the Preacher" is the lead track of what I long ago called Nelson's most overrated album, Red Headed Stranger. If I ever noticed that "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" was about a bad boy bashing people with an expensive toy, I'd forgotten, though I admit McCartney does fairly well with an inscrutably mock-ironic tone that renders the song a one-shot in his vast if oft lightweight catalogue. As for Type O Negative, if you're telling some version of the truth about your deep love for this band I urge you to seek psychiatric counsel at your earliest convenience.

[A] I grew my hair out only in late 1967, which means I wasn't much of a pathfinder, only then stubbornly not to say perversely refused to cut it in the punk years. As a Clash groupie pointed out to me in French after their amazing late-'77 Leeds concert: "Tu as les cheveux longues." Two-and-a-half years later, however, Carola and I underwent a marital crisis in the wake of five years of infertility trauma, and as often happens to people in such fraught moments I decided to cut my hair. Felt good. Have been patronizing the same barber ever since.

[A] As I keep saying, people like what they like, and if one of them happens to be the most winsome woman you've ever met and the appropriate memorabilia comes your way, you give it to her to let her know she's both entitled to her own opinion and on your mind. That's just Courtship 101. Wrapping that promotional Quicksikver kite up for the mail was actually kind of tricky. But the effort I made to send it to Carola was one of the smartest things I've ever done. I've since introduced her to years of music she likes way more than she ever liked Quicksilver.

[A] Oddly enough, a history of '50s rock and roll--please not '60s rock, a far vaster and less coherent subject--went on my agenda around the time I began teaching at NYU in 2005, because it quickly became clear that my students knew next to nothing about it. I even wrote a Barnes & Noble piece musing about this lacuna, and designed a '50s course that I taught at NYU in 2015. If I didn't have my Substack gig I might even be working on it, though later I came up with another book idea I might also have pursued. But I do have my Substack gig, and it's very nearly a full-time job, and I'm 80, and the love of my life thinks I work too hard. So don't hold your breath.

[A] Since I'm old enough to own both Bo's great Robert Palmer-curated/annotated Chess Box and Bo's The Definitive Collection, which I recommended to Blender readers 15 year ago ago after Chess Box went out of print and which are now both collectors' items, those are what I play. But note too that early Bo is old enough to be available in one of those cheap multi-album gray market European packages that as copyrights expire are now surfacing on a lot of Black music from the '50s, and I bet all that music is pretty good. Nonetheless, I'm happy with what I've got, so I'll leave my Bo advice there and if you prefer to mine Discogs be my guest. As for Chuck, I'm old enough to own his Chess Box too, but generally I go to either the great The Definitive Collection or else something post-Chess: Chuck, the 2021 Live from Blueberry Hill, recently 1979's Rockit too. Since you ask, The Definitive Collection includes everything I find worthwhile from Chuck Berry Is on Top. St. Louis to Liverpool is several shades better. But given how much other great music is out in the world, in my opinion life is too short, and not just if you're 80, to devote too much time to these fine distinctions. a

[A] If you say so. Having just isolated a Canadian act I like a lot that you did not mention, Mama's Broke, as well as discovered that Buck 65 had returned, I'll wait and see if anyone on that inconveniently long list makes an impression.

[A] As these silly mind games go, this strikes me as a good one, which is why I've agreed to play. In terms of schooled skill and raw talent, your > isn't a crazy notion at all, at least by me, because I happen to be both a longtime admirer of Swift, who in 2008 started getting nothing but A's save one B plus, and a Joni skeptic, with little if any use for the vast preponderance of albums that followed her extraordinary 1970-74 run of Ladies of the Canyon, Blue, For the Roses, and Court and Spark: The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, and the misbegotten Mingus seemed half-assed at best and much of what followed was worse than that. Many people I like and mightily respect have loved that post-Court and Spark music, especially the first three--Eric Lott and the late great Karin Berg come to mind. But for me the records kept getting worse except for the superb 2000 covers album Both Sides Now, few worse than 2007's Shine, which I panned brutally for Rolling Stone. Swift's popcraft is so consistent that she's never sunk nearly that low. And yet, and yet, as I hear it Swift has also never recorded anything remotely in the same league as that 1970-74 run, where not only are the songs and singing nonpareil (and in different, evolving ways at that) but the musical conception is nonpareil as well--the ethereal folkie of Mitchell's debut Joni Mitchell and follow-up Clouds braves the harmonic complexities of the jazz that as I hear it will then contribute to her artistic undoing in the late '70s. This is music that has few equals as music anywhere--not just in Swift's sizable catalogue but in the entire rock canon. Blue and For the Roses are albums I find myself wanting to hear again. Fine though they are, Red and Evermore aren't.

