[A] "From time to time," I read. Gee, I thought, not exactly a witty term, why would I do that? So I Googled my site and got precisely one hit: a 2001 Turkey Shoot pan that read:

TOOL: Lateralus (Volcano) What am I supposed to say about the latest in meaning-mongering for the fantasy fiction set? That they are not as good as King Crimson? That I do not like my Billy Cobham comp even less? That this is not progress? That I am not a virgin? All of the above. Plus I never liked Crimson much to begin with. C

All of which I take to indicate that, for reasons I no longer remember, Tool was my post-9/11 choice to symbolize the ever-burgeoning pretensions of metal, which by then my readers presumably knew I didn't have much use for unless Led Zeppelin or Motorhead counted. What I'm really insulting in this very terse review is fantasy as opposed to science fiction, the overstatements of jazz fusion, and rock's eternal "progressive" tic. The virgin crack, I should add, I don't get. Were Tool deep into phallic sexism? Can't recall, don't much care. Hate that shit in hip-hop too.

[A] Nope. Have you ever published a record review? Murdered anyone?

[A] I don't believe in guilty pleasures, as I explain in the prologue to my Is It Still Good to Ya? collection, which began its life as a lecture at a PopCon devoted for better or worse to the guilty pleasure idea. And as far as I'm concerned, any critic who doesn't write as a human being who enjoys the art form at hand--although "cares about," "is interested in," and other less hedonistic verbs could be subbed in there--is doing a disservice to criticism and indeed humanity.

[A] I don't have the fortitude to come up with an exact date, but it seems to me I've been using the Inspirational Verse device since very early in the Consumer Guide's history even though I don't find it in any of the scant CG material I included in my 1973 collection Any Old Way You Choose It. It serves two functions: a) a readymade way to single out lyrics worthy of note for better or worse that can also be b) a quick way to end a review I don't have a capper for. A Google search of my site suggests that I've put it in play something over 200 times. Glad you enjoy it--that's the idea.

[A] "Generosity" can mean many different things, and while it's generally distinguishable from both anger and wit, most of those things can certainly coexist with anger and wit. In Rollins's case, however, I'd say generosity, along with facility and the more closely related ease, is at the center of why we care so much about him. (Spirituality, I should add, seems to me a rather different thing.) Love of music and the sounds he can make with his horn is discernible or maybe just imaginable in every phrase he plays. Bowie is far more a poser and ironist plus someone whose rather European aesthetic sense stopped hitting me anywhere near where I live in the mid '80s. But on Young Americans in particular, which was much earlier, it felt like he was reaching out to his rapidly expanding fanbase and hence embracing his own stardom head on rather than holding it at an ironic distance. This impulse soon engendered Station to Station, which remains the only album of his I love wholeheartedly and play for sheer pleasure. To which let me add that the idea that I can convey any of this to listeners half a century my junior is an equally tremendous privilege.

[A] No, but I admit I haven't tried that hard. A friend once gave me a copy of Africa Brasil, which I played dutifully more than once at the time and replayed again when I read your query only to find myself once again unable to breach the language barrier--or maybe I just don't get Ben, a rhythm artist for whom lyrics aren't necessarily paramount, due to some glitch in my general response mechanism. There are clearly great lyricists in African music--Franco and Youssou N'Dour by all accounts and some translations come to mind. But the musicality of those two artists and so many others subsumes the verbal content. In contrast, Brazilian music tends more pop in the Tin Pan Alley sense, which means among other things that it's designed to accompany or even showcase lyrics and thus can't fully connect with those who don't understand them. There might well be other negative factors as well--there's a classiness about the Brazilian pop ideal that's not my kind of thing. But the language differential makes it harder for me to bridge that gap.

