[A] That film came to pass when a young NYU student named Paul Lovelace proposed it. Films and especially student films being the somewhat crude and iffy and time-consuming propositions they tend to be, I had my doubts, but I liked the kid a lot and figured what the hell. I thought the results were fine—think often of the final shot of my riding up Fourth Avenue on my bike from the Voice offices—and became full-fledged friends with Paul. Carola and I attended his marriage to Jessica Wolfson and as unremitting baby fans went to visit them uptown more than once after they became parents. Then they moved to Austin, where they became successful filmmakers; recently Paul was brought on board to help make a much larger-budget feature-length documentary directed by bizwise tech entrepreneur Matty Wishnow and focused on none other than uxorious rock critic Robert Christgau. Working with Paul on that film has been somewhere between a pleasure and a joy. In case you hadn't guessed, I can't wait to see it. Let me add that Paul was an producer, writer, and editor on the now-in-theaters documentary Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted, which I've recommended here before and recommend again.

[A] Joel Whitburn's guides to the Billboard charts have always been valuable. I still keep them on my desk's bookshelf, although I see that the unbound, stapled, pamphlet-style first edition without which I couldn't have written the '70s CG book that made me slightly famous, is missing its first and final pages, so tattered it now starts with Avalon and ends with Welch. The Whitburn I still use is The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits. I also keep The Trouser Press Record Guide close at hand.

[A] This New York chauvinist gibe was concocted by Village Voice fashion writer Blair Sabol. As an unbowed NYC chauvinist I couldn't resist it but will note that this was well before the flowering of such (note spelling) L.A. punk-era bands as X, the Minutemen, L7, Black Flag, NOFX, and my special faves the Descendents. El Lay is or should I say was about the biz, which I always made room for as well despite my continuing skepticism about the Laurel Canyon folkie-virtuoso sensibility, which helped generate plenty of good music even so.

[A] Pure oversight, obviously—an oversight reflecting the inconvenient fact that I've always respected them more than I've liked them, although I do have a dim memory of being surprised at how much I enjoyed hearing them after seeing a movie featuring them that's also a dim memory. One reason is that I've never found even one of them a remarkable singer, another that I've never thought either their songwriting or their groove all that either. The only album of theirs I actively liked was never Consumer Guided, at least in part because it came out precisely when I was breaking up with Ellen Willis, an all too engrossing endeavor: 1969's eponymous, as they like to say, The Band. If this answer hasn't perturbed you I suggest you look over the Consumer Guide reviews they inspired. The corrective to this disinterest is Greil Marcus's Mystery Train, where the Band plays a major role. After which you might take a look at Barney Hoskyns's considerably less idyllic Woodstock book Small Town Talk. Not exactly a utopia, that town.

[A] For starters, de gustibus non disputandum est. Like what you like. But prog is pretentious by proud self-definition and too often utterly devoid of anything I would call groove. If you actively enjoy its style of full-of-itself and have managed to reside in the Groove Capitol of the Universe without developing a deep-seated craving for groove itself, a peculiarity you clearly share with millions of others who prefer the technical skills of such prog drummers as Yes's Bill Bruford, none other than Genesis's Phil Collins, ELP's Carl Palmer himself, and Lord help you Kansas's Phil Ehart, enjoy if enjoyment is what that feeling is. This major Ziggy Modeliste fan would much rather feel his lungs expand as his mind taps its foot and his favorite person in the world dances around the dining room.

[A] I own a fair amount of classical music that came in the mail but just about never play it. I could say I like Stravinsky and Bach and Vivaldi and it would be true enough, but that's memory at best, although when I took it upon myself to read Proust at 17 my professor, a terrific old poet named Ramon Guthrie, told our little seminar that Proust was inspired by Beethoven's C sharp minor quartet, which I listened to on earphones in the library and liked so much I bought it as an adult and have even played it a few times.

