[A] I decided to construct that list NOT by replaying the many albums that got straight A's, a herculean timesuck of a task, but by scanning the list and seeing what had taken up some kind of residence in my memory, which means in turn that they had played an active role in my life. That means some albums were left off, and so be it. It also means others that I did replay were upgraded, most notably CMAT and, obviously, Glaspy, which started sitting on my shoulder and whispering in my ear at the very start of the process. Of the downgrades you mention, the ones that stir the most regret are Tyler Childers and Amanda Shires. Least: Danny Brown though of course you never know. Might there be others were I to devote another day to checking everything out yet again? How could there not be? But working late in the game due to health reasons and eager to move on to the April and May Consumer Guides, I had no intention of doing so.

[A] That is me, definitely. I wrote a big piece for Esquire about Monterey that's in Any Old Way You Choose It. Was sitting up front and salvaged a hunk of Hendrix's guitar that was thrown out as garbage that by a subletter a few years later. Arrrghh.

[A] When I was at Newsday I wrote a piece called "Trying to Understand the Eagles." (Relevant aperçu: "Listening to the Eagles has left me feeling alienated from things I used to love.") Eagles fans hated it. I'm still proud of it myself.

[A] I liked a 2017 collaboration of theirs with a Malian supergroup. But asking me questions about classical music is a waste of time for everyone involved.

[A] See above. Might my response levels change over the months and years? Of course. But at a certain point I play what I feel like playing or a guest has requested and find out from there. In the case of Selo i Ludy I had a conversion experience that hung in there for a while, and although I've only played it a few times since, it always sounds good. Remember: I OWN A LOT OF ALBUMS!!!

[A] I'm glad you liked it. I had my doubts about the project but I'm very proud. It's currently showing around the country at film festivals, and I expect it to get to a Manhattan festival later this year.

[A] Although both my parents and for that matter my more dexterous maiden aunt Mildred played piano, I thought lessons were boring when I could have been playing stoopball outside, hence have zero formal knowledge of music. But the big living room radio console my fireman father splurged on was always part of my life, not least because it came with a phonograph he converted 78s to LPs when they became a thing. Plus I loved baseball, particularly the Yankees, which means my brother and I had a radio in the basement, where we slept. What I can no longer remember is whether WINS was the Yankee station back then, because it was the (first) Alan Freed station, and it was Freed who leaned down on the biracial pop music he dubbed rock and roll. Plus there was DJ Peter Tripp on WMGM nearby and at the upper end of the dial WWRL, a black-oriented (and Harlem-based?) station that played only r&b. My parents were also good dancers. And my beloved grandfather Tom Snyder was the first person I knew who owned a 45 RPM record player. So there was always plenty of music, especially pop music, in my life, and by the time I was 10 I was into it. At Dartmouth I hung out with the tiny bohemian clique insofar as they tolerated me, and they hipped me to jazz. By the time I was out of college I played pop radio all the time and also occasionally visited jazz clubs, where Thelonious Monk was my special fave. All of which is to say that not just that for most of my life I was a serious rock and roll fan. Add to that my night-gig boss, the painter Bob Stanley, who was glad to play the radio at F.I. Dupont where we filed margin calls and before too long the pop art movement was under way, which added an extra layer of validation to my attraction to pop music, which Bob liked too—there's a Shirelles piece of his hanging in my living room and a Ringo in the dining room. Aesthetically, the-"high"-art-to-pop-art switcheroo made it easier to write critically and with aggressive respect about pop music. Hence: rock criticism.

[A] Answer: none. Although sleeping I've had dreams about being in a band a few times, I find I have not the slightest interest in speculating about what band I'd most like to join. Professionally meeting John Lennon in particular was an honor and a treat. But I like being a writer, and I like being a critic. That's where both my talents and—work though both are—my pleasures reside.

[A] Because Carola named her novel The Only Ones (check it out!!) we retain a theoretical fondness for the band—when she's creating playlists for a reading she always sticks in one of their songs. But that Perrett solo album was a B+ by me, and sampling it again on streaming I soon decided that he came across better sonically as a group leader than as a solo artist. So though you might ultimately prove right about how good that solo album is, I'm not sure I'll dig on a nearly decade-old release to double-check.