[A] The source of this calumny is my pan of the 2008 covers album Lewis did on U.K. punk anarchists the Crass, a more-rad-than-thou band I heartily disliked due to their barely concealed contempt for the working stiffs and ordinary yobs they supposedly wanted to remake the economy for without ever beginning to specify how this noble goal might be achieved. The relevant passage read as follows: "Historically, people in this economy [meaning the one that failed the working class] have taken what they can get and had some fun in their spare time. They like Sarah Palin because they know she's as smart as Jeffrey Lewis and suspect they're not all that far behind themselves." Not long thereafter, Lewis formed a working alliance with Peter Stampfel that continues to this day, and as a friend of Stampfel I got to know him, where he proved much smarter than his misbegotten Crass project as did many of his solo albums, most memorably 2015's Manhattan. A fine artist and an ace guy, I've come to think. But as to whether Palin is as smart as he is, I wouldn't rule that out. For sure she's shrewder than she looks or she wouldn't have survived this long, though she did get swamped on election night, splitting the vote with another Republican and thus it seems enabling Democrat and native Alaskan Mary Peltola to continue to represent her largely Republican state in the House.

[A] Thank you!!!

[A] I was raised in a born-again Christian family in Queens, Republicans though never true conservatives who like most Americans came to think the Vietnam War was a mistake. I started moving away from Christianity in my early teens, explicitly espousing atheism at 17. Influenced by several women I cared for, prominently including the two referred to in the Canada question below, I became a leftist in the '60s and would now label myself a "left Democrat" because I believe the word "progressive" has lost most of its mojo. I thank you for giving me an excuse to remind And It Don't Stop readers that there are crucial elections taking place November 8, perhaps as crucial as any we've known, and to urge them to vote as soon as possible as well as donate to favored candidates, as I have to over a dozen since March or so. Never since World War II has democracy been in so much peril.

[A] Thanks for the tip, but wanted to make clear that because I generally open the Xgau Sez stuff only as deadline approaches that it was not your query that started me listening. It was my musically savvy daughter's enthusiasm, she bought tickets to more than one show, plus the imprimatur of Rob Sheffield at Rolling Stone and the general vibe--heard two different baseball announcers report on taking their daughters and expressing credible respect (although Michael Kay was careful to say that he was "no Bruce"). Despite my complete indifference to One Direction, it seemed to me I should at least Spotify him a little, and almost immediately--I started with the debut--I was impressed by the clarity and definition of the production as well as lyrical snatches here and there. I'd love to see him, and I'm rooting for him--for him to retain a modicum of sanity under such circumstances is next to impossible.

[A] First of all, I see where there's a mega-reissue of Sweetheart of the Radio, which I knew naught of, because I have just about zero interest in these everything-included retrospectives. They're the rawest kind of corporate profit-taking and collectoritis, plus I have more old music I love in my shelves than I'll ever hear again, plus I still enjoy a lot of new stuff. Second, the Byrds have not aged well. They were the true folk-rock, which means among other things devoid of groove--their drummer, Michael Clarke, was the most stationary of his time, and he had competition. And their best singer wasn't leader McGuinn but Lord help them David Crosby, who admittedly did end up making something of himself. They meant a lot in their time on the basis of "Eight Miles High" alone, I still like Notorious in particular, and Sweetheart is several tads more than OK, though if you want to hear somebody cover "You Ain't Going Nowhere" I suggest Maria Muldaur. Third, Gram Parsons was a genius and a superb singer and they weren't. If he says his vocals were better than McGuinn's I see no reason not to believe him because I'd be surprised if they weren't, though doing the compare-and-contrast mambo with a YouTube version of the mega-reissue got tiresome fast. The Flying Burrito Brothers' The Gilded Palace of Sin remains one of my favorite albums ever. In addition to being a genius, Parsons was clearly cursed, and I'm very sorry he's gone.