[A] Nope, but maybe for senator or something. In 1968 I did vote for at least one Republican councilman I recall, named Don Weeden. The basically anti-electoral Ellen Willis did too. Our councilman, whose name has slipped my mind, was a Jewish Democrat who'd been around for decades and was no progressive. Of course, that was in 1968, by which time Republican John Lindsay was the relatively progressive mayor. And in 2000 I voted for Nader rather than Gore, which in New York meant nothing in the electoral college but in Florida might well have provided Bush with his tiny margin of victory. In retrospect, I think the fame Nader earned for his considerable consumer-protection and environmental achievements went to his head the way even earned and principled fame so often does and as a result wrecked our electoral politics. And I will add that I can't imagine how a Romanian could follow all this detail.

[A] Young, Mitchell, McGarrigles, to a somewhat lesser extent Cohen—titans all. And right, Rush to a much much lesser extent are my kind of band—my tastes jn rock run obviously run more punk/new wave, although the Guess Who played a minor role in my 1969 breakup with Ellen Willis ("Undun" was key at that moment) and I also found Bachman-Turner Overdrive OK. But really, give me the New Pornographers, Tokyo Police Club, recently Pony. Plus some great rappers: K'naan, Backxwash, and last but also very near the top of this graf the great Buck 65.

[A] A quick count indicates that I have going on 60 box sets in my office and another 30 or so in the hall. There may be more somewhere. I don't recall buying a single one, though there may be a few exceptions—just about every one arrived in the mail free, usually back in the good old review-copy days. I keep them primarily because they orient me as nothing else could when I want to write about one of the artists a collection compiles. The only ones I play with the slightest regularity are the two Armstrongs—Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a career-spanning omnibus, and The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings, which documents his '20s stuff. I don't play them because a choice album or sometimes two or even three will sate my hunger and curiosity (and/or maybe prove a special delight for Carola or Nina).

[A] From first grade, where I quickly learned to read well enough to devour all my mom's old Bobbsey Twins books, I've had a large vocabulary for my age, because my reading did not stop with the Bobbsey Twins. I've always read a lot. That said, however, "prognathous" I must have come upon while doing my best to nail a metaphor. "Lagniappe," however, has been in my recall vocabulary for decades. Have no idea why or how. But I don't use big words to impress; I use what I regard as the most apt under the circumstances, which can vary enormously.

[A] I believe that when I die I will survive nowhere except in the hearts and minds of my loved ones, friends, and admirers. But I'm aware that no living human has any way to be certain that there's no such thing as life after death, although if there is it will certainly not be life as physical humans experience it. As for the president (literate humans do not capitalize it as a noun as opposed to title, a grammatical usage I'm sure sticks in the barely literate motherfucker's craw in the unlikely event that he's aware of it at all): He's a vindictive, pathologically resentful, racist greedhead—evil, as I have not the slightest doubt the God whose existence I think so unlikely is all too aware if he's out there keeping tabs. Value that highly if you will.

[A] Hope not, but can hardly blame you for asking. To borrow two verb clusters from Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall, it's up to all of us on this side of the Atlantic to defy-delay-undo, to slow-impede-defeat. I'm a patriotic democrat/Democrat. So is almost everyone I know except a few out-and-out leftists. But I don't know anyone who's feeling actively confident that we'll be able to take some deep breaths four years from now.

[A] Amen, brother.

[A] Armstrong being Armstrong, there probably has been, but that's not the kind of thing I keep track of. My big Terry Teachout-hooked piece was a lot of work and ended up one of the best things I ever wrote. Recently there was an Armstrong-inspired Broadway musical called A Wonderful World that I found accurate and admirable and thought-provoking as regards the strong women in his life should some version come your way. But do I want to read another Armstrong book? That depends. For sure the profusely illustrated Gary Giddins retrospective Satchmo: The Genius of Louis Armstrong is worth having around to look at as well as read.

[A] Oddly enough, I haven't read that many Beatles books. But I'd be very surprised if there was a better one than Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles, which pays close attention to the female fans he argues were the band's too often neglected artistic secret. That said, Philip Norman's Shout: The Beatles in Their Generation was early and excellent, and Brian Epstein's very early A Cellarful of Noise, which I bought from a drugstore paperback rack circa 1966, is embedded deep in my heart. May Pang's strange and sometimes embarrassing Loving John has stuck with me, as has Norman's 2008 Lennon bio and for that matter The John Lennon Letters, which I found so engrossing I reviewed it. As I began by admitting, I'm no expert, and as you may have noticed I keep going back to JL. But I guarantee you'll get plenty from the Sheffield.

