[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.

[A] You could consult the Dean's Lists, which started with the Pazz & Jop poll and continue to this day. But there are no 21st-century Consumer Guide books because nobody offered me money for one. As I assume you know, in 2001 Tom Hull created robertchristgau.com, which rendered future CG books unprofitable for sure—for book publishers and to a lesser extent for me, since especially given all the new reviews a '00s book would have had to add to my journalistic oeuvre I would have been sweating blood for my piddling advance. In the end, as things worked out, the website Hull invented and sweated over out of pure friendship functioned to spread my renown (and also his own, which was well-earned indeed). Without it I doubt And It Don't Stop would exist. So my thanks to him, not for the first time. And also to the readers it vouchsafed me. On the web site are the 21st Century Dean's Lists along with my ballot for Rolling Stone's best of the 2000s poll, and there was a 2010s Dean's List right here on And It Don't Stop.

[A] It probably means I wrote and/or revised the debut review to begin with or with book deadline approaching when I was preparing the '90s CG book. You will note that the next two Madonna albums are both B's merely. So it's my guess, and a guess it is only, that having softened on Madonna throughout the '80s I either wrote in toto or refurbished to to one degree or other a retrospective review of the debut at that time.

[PS: Most of the Consumer Guide columns preserve the original reviews, offering links to the database where reviews and/or grades were later revised. However, in a regrettable short cut, the reviews in the Dec. 27, 1983 column were, as an internal comment puts it, "hoisted this from database; should check against original." The "Additional Consumer News" was added, but the reviews were never reverted to match the print column. My intention has always been to restore the original columns -- I don't see any need to preserve typos and flat-out errors, but standard policy is to accurately reflect changes of opinion and chronology. I don't know how many files still exist like this: offhand, I'd guess between 10-20 out of nearly 600 in the directory, possibly more, but not many. This case particularly bothers me, because I remember a lot of rock critics writing exceptionally nasty reviews of Madonna's early work, so I've actually gone looking for the missing review, was confused not to find what I hazily remembered, and hadn't noticed the reason it was missing. — Tom Hull]

[A] I've seen Swift precisely once and would probably make it twice if some bizzer or publicist approached me with a freebie, not to mention two. Nor do I care enough about her music to compare alternative versions absent word-from-the-right-mouth. I started giving her props in 2008. I respect her in principle. I think her last album was self-indulgent at best. Life isn't as long as I am old.

[A] Those weren't mea culpas, just simple experiments, because Hilburn wanted me to write something and I seldom do that kind of thing off the top of my head (except maybe sometimes in, er, Xgau Sez). Said to myself I haven't heard these in years (because given my line of work there are many good-to-excellent records I never hear again post-review except maybe in December when I'm putting the Dean's List together, which I hope doesn't disillusion you but is just simple time management) so here's a way for me to play three pretty good records I haven't heard in years and call it working. Enjoyed them all more than I anticipated, probably but not definitely played them all at least twice and whammo, knew what I could write for Bob (H not C). Which took at least an hour or two because writing takes time. As of course does music. It exists in time, which is always fleeting.

[A] May I suggest that unless American politics is your academic specialty or something you refrain from gross generalizations about a nation half a world away from yours. It's certainly true that today's active Democrats have a collegiate/academic tinge/orientation that diluted or strained their moral compass and damaged their appeal to large swaths of the working-class electorate. But the "establishment" is the people with too much money, not the people who inflect a major field of discourse. As far as Harris's lack of moral compass is concerned, do you really believe that being compelled to do some sort of impossible balancing act as regards Palestine, an issue regarding which only a sliver of the American electorate and indeed political class knows how to "solve" unless making Netanyahu and his apparatchiks vanish in thin air suddenly becomes practicable, is what cost her the election? What cost her the election was her gender, her color, her classiness, and the Dems' failure to address the economy in a clear and plausible way.

[A] I never quit Twitter/X because I wanted to be able to check something whose buzz there interested me, which I doubt I did half a dozen times, mostly on Carola's say-so. But that was when I thought Musk was a rich eccentric albeit the union-busting billionaire he'd proved himself at Tesla. But once he began flaunting his Trumpy antics I just never got around to quitting, which I soon will. He is vile, vain, actively revolting. Bluesky here I come.

[A] I never watch morning TV and hence cannot count myself any special admirer or detractor of Joe and Mika, although as a marriage fan I approve of them in principle. As I understand it, they do a light, chatty show with the occasional political edge, which given the just-waking-up audience they serve presumably requires more cordiality than any of MSNBC's night people are inclined to provide. So if they want to make sure they're not cut out of America's newly elected ruling class, I don't see any reason to blame them.