[A] This goes back to the vexed circa-1969 question of whether Aretha should do a Coke commercial, which neither I nor my more Marxian then-partner Ellen Willis had any problem with. Let artists we loved shovel up more money--this was capitalism, and rock and roll was a product of capitalism. So I've seldom moralized about such machinations, though these days I guess it would depend on the corporation: no fossil fuels, no big banks, probably not much international agribusiness either. But much as I distrust big tech, that's a much closer call. I mean, I own an iPhone myself, albeit one I inherited from Nina. And drink loads of Diet Coke too. There are so many graver economic injustices and disconnects to address.

[A] Gee--what faux-female commenter could be so interested in Lester Bangs books that s/he peruses Lester's Amazon entries for typos and so overawed by the Greil-Xgau cabal that s/he wants to check out their dick size? I wonder.

[A] I was certainly aware that I was generalizing swiftly and broadly in that piece, and if I owned Heartaches by the Number I would have checked it out, as I did David Cantwell's excellent Merle Haggard: The Running Kind. I was also aware that there were revised editions of Bill C. Malone's Country Music, U.S.A. to which Geoff Mann referred in his essay; I'd read the 1968 version shortly after it came out and have never seen either of the newer ones. But since I wasn't claiming to do anything but review those two essays and had plenty to say about them, with deadline approaching I went with what I had. My generalizations are obviously too vast to swear by, but as more-than-plausible argument starters I stand by them.

[A] Without committing to play till the ninth inning, I did what I could to check out most of Soto's picks and was surprised at how few of them worked for me. To choose the biggest disappointments because my tastes clearly run more r&b-let's-call-it than Soto's, neither Sly's "Sex Machine" nor JB's "Time Is Running Out Fast" made me say anything like "How the fuck did I forget that"? The Neil Young, the Bowie, even the Sugar just didn't reach deep enough. But "Tel-Star," "Frankenstein," and not quite as undeniably the Stooges' "L.A. Blues" certainly qualify, as of course does Funkadelic's indelible "Maggot Brain," which Carola and I recall first grokking while we were parking our car in an Akron driveway in 1978 and staying in our seats till it was over, enthralled. Almost as crucial is the Meters' "Cissy Strut." I'd never registered Yo La Tengo's "Spec Bebop" and loved it. I'd replace Eno's "Becalmed" with his "Sky Saw." Pink Floyd's "One of These Days" would probably place. Rush's "YYZ," which it's quite possible I'd never heard in my life, also might. But I think Soto was wrong to leave out all "jazz"--Miles Davis's 27-minute "Right Off," which leads Jack Johnson, is extraordinary and indelibly rock-derived, and not just because it builds off bassist Michael Henderson's "Honky Tonk" riff. Which brings us to the '50s, which Soto ignores altogether. As I've written more than once, it was the hour I spent as a 14-year-old playing side one of my Bill Doggett 45 "Honky Tonk" on repeat that transformed me into the person who became a rock critic. Side two was the hit, one of the best-selling instrumentals of all time, but I always insist that both sides form one composition, still one of my favorite tracks ever. One of Soto's commenters mentions that he also omitted Link Wray's equally influential "Rumble," where you can hear noise guitar being born. And from the '50s I'd add New Orleans sax man Lee Allen's "Walking with Mr. Lee"--and also, just to be contrary, Count Basie's 1956 hit version of "April in Paris," another 45 I bought, which Billboard calculated peaked at number 28 but was bigger in NYC I guess.

[A] The short answer is of course that's the distinction, although the lack of vocal identity is a meaningful parallel it's sharp to point out on your way to homing in on the formal similarities between the two bands and brands. That said, except for Zappa himself if you like the way he plays guitar, which many do more than me and not without reason, there are no musicians as personable as Bootsy Collins or Eddie Hazel or Bernie Worrell in the Mothers however formally skillful the players Zappa gathered around him. Nor were the Mothers anthemic the way P-Funk was--that wasn't how Zappa rolled, which as far as I'm concerned is one more manifestation of his stingy spirit. To me, 1972's (very early) America Eats Its Young, Clinton's most Zappaesque album, is also easily his worst. Usually there's tremendous generosity to his music, which kept on developing after his Westbound tour was over. And that sort of, well, let's call it spirituality, is one thing I respond to in musicians. The Beatles sure had it. John Prine. In their way both Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn. Damn right Peter Stampfel. But probably more Black artists: Coltrane, Rollins, and Coleman in jazz, Aretha and Otis Redding especially in soul, in hip-hop the Roots and Kendrick Lamar for starters. And hey: Louis Armstrong! Not that I don't also identify with righteous anger and sardonic wit. Which Clinton also had.