[A] Probably a lowish full A, else it wouldn't be number 11. Initially I found her self-evidently remarkable album hard to get both my mind and my pleasure receptors around, which is why I wrote one of my more abstruse reviews about it—a somewhat twisted and indirect analysis of a relationship to Lorde I thought cool at the time and I now find so "clever" I'm not sure it makes sense myself. But seeing how positive the year-end consensus was I found myself, well, convinced: able to go back to the album and enjoy it for what it was.

[A] As it happens, I was friendly with a guy who recorded her when they both were living in the same building in Manhattan circa 1970. Wasn't that impressed then either. Tastes differ, including yours and mine in this matter. In order for my opinion to change I would have had to play yet more Emmylou Harris, which I would only do were a guest to make a request because I try to be a cordial host. Meanwhile, I have better things to do and am happy to stand by this Subjects for Further Research graf in my '80s CG book. "In 1984 I wrote off her second best-of ('pristine neobluegrass, pristine rock oldies') even though I'd already put 1980's pristine neobluegrass Roses in the Snow on my A shelves. But 1986's rockish Thirteen impressed me almost as much as 1987's Parton-Ronstadt-Harris Trio, which Harris held together—this reformed folkie always sounds great on other people's records. She's genuinely at home in Nashville, and put into relief by competition like Nanci Griffith, Kathy Mattea, and Lacy J. Dalton, she may well deserve to stand up there between Rosanne Cash and Reba McEntire. That best-of sounds better now."

[A] I must say it's flattering to have readers who gauge things so carefully. Wussy, as I presume you're aware, probably owe me more than any other band I've raved about, which is hardly to say I've turned them into stars—the cash value of critical approbation, even from Der Dean, is damn near nugatory. But just for the hell of it I took a look at the 2016 Dean's List and saw that they were 14th, right behind Rye by Dawn Oberg, who I expect would just as soon not estimate the cash value of her full A but be pleased if you checked out whether you too thought it superior to Forever Sounds—commercially, she makes Wussy look like the Rolling Stones. P.S. Heartwise I had an ablation to cure what I experienced as all but imperceptible "atrial fibrillation." Live long enough and strange words like these may enter your vocabulary as well. Won't that be interesting? Even if you still don't know what an ablation is after you've had one?

[A] You don't need to believe in God to believe in evil—you just have to have a conscience, or maybe simple empathy, a concept first named by the ancient Greeks, who didn't believe in God although they honored plenty of gods. You combat it by engaging in righteous politics to the extent your personal life permits, which in this godforsaken nation often means combatting "born-again" Christianity to the best of your ability. I say that as a proudly apostate ex-Christian whose younger brother is a born-again clergyman-activist who figured out a way to honor his faith by using the church to train nurses who'd promise to use their new skills in poor countries overseas. I also say it as someone painfully aware that the odious sex offender and let's just hope not disastrously unqualified defense secretary Pete Hegseth is a rabid Christian nationalist who should be called out on his religious affiliations as well as his alcohol abuse, sexual assault allegation, and extensive history of organizational incompetence.

[A] Consumer Guide quote unquote is no longer as much a descriptor as a brand—a rather profitable one for its (de facto) owner, me, that is unlikely to be nearly as remunerative for anyone who purloins it. Since I make it a practice to if possible buy the CD version of any album that sounds like a potential pick after a (streamed) play or two, it costs me money I wouldn't be spending if it wasn't making me more money (though I'm sure I'd still buy some physicals). One reason it's been so successful is that I don't fake or exaggerate my responses, which is one of many skills I've mastered in the course of the decades I've been doing it, and in addition I know from experience that owning the physical improves the accuracy and detail of my responses and judgments, sound quality and the surprise factor built into my regular practice of sticking multiple discs into my changer in the confidence that I'm unlikely to remember what's coming next. Can this go on till I'm 90, which for many reasons is unlikely? Maybe, maybe not. In seven or eight years perhaps I'll know and perhaps I won't. In the meanwhile I'll help people not waste time on music I believe is likely or not to be worth said time.