[A] I never liked Wilco as much as I was supposed to. There was and still is something a little too sluggish about them. As for your snotty letter, I'm glad you changed your mind, but as I believe I've written somewhere, criticism is not a popularity contest. Which is not to say I don't feel contempt for all the Kansas and ELP fans who not only think I'm a fraud but underestimate my IQ.

[A] I presume with no memory of the facts that I didn't review Gentry's albums because I didn't think they were good enough. I did, however, once compare Laurie Anderson invidiously to "Ode to Billie Joe"—which is not to say I don't enjoy and admire Anderson.

[A] I gave As to every one of the albums you list. But you guess correctly when you figure I don't listen to many live rock albums, though JB's Sex Machine, which I've never been fully convinced is all the way live though that's its rep, is an exception. I do however listen to many live jazz albums. Coltrane's Live at the Vanguard, Ornette's Friends and Neighbors, Davis's Live/Evil and Monk's Palo Alto are four that come to mind as I wonder whether Monk's London albums are live or anyway part live and I bet there are others.

[A] I am now officially and more or less completely recovered from prostate aquablation, a notoriously slow-healing procedure for old men with enlarged prostates which as I understand it is seldom cancer-related and definitely isn't in my case.

[A] I'm not familiar with these, but a cursory glance suggests the Davis releases are archival and the Coltrane for completists (which I'm not). Instead let me recommend you investigate alto saxophonist and de facto inventor of bebop Charlie Parker, aka Bird, who seems to have gotten lost in the historical shuffle. Made his crucial breakthrough in the '40s. Check him out in the CG and you'll find two full A's and two A plusses. I've been playing Now's the Time around here a lot recently and it never gets tired.

[A] I paid more attention to the Dead live than most critics, but as the Deadhead subculture became a mass cult the physical strain became too much. Note however that I covered a Dead concert in Jersey that I wrote up in the Newsday offices in Nassau County and then drove further east on Long Island to join Carola on Shelter Island, where I made our romance official and surprised her by showing her my copy after we got out of bed. At that point I don't think she'd ever read a word I'd written. Pretty sure we saw them together at the Academy soon enough. Please also note that the review in question praises a 1990 live show for its "mesh of the tight and the shambolic that on their best nights rendered their music responsive and interactive"—there were good nights, not as many as there once were, but this was one. Parsing the exact moment when the good nights might have begun to dry up isn't worth my time, and probably not yours.

[A] I don't review every album on release; in this case, a collection made an impression many years after it appeared, and I reviewed it in the April 2024 Consumer Guide. So the half a century thing made sense in context. As for the A shelves, one problem with being known for grading things is that people get literalistic about it. Please allow me to use the term "A shelves" the way any normal person would—the shelves where I keep the important stuff as opposed to "housing only albums graded A." Credence, for example, was one of those major bands whose catalogue included a B and B+, but at a certain moment in history I wanted to keep it all in one place. Haven't played them in years though bet they'd sound pretty OK if I did.

[A] I liked these sets in 1982 (ahem: "the finest major-label reissue anthologies since Atlantic's long-lost History of Rhythm & Blues"). I see no reason I wouldn't like them now. That said, for better or worse I play very little vinyl. CDs keep me busy enough unless I'm doing research or Carola or a visitor puts in a request. If the label were to send me the CDs in the mail I'd probably revisit them. But that is highly unlikely these days.

[A] Monk's Misterioso, The Beatles' Second Album, The Rolling Stones Now, something picked blind from my two dozen or so Armstrong CDs, maybe the longtime Bob and Carola fave Manfred Mann's Earth Band (although obviously that's not a timeless classic except for us who played it plenty when we were becoming a couple and the guys who made the record).

[A] It depends, right? So say "rock," as it's called: electric guitar. Jazz: saxophone. Funk, etc.: drum kit. "Rock and roll": human voice. Folk: "human voice." Jazz: also piano. Trumpet doesn't fit anywhere despite Satchmo.

[A] She didn't slip under my radar. But while I've found her interesting as an artist, she's never seemed quite compelling. Just played the new one and thought it sounded like a B plus. (Also thought the Erotica comparison an overstatement.) That said, I'd need to listen more before it sinks in enough to finalize that informed conjecture.