[A] First of all, those are all individual artists--no Beatles, no Stones, etc. Second, the ringer on my list is Bowie, who like Wilson seems to me to have worn out after a single decade, the '70s as opposed to the '60s. The difference is that I found my good friend Rob Sheffield's On Bowie more convincing than my even better friend Tom Smucker's Why the Beach Boys Matter (which you should definitely check out). That's because Sheffield praised late work I knew I had no predilection for formally--that I expected he could hear better than me--while Smucker praised late work whose less evolved formal materials are in my wheelhouse yet despite Tom's tips never broke through for me because they seemed all too merely competent. (Tellingly, the great exception is the magnificent remade Smile, which embellishes and finalizes inspirations almost four decades old.) Lyrics are certainly Wilson's weakness (though he didn't write all of them, by any means)--underrated though the imaginary teendom of "surf" and wigged-out whimsy of Wild Honey and Love You are, he's not remotely in a league with Dylan or Prince or even Smokey Robinson, Lennon-McCartney God knows or indeed Jagger-Richard. All that said, Wild Honey and Smile never disappoint when I put them on, as I do. (Carola loves Wild Honey; "Darlin'" is definitely one of Our Songs.)

[A] I find keeping up with new stuff in my natural but increasingly distant musical habitat quite challenging enough, thank you. The Substack incarnation of Consumer Guide gives me the opportunity to explore old jazz classics I've never paid enough mind, with Carola cheering me on. If I run out of those I might spelunk around, although it might be just as rewarding to dive into some of the '60s rock albums that like I was just saying I've barely written about. Every once in a while along comes a Harriet Tubman or Sons of Kemet album that hits me where I live. But the likes of Kamasi Washington and Makaya McCraven (not to mention that horrible Miles Okazaki Monk thing) sound not much better to me than Roy Ayers did when Gang Starr started pumping him in the early '90s. I do follow Tom Hull's reviews and every once in a while check out something from there. But I'm very selective and very judgmental so seldom come up with anything.

[A] Yup. No contest.

[A] For me, the moral is inextricable from the aesthetic. Maybe that reflects the fact that my aesthetic has more pleasure than beauty in it, although both these grand experiential abstractions should be in quotes because defining either is impossible. But this far we can go--the moral impinges on pleasure more than it does on beauty, because pleasure is more subjective than beauty. It's experienced from within rather than observed from without, although we do take ("subjective") pleasure in ("objective") beauty. Thus I've never been able to enjoy or even appreciate D.W. Griffiths's mise-en-scene in the morally odious Birth of a Nation, or found any use for Toby Keith's lynching bagatelle "Beer for My Horses" no matter how much Willie Nelson loves it.

[A] First of all, you don't have to hate Paul to think it's silly to view him as "pretty much the most important musician alive" in a time that also included Bob Dylan, James Brown, Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Prince, etc. But in any case you're misapprehending how it was in the Beatles years. Maybe some people preferred the Stones--that was always an argument. Dylan, too. Maybe even Miles Davis, although among white listeners rarely then James Brown. But Beatles fans, which was most of us, usually had a favorite Beatle and liked them all--for me the order went John-Ringo-Paul-George. And if you liked John best it wasn't about his politics, which were simplistic and not terribly radical back then. It was about seriousness and substance and what we would not then have called soul combined with sharp wit and a hard edge. After the breakup, however, this got more confused and sectarian, not least because none of them made much Beatles-quality music, although I say John's was by far the best and most consistent even so. During what I assume you mean by his prime years--1970-1985, something like that?--Paul was prolific going on facile and a sucker for pothead whimsy. As a marriage fan, I always approved of Linda's co-starring role in Wings in principle, but compared to Yoko, just as a for instance, she was a cipher musically. There were great tracks, sure, but never enough to constitute a decent best-of, especially given the air pudding like "My Love" and "With a Little Luck" any such would be saddled with. The superb covers album he made after Linda died is a great exception, however, and the scuttlebutt about his 21st-century concert tours is impressive. I've come to admire him as a survivor and a public figure, and were someone who knows how my ears work to burn an Xgau-specific sampler I'd listen. But even recently, when I've given some well-reviewed new Macca album a few tries, it's invariably fallen short.

