[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.

[A] I've been writing about the history of bohemia for decades—my Book Reports collection has a whole section called "Bohemia Versus Hegemony." "Proletarian" is too Marxian and working-class a term, but it's certainly relevant. The two best books I've found are Malcolm Cowley's Exile's Return and Jerrold Seigel's Bohemian Paris. See my book pieces "Bohemias Lost and Found," "Constructed Social Scenes," "The Village People," and "Inventing Punk," all on my site.

[A] Sorry, but if you look at Bragg's Consumer Guide entry on my site you'll see that only one of his non-Wilco albums got even a B plus and, right, most weren't reviewed at all. This bodes ill for the Bragg-Xgau interface. And though Woody Guthrie himself does OK on my site, if you'll read the Voice essay on Guthrie (good to begin with but substantially improved I'd say in the rewrite I included in Is It Still Good to Ya?) I have my reservations about him as a musician too. I will check out the Bragg album you recommend, but I've never thought he was much of a recording artist per se. Both he and his obvious exemplar are wordsmiths first, and that very often impinges on their listenability.

[A] Defining genius is obviously impossible, but say this all-purpose exaggeration can encompass combinations of originality, productivity, acuity, and the equally undefinable beauty. These calls are best made spontaneously. Is, to choose a strictly random instance, the writer Carola Dibbell a genius? I personally would very much hesitate to say so in print if you hadn't given me the chance, but often I just look in her direction when she's merely my wife and think so and certainly I would happily argue that her sole novel The Only Ones qualifies as some kind of genius. Sifting on an impulse through the A shelf of my CDs, I say to myself Abba maybe if a fabrication can count, Cannonball Adderley some might say, King Sunny Ade absofuckinglutely, Adele millions of her adoring fans might well say, Terry Allen some of the few who've heard of him might conceivably say, Mose Allison some might say, the Allman Brothers their adoring fanbase might say, and now I'll stop in the hope that that's confusing enough for you.

[A] As a '50s jazz fan who greatly preferred Black musicians to white ones, I was still often in the racial majority at jazz clubs. But as someone always aware that Black popular music coexisted more or less equally in aesthetic terms with even Beatles-era "rock" (the Supremes, hey), circa 1964 I started patronizing 125th Street's Apollo Theater, where I was seldom if ever the only white patron but was almost always in a distinct minority. In 1967 I published a substantial Wilson Pickett piece based on the Apollo experience you can find on my site and in Any Old Way You Choose It, though why the final sentence has an "I" where there should be a "me" I do not understand.

[A] a) I love libraries, which made my life as a writer possible, and have been donating generously to the New York Public Library since I started itemizing my taxes circa 1966 (the American Friends Service Committee has been my other fave charity over the years). b) Though the Abba reviews in the '70s Consumer Guide book are pretty funny all things considered, I really have softened on them. A 1994 Australian movie called Muriel's Wedding was decisive in this. A real "pure pop" artifact. Have no doubt Lekman feels the same.

[A] See above. Don't know what kind of an A their GH might end up and don't have any other reason to nail the details, but an A minus or conceivably full A would seem right. A plus, highly unlikely.

[A] There's a difference between euthanasia, which isn't legal anywhere in the U.S., and physician-assisted suicide, which I'm for although it's only legal in 10 states plus the District of Columbia, I would expect only when decedent-in-waiting is capable of requesting it of his/her own free will. I can imagine favoring euthanasia under some circumstances. But to me it's obvious that specifics and safeguards would have to be built into any law legalizing it, which would inevitably complicate things.

[A] First, don't kid yourself about the raw appeal of your prose. Be relatively confident that some people out there enjoy your writing AS WRITING. Second, don't fib about how much you yourself like or dislike the music in question, and even more important, why you feel the way you do. If the reasons aren't vivid or interesting or significant or striking or of general social/aesthetic usefulness, review something else.

[A] I constructed a 100 fave novels list in 2007, when, let me remind you, I was 65 as you still aren't. Many of the top 10 I'd read after I'd turned 30 and a few of them post-40. The pre-30 ones I'll mark with an asterisk and add that I wrote about several of these books in Going Into the City.

1. Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie*
2. Christina Stead, The Man Who Loved Children*
3. Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past*
4. Ousmane Sembene, God's Bits of Wood
5. V.S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas
6. Norman Rush, Mating
7. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms*
8. Alejo Carpentier, Reasons of State
9. Margaret Drabble, The Millstone*
10. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

[A] First, all caps because I've said it several times before: I DON'T LISTEN TO PODCASTS. The main reason being that I spend so much ear time listening to music, both for pleasure and for work. How I sort out Consumer Guide records is as it's long been—Spotify, somewhat dubious sound quality and all, means there's no need to send me physical product, although it does give anyone who does so a big leg up, because I play anything likely-looking as well as some but not all of the indie obscurities I still do get in the mail—that's how I discovered Claudia Gibson's Fields of Chazy a few months ago, although it's far more common for me to quit after two or three tracks. And I always scan the Pitchfork and Rolling Stone review sections. Plus I gossip with other music lovers amateur and professional: my sister Georgia for one, and it was Rob Sheffield who turned me on to Rosie Tucker some months ago. Most important, however, is that although he's not on my nonexistent masthead And It Don't Stop does have an overseer: my much-younger-than-me old friend and nearby neighbor Joe Levy, the great editor who persuaded me to give this Substack thing a try and is forever emailing me with tips without which I'd have trouble making my nine full reviews plus five briefs quota every month. Levy made And It Don't Stop happen and thereby changed my old age. How long it can last remains to be seen—I am truly not getting any younger. But I am in his debt, and so are my readers.