[A] Duh. I say as someone who regarded himself as a feminist even before he hooked up with Ellen Willis, mostly via a Canadian woman I dated from afar 1964-66, who gave me my copy of The Second Sex, women's bands do tend to have better sexual politics than all-male bands, thus evading what with so many male rockers can be a major annoyance factor, to put it mildly. Like I said, duh.

[A] As it happens, Robert Hilburn asked me to write something for his excellent new Newman bio, which I'm now 70 pages from finishing, and what I wrote was based on a relisten to the three Newman studio albums I'd given a B plus, all of which I quickly concluded I'd underrated. So make Land of Dreams, Little Criminals, and Born Again some kind of A. But let me add one thing I'm realizing from the Hilburn, which is that Newman like his famous uncles also devoted a lot of creative energy to movie soundtracks to which I've paid very little attention. While I recognize that movies need soundtracks and presume that Randy's are fine, I am not a guy equipped to appreciate them critically or enjoy them the way I enjoy song collections, even though most soundtracks include a few songs.

[A] There must be others, but two that occur to me are the piece I wrote about Chuck Berry's eternal "You Never Can Tell" for London's Sunday Times and the long takeout on Thelonious Monk's (and Johnny Griffin's!) "In Walked Bud" to close out the Monk piece collected in Is It Still Good to Ya? I also once did a whole Double Dee & Steinski piece that kind of qualifies.

[A] First of all, Harris was one of the most fluent prose stylists ever to run as a plausible presidential candidate—which despite her own considerable oratorical skills doesn't mean she was as impressive a speaker as Lincoln, Obama, Washington it says here, or the fireside FDR or as purely brilliant intellectually as at the very least Madison, who did after all play a major role in conceiving the Constitution we say we fight for and the Trumpers hope to wreck. She was also arguably the handsomest, especially if dumb-ass Warren Harding's square-jawed thing didn't turn you on. But what both impressed me and led me astray was what the polls told us was the 50-50 race it clearly wasn't—at least not in the electoral college. I was confident ordinary voters saw her brains and looks as an attractive positive, which they clearly didn't. On the contrary, let's specify the obvious. She was Black and female and both cost her. Sexism and racism. Definitive? Maybe not, and we'll never know how big they were for sure. (It is also worth bearing in mind, just as a quirky oddity if you prefer, that what I'd estimate were the two most intelligent plausible presidential candidates of my and your lifetimes were both of part-African heritage.)

But in addition I'll note that my biggest personal political gaffe is that I never glimpsed the economic factors I have no doubt cost Harris big because that seems to be how it worked all over the pan-Covid world. About that I was ignorant, to my and so many of my allies' disgrace. I've also been paying more mind than I ever thought I would to what is now, evocatively, labeled bro culture. As someone who would always rather read, listen to music, or both than resort to YouTube and/or the podcast world, I ignore both the way I avoid Rush and Kansas reissues, living without that market share, which for me is negligible economically—but not, it would seem, electorally. Now those motherfuckers scare me.

Although I've long followed electoral politics in considerable detail, I don't have the expertise or vanity to make any prognostications here. I'm glad MSNBC is operative because I find it comforting—especially for the nonce Lawrence O'Donnell, whose detailed firsthand knowledge of DC in particular I've been finding informative and on occasion comforting.

[A] So you really think I should be searching out conceivable B plusses a quarter century old by someone I like and indeed respect but don't care about very deeply? Do the math if you like; I'll just estimate. Say Dean's Lists averaging well over 50 a year for 50-plus years. That's more than 2500, maybe 1800-plus hours worth of listening—at 12 hours a day, over half a year's worth played just once apiece, total by Elton John two. If a guest requested something, sure; maybe a best-of, I'm a good host. Would the right EJ song sound good in a movie? Sure. Do I have many other things to do with my ears? You bet. So long ago, after many sub-B plus albums, I stopped trying. Might I have missed something? Of course. Does this worry me? Not a whit.

[A] Until your note I wasn't aware that Business Is Business existed. I'll check it out—in fact am streaming it as I write, and though it sounds OK that's not all that promising an omen. Trap has always been off to the side of my active musical interests and as well as those of most of my far-flung advisory network. Called "Gucci Grocery Bag" up on Spotify just now. Sounds OK but less than compelling so far.