[A] That quote in toto, after an organizer foolishly claimed that "the sixties had finally come true": "'The new era Live Aid portended, though, had more to do with its many visible corporate sponsorships than any world saving, per se. It sealed pop stardom as another facet of modern celebrity--turned it, officially, into a kind of landed gentry.' To me what happened there was less neat and closed off." Certainly the landed-gentry phase of pop stardom, a nice metaphor, was inevitable without Live Aid, and plenty else wasn't portended there. Most important, Run-D.M.C. gave barely a hint of hip-hop's gigantic future, its starting point which for argument's sake I'll say was the Tupac-Biggie assassinations followed by Jay-Z's late '98 breakthrough "Hard Knock Life" and in 1999 Eminem, still more than a decade off . But in addition Matos's premonitory bows to SST, the Replacements, and the pop success of R.E.M. in particular don't in any way anticipate the way Nirvana's never-duplicated commercial success established alt-rock for a time as a mythic artistic hotbed.

[A] I'm reasonably assured this is not the algorithm per se. It's just people liking and playing the same records because they learned about those records from me. It certainly makes me happy when my fans enjoy some of the more obscure artists I favor, and I know that long-distance friendships have occasionally begun that way. But "power"?? That's not power. Power--of a sort, anyway--might be other critics latching onto the same artists and their readers streaming them too, up into the thousands of plays. How about tens of thousands? That would be cool.

[A] Not Jimmy, I assume. Or the saxophone whiz. Oh well. Even so you can say whatever you want about me as long as you keep putting in the hours with Stacey Abrams. Non-Georgians need you more than ever. Go Warnock.

[A] What a strange question even disregarding the fact that I gave Steel Wheels a B minus, not a B plus. Though I'm glad you like my work, I'm sad that some basic principles haven't gotten through. A major one is that in the end people like what they like, and that a simple way of understanding the critic's job is that critics should among other things try and explain what their opinions/responses are and where they come from. As has already come up in this space, I'm not a Queen fan even though, inspired mostly by my daughter, I've warmed to their precise, campy comic grandeur. When I find time to explore, I might listen more intensively. But if I live to 100 I'll never find time to hear much less immerse in their first six albums. Maybe my feelings will shift a little, but I'll never like them that much, and at best I'll limit myself to a best-of or two. Moreover, the Stones are inscribed a lot deeper on my sensorium than on yours--I've been a sucker for a fundamental groove I attribute mostly to Keith Richards and the great Charlie Watts since "It's All Over Now" hit the airwaves in the fall of 1964. And even though Jagger isn't my kind of guy as a human being, their sound plus his flair sparked into life longer than most aging rockers could manage. My unconventional fondness for Dirty Work remained in place last time I checked--a tremendously underrated album especially given the pass the Stones got on the 1983 Under Cover, its opprobrium based mostly on the overblown reaction to the echoey way producer Steve Lillywhite did drums, which is neither here nor there as far as I'm concerned. Replaying A Bigger Bang for the first time since 2006, my A minus seems right--the opening "Rough Justice" is a strikingly ironic/acerbic expression of both Jagger's musical gift and his romantic limitations and the songwriting strong is throughout, though "Streets of Love" is no high point. In addition to the CG review, wrote longer about A Bigger Bang for Blender in 2005 and then reviewed a 2006 show of theirs for the same mag. I stand by everything I wrote. Check it out--especially the show review.

