[A] Of course a schlocky band can come up with a first-rate song. I love that soundtrack--it's among my most-played albums even though it never came out as a physical. So I hereby recommend it to anyone who's never heard it, and yes, the movie is also terrific. Lady Antebellum benefited enormously in this context by providing the soundtrack with its title song. They also distinguished themselves by changing their name to Lady A in 2020 after being bombarded with criticism for the pro-Civil War implications of their name. Shortly thereafter (Wikipedia's is a good source on the details) they found themselves in a lengthy dispute with a Black blues singer yclept Lady A, legal name Anita White. Sampling White's top five blues/bluesy songs on Spotify, she's actually damn good--in my opinion better by far than Lady Antebellum/Lady A the country warhorses.

[A] I'd need to listen to a lot of blues records before working out a position on that conundrum, but as to "bitch" in hip-hop I'm basically against it without boycotting it--the word's tone does fluctuate radically in that context plus don't expect me to forget much less dismiss Roxanne Shante's great lost The Bitch Is Back. In addition let me note that my brief review of the Stones' 2015 Brussels Affair suggests that it's time to remove "Midnight Rambler" as well as "Brown Sugar" from their canon.

[A] I have no doubt that my Christian upbringing played an active role in shaping my humanism. "Love thy neighbor" was definitely a watchword at First Pres even if not all the parishioners lived by it. Also, my church library was one of the first places I found books about ideas, and I read several of them, which helped make me an intellectual, though I always preferred both fIction and books about baseball. But given the extent to which the leftist humanism of dozens upon dozens of my Jewish friends moved me in that direction, I identify more with that strain of secular humanism. As for the name "Christgau," there's a Danish brand of coffee called Christgau--an empty bag of it hangs from my office door. Then again, so does the remains of an envelope addressed to Rabbi Robert T. Christgau. In either German or Danish or maybe both the suffix "gau" seems to mean something like region or county, and I seem to recall that under Hitler certain states or geopolitical entities were called "gaus."

[A] An entire chapter of my memoir, Going Into the City, is about Dartmouth, and I assume you would find it enlightening. In NYC I was only allowed to apply to three colleges plus a CUNY, and I no longer remember whether Cornell and Hamilton wanted me, but Dartmouth gave me a scholarship, maybe because I had a great-uncle who attended on a football scholarship, didn't graduate (blew a knee, for one thing), then became an alumni association heavy of some sort; he was also a drunk who was run over by a bus in Cooper Square a few blocks from where I've resided for half a century. So he might have helped. In addition my College Boards were off the charts though my high school grades weren't, and math chairman although not-yet-prexy John Kemeny called me in to bawl me out for choosing the "gut' Math 3-6 option instead of Math 1-2 because it was the easiest "science" "sequence" and all I wanted to do was study literature and philosophy, which I then did for four years. My grade average was good-not-great because I have no knack for foreign languages--cum laude and Phi Bet but not by much. But I absorbed a lot of literature and philosophy there and made a few lifelong friends in English Honors and on the fringes of what passed as the undergraduate bohemia. I was the youngest member of my class.

[A] What can I say? It's the rare artist who has any feel for criticism as a craft or calling and I'm even better at mine than he is at his, about which I've often written positively plus there's a big piece about his band in Is It Still Good to Ya? Maybe you should buy yourself a copy and Xerox the VW piece and send it to him even if you don't like it, which I'd make a 50-50 proposition.

[A] We have similar tastes. Doing a best of '68 list would be a week's work I am reluctant to undertake, but I can say that the only album on the list I think of as way overrated is Cream's Wheels of Fire and a replay might conceivably change that (and I'm not a big fan of Jefferson Airplane's Crown of Creation either). But the only ones I'm pretty sure I've played for pleasure or something like it--usually what I'll call unnecessary research comparison--since say 2015 are, in guesswork descending order: Cheap Thrills, Beggars Banquet, Electric Ladyland, The White Album, At Folsom Prison, and conceivably Songs of Leonard Cohen. Not sure I own or therefore know In the Groove. (Motown didn't mail out review copies back then.)

[A] I'd rather not for several reasons, though I suppose might change my mind. But there's a brief novel by Margaret Drabble, a UK author I generally respect more than I admire, that I read at Carola's urging when we first got together. It's called The Millstone and I recommend it to everyone I know even though I understand childbirth is a less universal theme than some might imagine. I wrote about it in Going Into the City. It's both soulful and exquisite.

[A] I'm not the guy to ask, since The Communist Manifesto is the only one I've read. Instead I strongly recommend an essay collection by my dear friend the late great Marshall Berman: Adventures in Marxism. I'm probably not supposed to say this given what I haven't read, but Berman's prose is a lot easier on the cerebellum than Marx's. So I should add that circa 1967 I read and admired Marx's 18th Brumaire. It was regarded as something of a potboiler albeit a revolutionary one as I recall, but for just that reason goes down easier.

[A] Essentially, I never listen to the radio, although I did when I owned a car a couple of decades ago, and then I stuck stuck to pop stations, which had and have more to teach me about what's going on. I did enjoy Dylan's book The Philosophy of Modern Song, though.

[A] Given how crucial Africa has been to post-2000 pop and arguably a lot of what's earlier than that I certainly don't think these are outlandish ideas. But I would note that Marsh has been so much a lifelong anti-bohemian that his thoughts in that arena are always suspect.