[A] That stat is an exaggeration traceable to Substack's practice of calling anything over one thousand "thousands." Between Christmas and New Year's we did indeed hit the 1000 mark, which is much higher than I ever expected this project to go. But one thousand isn't "thousands"--we've picked up more subscribers since, but we're a long, long way from two. Of course I'm gratified to have gotten this far--thrilled, really. But "thousands"--nah.

[A] As someone who certainly likes the song and just as certainly doesn't love it, I went to my iTunes and found four versions: Magic Sam, Robert Johnson, Taj Mahal, Buddy Guy & Junior Wells. But while Johnson's version obviously has some jam, only Taj's, amply and crucially abetted by the Pointer Sisters, made me want to hear it again--probably because he/they mess so joyfully with what is by now a generic song. That said, the Guy-Wells is also a step above, and cult Chicagoan Magic Sam's seemed markedly more vital than anything I then played on Spotify except Johnson. Order of frequency as Spotify has it: Blues Brothers, Johnson, Eric Clapton, Urban Knights (??), Steve Miller. I can't remember who sang it in the Blues Brothers (Ackroyd? did Matt Murphy even sing?) and am tired of trying to find out. Clapton's version is dull vocally as became the rule as he got older and "bluesier," abandoning the Don Williams and J.J. Cale impressions he was born for. Midway through Miller's version I'd had enough; Magic Sam is seventh in the Spotify queue.

[A] Thanks. Music fans tend to live in insular worlds. Usually they're students and then borderline bohemian when young, as you might have been or still be. When they get older they make their livings in what I'll broadly designate the information industry--teaching, law, journalism, advertising, promotion, if they're younger tech. It's always encouraging to encounter a fan from a different work world. One of the most enthusiastic Wussy fans I've ever encountered was right next to me at a Studio at Webster Hall gig singing more words than I could have remembered offhand. We talked a little, and he told me he was a cop. Bring your pals was my attitude.

[A] This is an enormous question I can answer only in part. Nina is not as big a music fan as she used to be, but she was always into One Direction, who I, perhaps callously--Rob Sheffield loves them--simply could not hear. But last June she expressed a similar interest in Lewis Capaldi and Capitol was kind enough to get me three tickets--for me, Nina, and her friend Val. Val knew nothing of the man and is no pushover, but she was knocked out, and so was I--live, so hard-working and self-deprecating and kind and, crucially, funny. The funny does not come across as much on record, but I liked his album anyway--he was nominated for one of the Grammys Billie Eilish won and looked a little sad after even though he'd been a longshot, only to recover with enthusiastic applause as I expect is his way and don't believe is at all phony, at least not yet. I also have a sister and brother-in-law living upstairs in my building and always want to know what they think about music--Georgia published rock criticism for years. Steven retired from the law to play as much trumpet as he can. Ga and I have such related sensibilities that I take her movie and fiction recommendations as seriously as those of anyone I know. And then there's . . . Second set of ears? No shit. Now more than ever. I adore Carola for many reasons--many many--but our aesthetic compatibilities are high on the list. When we disagree, which happens, we wonder why and interrogate it a little. If Carola had wanted to be a fulltime critic she would have been a first-rate. But one reason her responses and ideas are so insightful and original is that she didn't, which freed her up to respond at will in a way full-timers rarely can. Insofar as I'm an exception to that generalization it's partly because having her around frees me up--I play new music with her in the room almost every day. Indulge me and follow this link to a review of a Fleetwood Mac concert she covered because 12-year-old Nina was such a fan. Note how skillfully she skirts the fact that, actually, she isn't so much. Note how irrelevant that pirouette remains to any reader who just wonders how the show was.