[A] First of all, I don't put Warwick in Holiday's or Fitzgerald's class—take a look at my reviews and note that the Warwick picks are basically redundant greatest-hits albums I assume without doing the research were reviewed at different times. Second, I'd almost certainly add Dolly Parton to this short list, exactly how I won't figure out for free. Third, I was just mentioning Dinah Washington as a Subject for Further Research in a recent Xgau Sez and take this note as seconding that emotion. Fourth, checked my CD shelves and found a 2004 reissue of Black Coffee, the only Peggy Lee there though I bet a few are I've tucked away in my vinyl. Promise to play it at breakfast or dinner soon.

[A] When I was a young jazz fan just out of college in 1962 I was already aware that most of my favorite music was made by African-Americans. So even back then I made it my occasional business to try to learn more about Africa. My research was sporadic to say the least, and I never became a big fan of Miriam Makeba, then the best-known African musician. But I never forgot that truism. As I've written before, the turning point came when I drove over to Brooklyn to have dinner with John Storm Roberts, a Brit who grew up in Kenya who was covering salsa for me, and he told me he'd released a superb DIY compilation of African pop hits called Africa Dances, which is still findable on Discogs. I loved and reviewed it instantly. By the late '70s other African music was being released in England, with King Sunny Ade an early beneficiary, and soon it was an vaguely defined subgenre, which as you say I've always kept my eyes and ears on. But what's struck me over the years is that seldom are lyrics a comprehensible part of the package, and also that the woman I married, who heard Africa Dances at the same time I did, is a much more skilled and enthusiastic dancer than I am, which in a rhythm music is a major factor. So there's a sense in which Carola augments my enthusiasm whenever she sashays around the dining room as an African album comes on.

[A] These all sound like good movies and I'll try to keep an eye out for them. As for the Hubleys, the only film of theirs in my recall memory is Moonbird, a basically humorous 1959 kiddie animation that completely charmed me when it came out. I believe I saw it as a short at the Fifth Avenue Cinema. Even at 17 I was a complete sucker for little ones like those who dominate this film. Regrettably, they do not include Georgia, who was not born yet. To which I should add that it was my pleasure to see Georgia and Ira (and James McNew too) at a house show last Tuesday, where everyone in the audience paid for their seat by writing a rather large check to the Harris-Walz ticket.

[A] Without an iota of reporting to back me up, I would assume that at this juncture newly crowned Jerry Garcia fill-in Mayer can use an extra shot shot of the hottest young male newcomer in the biz and might even have angled for one. I also assume that superstar Springsteen is both impressed and just plain decent enough to be happy indeed to hitch his wagon up with Bryan's when it's convenient for both.

[A] Stokes was one of my best friends at the Voice. He lived just a few blocks from me on East 10th Street and as the generalist you describe liked to say: "You want a ham sandwich? I'll give you a ham sandwich. You want cheese on that? I'll put cheese on it." Politically he was a staunch left liberal with no radical pretensions—I believe he worked in city government for a while. We once spent half an hour rewriting his The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie review so that we could legitimately obey the silly heds-must-have-a-verb rule so as to call it "Flo and Eddie Flow and Eddy." Eventually he moved to Vermont, and by sheer luck I decided to give him a call from my sister's summer place. He'd had cancer and told me he was headed down to Boston the next day for surgery that would fix him up. Instead it killed him, making me the last Voicer to exchange words with him. He was deeply missed and for some of us remains so.

[A] First of all, let the record show that I was a Springsteen fan before Jon Landau himself--saw him at Columbia's behest at Max's Kansas City in 1973 and assigned none other than Carola Dibbell an early review, than there is no greater compliment I can offer. Howard Keel was a big-voiced Broadway star whose approach to singing basically shared a certain grandiosity with Springsteen's. "I Think We're Alone Now" was an excellent hit by the somewhat unfairly forgotten Tommy James and the Shondells. James wrote a memoir called Me, the Mob, and Music that's basically about what it says it's about, centering on the notoriously gangster-not-gangsta-ridden Roulette label, where he scored his hits.

[A] Without question my favorite music history site is located a few miles from where I grew up: the Louis Armstrong House Museum on 107th Street in Corona Queens, only a few blocks--not that I knew this then--from where I went to junior high school on 104th Street right near the 7 train IRT stop. But I've enjoyed visiting New Orleans several times and wonder if I'll ever get there again, which I well might. As for my to-do list, I'm a little old for that now but would certainly explore whatever Beatles shrines there are in Liverpool if I were to find myself there.