[A] I don't think "blown me away" is a very useful way of putting it. Rather I'd say something like "excited me" or "commanded my full immediate attention." In 2023 there were a number of such, several of which I recognized as terrific right off but also could soon discern were clearly limited in one way or another: Gina Birch would be a perfect example--not for everyone at 69 and understandably so. Olivia Rodrigo's Guts might be an exception--terrific from first spin but also clearly calling out for deeper analysis and further elucidation. I couldn't get enough of the 2023 Lewis Capaldi for the first day or two, although that's an album few admire as much as I do, and the same probably goes for Dolly Parton's Rockstar, which I crowed about to Carola track by track first play but soon recognized wasn't for everyone on a first-to-last basis, and rightly so at that. Having already seen the Ramones a bunch of times when their debut surfaced I played it immediately and never seem to get tired of it. Then there were my first two rock album buys, The Beatles' Second Album and The Rolling Stones Now! Both are still play-it-again faves around here. As for Sgt. Pepper, I sat around with a bunch of journalists and listened to it for hours before its official release, still play it occasionally. and now resent anyone who puts it down "Within You Without You" notwithstanding.

[A] I am genuinely flattered that you believe I'm so diligent and open-minded I can be expected to replay an album by an artist not one of whose releases I came close to enjoying as opposed to respecting. But I'm not. In fact the only one of the six artists you name I admire more than that is Bjork, and even in her case the positivity doesn't extend so far that I'm about to figure out how to insert the appropriate umlaut into her name. Many serious aesthetes among rock fans admire these artists you name. I don't, because none of their aesthetics make enough room for pop fun or African-derived grooves, both of which are gold as far as I'm concerned. With Smashing Pumpkins my disillusion arrived early in their career, at a doomed 1994 rock festival in Rhode Island whose performance I described thusly:

It was after 8, so we spread our stash of Armenian food on a desolate press table slightly aft of the stage, but although we hoped to avoid Nick Cave, all too soon rampant self-expression was drowning out dinner conversation. We took our time returning, then lounged far back as the decent conventional rock and unriveting arena solos waxed and mostly waned. Occasionally the star would announce that he was about to knock our socks off, but he never came close, and around 9:20 he started complaining in a strangely un-Australian accent. He dissed Rhode Island, he dissed the site, he told us we should "tear up the empty lot" when the show was over, he congratulated us sarcastically for attending: "There may be a bomb underneath you but you are rocking--at least you can tell your children that you came and you rocked." He pouted: "I'm sorry we suck." He rationalized: "We apologize for trapping ourselves in a vortex we can't get out of." Finally, just before 10, he advised us to drive safely and limped off to widely scattered cheers. The Quonset edition of Lollapalooza was over.

I was pissed off and deeply confused. For half an hour I'd been jeering this bad expressionist band in the expectation that soon I'd hear a good one, Smashing Pumpkins. God, I thought, that must have been some traffic jam. But when Carola asked who the female musician was, I figured it out. Nick Cave had preceded Quest--that was Smashing Pumpkins. How embarrassing for me--but how much more embarrassing for Billy Corgan. Carola, who isn't normally given to hyperbole, called it the worst performance she'd ever witnessed in her life. I told her she'd never seen Richie Havens.

I am proud to note that after this passage was published I was approached in a restaurant by a bizzer I knew who worked for Smashing Pumpkins. He thought it was a riot.

[A] That's a fair question and I haven't come close to figuring out why it pertains. I expect it has something to do with trap as an approach to rhythm that I don't understand, don't cotton to, or don't like at all, though I'd begin by venturing that it's not hooky enough in the pop sense, which is something I've always valued in hip-hop myself. The thing about Danny Brown is that he definitely has ambitions as a lyricist, and except for a few of what I'll call the New York intellectuals--Wiki, say, or especially second-generation Marxist Billy Woods--that's becoming rarer near as I can tell.

[A] Looking back on 2018's Dean's List, I find 16 women in the top 30: Noname, Bettye LaVette, Pistol Annies, Tierra Whack, Cardi D, the Paranoid Style featuring Elizabeth Nelson, Maria Muldaur, Kah-Lo, Wussy featuring Lisa Walker, Janelle Monae, Elza Soares, Amy Rigby, Amanda Shires, tUnE-yArDs, Hinds, and the transgender Sophie. So without doing any handstands, that looks to me as if it qualifies as a yes--there just weren't that many women getting respect back then. So 16 in the top 30 deserved some sort of plaudit.

[A] The Varese Sarabande seems like a best-of worth owning. And I envy you your "It's Love That Really Counts." But my 16-track Shirelles best-of on Rhino has served as one of my favorite albums ever for many years and I'll just stick with it.

[A] If you suffer from depression and this record braces you, by all means stick with it. Me, I've never liked a screamo record in my life and see no reason to try and make an exception for this one.

[A] Robinson is just about my favorite contemporary novelist although the more aesthetically daring Jonathan Lethem is in the running, and while I regretfully doubt that Swedish socialism will ever catch on here I'd be delighted if it did.

[A] David was one of my first assistants, recommended as I recall by Riffs contributor and NYU prof Perry Meisel. He had a very good brain and was a pleasure to be around. I learned of his death, which as I recall was heart-related and took place when he was pursuing a graduate degree in English in Texas, via the earliest iteration of the commenting community that grew up back when the Expert Witness blog generated a de facto discussion group that dubbed itself the Witnesses. He was mourned; it was a shock for all of us.

[A] Anyone who's really interested in my take on Eminem should find what The Believer called "The Slim Shady Essay," which is available on my site and also collected in Is It Still Good to Ya? It was assigned and paid for and then left hanging as a minibook by someone who'd been led to believe by the late Dave Hickey that I might write something worthy of his recommendation. But there was only one Dave Hickey, and it definitely wasn't me.

[A] I have tried to get into that admittedly beloved Neutral Milk Hotel album on at least three separate occasions. Many love it and are free to do so, yourself included. Not me. I'm older than you and would at this point in my life would almost always rather devote my ever-fleeting hours to something I like already.