[A] First of all, I use the word "genius" plenty--too much, probably; Google says it gets 1130 hits on my site where "talent" comes in at 1050 and "smart" at 913. Second, musical genius doesn't have much to do with IQ, certainly not, for instance, the 175 that talented non-genius Bob Mould claims in his memoir, though 120-125 would probably be a good idea just to utilize and kick-start the musical genius properly. Third, most of the musical geniuses I can think of are Black: on your list James Brown above all with Prince second, maybe Wonder, not DeBarge or Ocean, but how come you left out Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin? (And Louis Armstrong! Duke Ellington even though he's never been a favorite of mine! Thelonious Monk! Miles Davis!) The one obvious white genius who comes to mind is easy and isn't on your list: Bob Dylan. Ditto for Joni Mitchell whatever her vanities, Lennon probably, Eminem in his fucked up way conceivably, and I definitely wouldn't rule out Swift. The others less, with understandable candidate Beefheart exemplifying near-genius's limitations. Billie Eilish PLUS HER BROTHER, THAT'S DEFINITELY A PARTNERSHIP, might qualify in 10 years and might not. When I wrote my Billboard obit of George Jones I pulled out the G-word, which didn't seem preposterous, especially for someone on a death deadline. As for Randy Newman and the Clash, both come close enough to justify a good joke, Newman in particular given his soundtrack sideline. And now I declare an end to this party game.

[A] Ordinarily I skip A plus questions but this one I couldn't resist. How could I not nominate the two I put on my Rolling Stone list: Sgt. Pepper and The Beatles' Second Album, the latter of which most Beatles scholars don't believe counts if they even acknowledge it exists? But because so much of my early Beatles listening was their U.S. albums, I'm not qualified to distinguish among the "official" UK versions that preceded Sgt. Pepper. Moreover, while I feel and understand the artistic skill and historical momentousness of prime candidate Rubber Soul, in fact I only cream for three of its songs: "Norwegian Wood," "Girl," and "In My Life." A plusses have to do more than that for me.

[A] These things are so personal. I mean, I love The Nightfly and Carola adores it. But Donald Fagen "happy/upbeat"? That pathological ironist? How??? Still, I thought it might be fun to find something suitable. Two records I go to for that sort of thing are Franco & Rochereau's Omona Wapi and Manu Chao's Proxima Estacion Esperanza, but both may be too world-musicky for your tastes. Either '70s New York Dolls album? KaitO's Band Red, a recent if admittedly esoteric rediscovery around here? The New Pornographers' Whiteout Conditions? Toots and the Maytals' Funky Kingston, which another reader just excoriated me so passionately for giving it an A minus rather than a full A that I replayed it and found it was still an A minus for me. Hey wait, I've got just the thing: The Beatles' Second Album. Guaran-fucking-teed.

[A] What can I say? Popular music evolves just like any art form--Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven were revolutionary in the late '20s and still sound amazing today, but while it's possible to imagine some historically inclined imitator reviving that sound to an extent, that's a long shot technically and an impossibility culturally--just wouldn't strike the kind of same spark, in the audience or among the musicians themselves (plus, of course, no Satchmo). It's distressed me for many years that the rock and roll of the '50s is an unmapped antiquity for most young listeners--to me the great Chuck Berry and Coasters and Buddy Holly records plus many doowop one-shots (let's hear it for, hmm, how about Johnnie and Joe's "Over the Mountain, Across the Sea") are thrilling on the face of it, but to listeners your age (assuming for the moment that your autobiographical profile is factual) that music has been aesthetically inaccessible for decades. Almost the same goes for soul stylings, although a few aging holdouts as well as some young multiformalists like (Brown University graduate) Jamila Woods continue to work in that general area. But with bands it's different. There are still plenty of bands, some even g-g-b-d or g-k-b-d, exploring that option, and still venues for them too.