[A] Always special to learn I've reached someone half a century younger, so thanks. As for the comments question, thanks too--for getting me to set my mind to it. Once I did the answer was a clear no, for two basic reasons. The first is that it's work to oversee a comments section, even lightly as I did back when Expert Witness was at MSN. The work I do for And It Don't Stop should be more writing, sometimes subscriber-only and sometimes not--I have several things in mind that I've yet to get to. Moreover, as you don't quite say, that comments section was a miracle--believe it or not, there was apparently a discussion group in China devoted not principally to my writing (although once a young Chinese speaker came to a reading of mine and told me he'd been part of it) but to the commenters themselves (here's to you, Cam Patterson, Blair Fraipont, Jason Gubbels, Michael Tatum, Liam Smith, Bradley Sroka, Nicky Farruggia, and so many others). It was so rare to find comments almost devoid of backbiting and trolling, which in many ways was the greatest thing about it--I made many friends including a few close ones there. In the Twitter age of course, the situation is worse. Even subscriber-only, I very much doubt the temperature would remain as temperate as it did back then, and keeping it down would be not just labor-intensive but emotionally taxing. As for quitting your day job, let me try and be a good dad. Is your good-paying job a stroke of luck or probably replicable in the absence of an economic collapse? If the former, I'd be cautious; if the latter and you're chomping at the bit, well, assuming you don't have kids yet this might be the time. I'm surprising myself somewhat by writing this, because I've been preaching since I started teaching at NYU in 2005 that the US economy is designed to exploit your generation. So please don't just ask me. It's a big decision.

[A] First of all, I've reviewed three Coltrane albums, not just one. Let me remind you that I've also done lots of Ornette, who like Davis made rockish moves. Monk is about my favorite artist except maybe the Beatles, and Bird was the shit when I was getting into jazz in college. And how about Sonny Rollins? Coltrane, meanwhile, wasn't helped discographically by his early death-- not unlike Hendrix's various would-be canonizers, Impulse pushed the posthumous catalogue till distinguishing among newly fabricated albums became a game for specialists and suckers (and I should add that the old jazzbos I know don't think much of the "newly discovered" 2018 album the younger set was so impressed by). However. If only because my most trusted aesthetic advisor is always ready to hear more jazz at dinner and for that matter breakfast, I've been doing some exploring. So far I can report that neither the Atlantic nor the Prestige "Trane plays the blues" albums seems like a standout to me, and that there will definitely be Coltrane reviews in future CGs, with details yet to be determined.

[A] Yes, in that order, and these are records I still put on occasionally, as I do Chilton's solo work--at least once after early 2019, when I was checking out Chilton reissues including the Ocean Club recording and reading Holly George-Warren's excellent if dismaying Chilton biography, A Man Called Destruction.

[A] Thanks for apologizing, but you know you're grade-grubbing anyway. Look, fellas (and I do mean fellas), it's not hard to understand. In part because I've set up the Consumer Guide to be relatively free of normal deadline pressure, I don't generally jump the gun on grades and remain remarkably steady in my judgments over the years. But this is still journalism, and some sort of news value is the responsibility of all but its most perverse practitioners. Tha Carter III was one of the most long-anticipated albums of the '00s. So you can be sure that I felt more than the usual pressure to get to it sooner rather than later--and also that I didn't stop checking it out after I'd weighed in. I dimly recall that there was a lag before the brilliance of "Phone Home" hit me, but it was more than that--the album is remarkably substantive front to back, playable too. So as I listened, I grew to appreciate it more and them love it some.

[A] Basically, I read other people's reviews to find albums to check out on Spotify and am gratified when I'm actively moved to then replay such a pick even once. This means I don't keep close enough track of current rock criticism to comment on it with any special insight. It's obvious enough that the two major outlets are caught up in self-branding, as they have to be (and as the also-rans are as well). P4K tries to stay ahead of the curve, often to what I hear as needlessly (also perishably and/or abstrusely) esoteric effect. This year, however, I was also struck not just that P4K's year-end list was dominated by women (as my 2019 list stands at the moment, it's almost half female), but by how many of the mag's female choices favored a rather retro singer-songwriter aesthetic--slow-moving, lyric-enunciating, strophic, and oft genteel--I've never had much use for. One more setback for catchy songs with a good beat, I suppose. Meanwhile, while doing a decent job of keeping up with young trendies, Rolling Stone serves as a counterweight to P4K's esotericism, finding aesthetic distinction in "residual" formal commitments that I too often find kinda just old. Wayne Robins, a very longtime acquaintance who replaced me at Newsday when I moved on to the Voice in 1974, wrote a Pazz & Jop-hooked essay (in the first year there's been no Voice-linked P&J, and by the way I've yet to glance at the Facebook-based self-proclaimed "Rip-Off" Pazz & Jop I'm told someone's launched) that deals usefully with many of these issues.

[A] Stick-to-it-iveness and the love of a good woman.

