[A] I just put on It's Only Rock 'n' Roll when it was time for my nap—on Spotify, admittedly, wrestling vinyl out of my industrial shelves is not for 83-year-olds and the R's are especially awkward. Dozed off for a while, woke up, wondered briefly what that was because until I truly awakened I didn't know. Initial conclusion: no Exile, no Now! Duh. Subsequent analysis: I will never play it again. As for Emotional Rescue, I'll stick with what I said when assessing Dirty Work the best album the Stones came up with post-Some Girls: "it peters out quicker than the side-openers make you hope." And FYI, rerating albums can get pretty tiresome.

[A] I try never to downgrade how crucial growing up in a fundamentalist church not just was but HAD TO BE as regards what became of me. But I don't think fundamentalist notions of charity, which are real up to a point, led me on the road to humane politics. My younger brother has spent most of his life as a Christian youth worker. He's been instrumental in bringing Christians of color, most of them Asian, to middle-class Connecticut, where he's resided for most of his adult life. He's built housing in poor countries. He's honest and humane. But we seldom if ever talk about politics, and I very much doubt he's any kind of leftist, though perhaps he is some kind of liberal the way such things are gauged in his world.

[A] CDs only, in no particular order, alphabetical included.

• New Orleans Nights (Verve)
• Vol. 6: St. Louis Blues (Columbia)
• Louis in New York Volume V (Columbia)
• Plays W.C. Handy (Columbia/Legacy)
• Love Songs (MCA)
• Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines (Columbia)
• C'Est Ci Bon (Tomato)
• Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington: The Master Takes (Roulette Jazz)
• 16 Most Requested Songs (Columbia/Legacy)
• What a Wonderful Christmas (Hip-O)
• An American Icon (Hip-O)
• Pops Is Tops: The Verve Studio Albums (Verve)
• Satch Plays Fats (Columbia/Legacy)
• The Complete Town Hall Concert 1947 (Fresh Sound)
• Satchmo: A Musical Autobiograph (Verve)
• Louis Armstrong Meets Oscar Peterson (Verve)
• Louis Armstrong and His All-Stars (Columbia/Legacy)
• Louis Armstrong Volume 7: You're Drivin' Me Crazy (Columbia/Legacy)
• Satch Blows the Blues (Columbia/Legacy)
• The Best of Louis Armstrong: Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings (Columbia/Legacy)
• The Complete RCA Victor Recordings (BMG Classics)
• Ken Burns Jazz (Columbia/Legacy)

[A] Good choices all, obviously, although I wouldn't be so quick to grab the Velvets (who I did see several-plus times during their justifiably legendary Danny Fields-conceived Max's stay in 1970). But to be truthful the only rock act—putting JB in a category of his own (and yes, I did see him at the Apollo early on)—I couldn't give up would be an early Beatles show, preferably in the UK '63 or '64 though I'd settle for Shea Stadium. That's because I'd go for jazz: something like the Coltrane-Dolphy gig I describe briefly in my memoir plus pre-Charlie Rouse Monk (not that there was anything wrong with the Rouse gigs, some dozen of which I attended, just to catch Sonny Rollins or someone comparable), and, hell, Charlie Parker with Dizzy Gillespie anywhere.

[A] FWIW, which is not much, none of those choices yells A plus at me, although any of them might plausibly qualify. But really, the only way to tell is to catch yourself raving when you put it on, whether because for some reason you're essaying a career lookback at the artist in question or because the album in question migrated into your hand for no better reason than impulse.

[A] Fact is, there's not a lot of country on my radar—didn't even know who Billy Strings was. And in general I'm not a bluegrass guy, which is not a judgment just a matter of taste—sounds too folkie. While for sure what I value most in country music is such singular vocalists as Jones, Williams, Parton, Cash, Lynn and the colloquial, connubial, humane, hard-edged songwriting they imprint on musical history. So out of respect and curiosity I Spotified Billy Strings's Live at the Legion as I went down for a nap and as I figured found it enjoyable but not remarkable when I was conscious. Excellent "Tom Dooley" and "Don't Think Twice," give you that.

[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.)