[A] I knew this going in. But I've come to feel so strongly about "bitch" that I believe all men, gay men included, should make it a rule to stay away from it except in direct and explicit quotation. That said, however, it's certainly reasonable for you to alert readers who never think about Britney to this wrinkle.

[A] Not without great difficulty except to say that whenever I go over to Joe Levy's place I notice how much better his is. All my stuff is of quality without approaching audiophile standards I have no use for and would probably fuck up quick. For me what's important is its reach. My sound man is Perry Brandston, who I've known since 1966, when he was nine. He does sound for a living and is renowned for his knowledgeable and original and for just that reason eccentric setups. I have speakers in the dining room (formerly the living room "good ones," still loud and clear but now 30 years old), which abuts our open-plan kitchen and is where I do most of my joint listening with Carola. Early this year I replaced the finally kaput single workaday speaker in the bedroom, which is now mostly mine because for insomnia reasons Carola and I seldom sleep in the same room anymore (and Lord do I miss it), with an expensive one Perry recommended when it crapped out--there I hear music in mono. I have a quality but far from high-end hi-fi setup in my office and own a very good turntable I seldom use. But I also have Bose desktop speakers where I often check out stuff on Spotify etc. because I don't fancy the bother of crossing the room to punch the right buttons on my pre-amp. This was true long before I hit 80.

[A] I love Canada. I had a long-distance romance with a Canadian woman I remember with great fondness and respect that I broke off when I fell for Ellen Willis in early 1966. But before then I visited her every few months in Toronto, Quebec City, and Montreal, where I first saw the Rolling Stones live in November 1964 and was amazed to walk past the bus station afterward and see more male longhairs than had yet materialized in the East Village waiting to return to the boonies. I covered the big Toronto rock and roll festival in September 1969, also the Stones there in 1975. I've vacationed with my family in Canada several times. And to my way of thinking I've also loved plenty of Canadian music, particularly Neil Young and (early) Joni Mitchell but going all the way back to the Guess Who's "Undun," one of the linchpins of my 1969 "In Memory of the Dave Clark Five." I'd assume that among the 14 acts named not in my recall memory there are one or two worth an Honorable Mention and zero worth an A, because I have a pretty good network. I would assume these would be "indie" or "punk," because most rock bands I like these days are. I would brag that I'd read Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers before he released his first album and point out that I've said very nice things about such alt-rock as Tokyo Police Club, Pony, and especially the New Pornographers, fourth on the Dean's List in 2017. I would note that I've given A's to such rappers as Shad, K'naan, Backxwash, and the great Buck 65. I would note as well that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation requires that its outlets promote Canadian music with disproportionate airplay. And I would wonder if, as I suspect, your hurt feelings go back to my disdain for the neither tragic nor hip Tragically Hip, the Great Mythic Unjustly Ignored Canadian Rock Band. Worse than Kansas, my sole review reported, and it doesn't get much worse than that.

[A] Since I receive very few promo CDs or DLs, Spotify is how I get to hear all the albums I don't have in my possession--a tiny proportion of the total available, of course, but hundreds a month. After multiple plays I decide which ones sound good enough to review and eventually buy, preferably as physicals, because for various reasons technological, psychological, and journalistic I prefer to review physicals--those I'm compelled to merely download I then burn. The Spotify songs included with the CG, which play at full length for readers who are Spotify subscribers and 30 seconds for those who aren't, leaves what readers then do with these albums up to them. I hope they buy some themselves, which is why I almost never publish pre-release reviews. But I have no control over that.