[A] First, this gives me a chance to mention that although my knee is doing well I can barely walk due to a related IT band problem that affects my thigh. This is not so-called IT band syndrome, a nasty variant of runner's knee. It's in my thigh specifically, and finding effective treatment has thus far been alarmingly difficult, although I've just met a trainer who impressed me. So if anyone has undergone a similar problem I'd appreciate learning about it. As for the Cloud Nothings, you've nailed the issue exactly. Look at the last Cloud Nothings review and note how I dismiss complaints about his sameyness--a little defensively, I'd say. No surprise that the new one sounded to me like one of those marginally differentiated Honorable Mentions I've vowed to cut down on. I could be missing something, of course. But the likelihood is small. I'd rather check out something differenter.

[A] There is no review of Artpop. It came out during the Consumer Guide's 2013 hiatus between its long Microsoft sojourn and its brief stay at Medium. Played it recently out of curiosity and did not feel compelled to play it again, hence wonder whether I would have rated it so highly had I been compelled to write about it, a process that my ears invariably find educational.

[A] A good title should be intriguing, suggestive, and accurate. Magazine editing is perfect training, because it compels you to think of a lot of them. Basic method: find some good language in there and work on it. Great album titles that come to mind are Rubber Soul and good kid, m.A.A.d city. Two great book titles are by people I'm close to: Mystery Train and The Only Ones. I don't remember how I came up with Any Old Way You Choose It, but it came pretty easy and I'm more than proud of it--it was definitive, thank you master phrasemaker Chuck Berry. Is It Still Good to Ya? came to me early in the compilation process because it was the hook of what I always knew would be the prologue; Book Reports took forever, landing simultaneously with its subtitle, which just popped into my head one day. Going Into the City was there from the start. Grown Up All Wrong, on the other hand, was hard labor. I wanted to raid the New York Dolls and call it If I'm Acting Like a King, That's Because I'm a Human Being. My editor Lindsay Waters vetoed it, never budged, although we had and still have a warm personal relationship. I was stubborn about it but finally gave up, just started thumbing through artists' albums for something to filch. After half a glum hour, up popped the song title "Grown Up All Wrong." I relistened to the lyric to make sure there was nothing I'd regret, rejiggered the intro to rationalize it, and have been very happy with it ever since--better than the Dolls one for sure.

[A] I've never gotten very far in Bourdieu's Distinction, an important piece of aesthetic theory I assume I agree with to some extent but in a less absolute, judgmental, dare I say snobbish way. So I can only wonder what if anything meaningful Bourdieu has to say about aesthetic pleasure itself, a real phenomenon however much it's compromised or tainted that is clearly inflected by what we know and how we grew up but I very much doubt is coextensive with our social positioning dramas. You and I like the same kind of bands, it would seem, but if you also like Ace of Base, who I've never gotten into, go with it. There's obviously real craft there. The idea is to let the music reach your ears unmediated insofar as that is possible, and although that'll always mean relatively unmediated, there are various ways to trick yourself into being more spontaneous about it. I've made it a discipline to figure out the real reasons I enjoy individual pieces of music and put my conclusions into writing for over half a century. I'm real good at it and never perfect. It's a contingent world. It's also the only one we got, and music generally makes it better.

[A] When the category is as vast as "classical music," it's not a "blind spot." It's something I'm not really interested in, like biochemistry or astronomy or sculpture, although in recent years I've come to care more about the first two than I do about classical music. That said, I've read a great deal of classical music history in passing, most recently when I was reviewing Ted Gioia's Music: A Subversive History for the L.A. Times. Most germane, however, is what I've written about the late great not-actually-a-musicologist (which-was-probably-a-good-thing) Christopher Small. My Voice piece about Small was eventually reprinted in a classical music journal whose title now escapes me. More to the point, the entirety of my long interview with him, transcribed over several days by none other than moi because like many who knew him I loved Christopher Small, was published in Jason Gross's long-running online music mag Perfect Sound Forever and reprinted in Robert Walser's posthumous Christopher Small Reader. I know no one at WQXR and have very little to do with academic musicologists, although onetime Times critic John Rockwell, who in "retirement" writes regularly for an opera magazine I can't keep straight from the other opera magazine, is one of my closest friends. Of course, he was also a rock critic for a while.