I just re-read your review of Michael Nesmith's album InfiniteRider on the Big Dogma for the first time in around 40 years. . . it seems to me you reviewed him, his career, his business. . . but NOT the album or its music. Terrible review . . . probablyhurt his sales . . . his reputation . . . and cost him a lot of money!aI find this so touching I couldn't resist reprinting the two queriesin the order they were received. I mean, it's a very long time afterthe release of the ex- (and future) Monkee's ninth album of thedecade, six of whichI reviewed even though by 1979"new wave" was all the rage (two including a comp got B plusses),and this fan, apparently of both Nesmith and Der Dean, is still notjust brooding about my B minus but convinced that my lukewarm recordreview in a Greenwich Village weekly destroyed the sales ofwhat he regards as Nesmith's masterwork. As it happens, I wrote aboutthe Monkees respectfully inmy very first Esqure column in1967, and by the end of that year had singled out Nesmith as thetrue musician of the foursome, which soon became conventional criticalwisdom. And just for the record, The Monkees' Greatest Hits hasits own jewel-cased position right next to my 40 or somethingThelonious Monk CDs. Also just for the record, I thought the Monkees'"revival" of the aughts was one-upping "poptimist" contrarianism pureand silly.enddate2021-05-19fromLiam BriginshawlocMelbourne, AustraliaqI have a question which you may have answered multiple times, and ifthis is the case I apologise for not digging it up. Autobiographiesand biographies by musicians are relatively common, and often enoughthey're not particularly well written, either because the musiciansaren't suited to that kind of format in the case of autobiographies,or--and this is perhaps more common--the musicians have becomedeities, and their biographers simply feed into that narrative with abunch of crazy stories that don't necessarily say much about the livesand ideas of the musicians, or the world that they lived in. Thereare, of course brilliant ones out there too, written with greatsubtlety and thoughtfulness. Which are your favourite bios ofmusicians that you've come across over the years?aAlways glad to be handed a chance to remind readers and I hope bookbuyers of my 2018 Duke collectionBook Reports, which includesessays on books about Jerry Lee Lewis (I'd now add to Nick Tosches'sHellfire, Rick Bragg's Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story),Lead Belly, Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk, Ed Sanders, RichardHell, Carrie Brownstein, Patti Smith, Rod Stewart, James Brown, ArethaFranklin, and Bruce Springsteen. In this newsletter itself I'vepositively reviewed Jim DeRogatis's dogged R. Kelly bookSoulless andCharles Shaar Murray's magnificent John Lee Hooker bioBoogie Man. TheLouis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, Etta James, Franco,and Bob Marley pieces inIs It Still Good to Ya? are alsokeyed to biographies. And in my 1998 collectionGrown Up All Wrong the Elvis chapteris called "Elvis in Literature" because it's based mostly on a sliverof his endless bibliography. Both volumes of Gary Giddins's BingCrosby are superb--with the second one especially sharp onU.S. culture during World War II. John F. Szwed's Miles Davis and SunRa are damned good. And I should add that although I'd recommendobtaining my collections from Duke or a local bookseller, naturally,most of those essays are findable on my site, which has aBook Reviews tab to help you track down afew more.enddate2021-05-19fromBrad MorosanlocLondon, Ontario, CanadaqLove your collection, Book Reports, as it has recommended someterrific books. I remember reading somewhere your admiration for JunotDiaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, so I was curiousas to what are your favourite novels so far in the 21st century?Thanks.aThis is something I happen to keep track of, so here's the top 10 ascurrently conceived only with extra books for a couple of authors:George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo. Junot Diaz, The BriefWondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Michael Chabon, The AmazingAdventures of Kavalier & Clay I (also TelegraphAvenue). Norman Rush, Mortals (reviewed in BookReports). Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora (also New YorkCity 2140). Jonathan Lethem, The Fortress of Solitude (alsoDissident Gardens). Carola Dibbell, The Only Ones (sheused to be lower but that was a polite lie). Colson Whitehead TheUnderground Railroad (also The Nickel Boys and SagHarbor). Elif Batuman, The Idiot. Akhil Sharma, AnObedient Father.enddate2021-05-19fromBrianlocDublin, IrelandqDoes a best of the '90s list exist? (This question inspired by renewedLiz Phair excitement over new singles being quite good actually.)aNope. As I'm always whining, lists like these, if properly prepared,are work. But it occurred to me that having just done my RollingStone top 50 a year ago, I at least had a good start--until acount suggested that more than half were from the '60s and '70s andonly five, F-I-V-E (5), from the '90s--six if I count James Brown'sStar Time, almost all of which was decades old by the time thefour-CD comp was released, but of course I can't, just as I can'tcount the fabulous and now scarce Go-Betweens best of1978-1990. So we'll begin with those five, alphabetized: DJShadow's Endtroducing DJ Shadow, Eminem's The Slim ShadyAlbum, Guitar Paradise of East Africa, The LatinPlayboys, Tom Ze's Brazil Classics 4. Then I will quicklyadd Arto Lindsay's Mundo Civilizado on the grounds that Carolarequested it when feeling poorly at dinner one night recently and wewere so entranced we instantly felt compelled to play it again rightaway and then yet again for our 19-year-old out-of-town grandniece thenext day (she said she liked it and also left with a bunch of surplusCDs I was happy to declutter myself of). But of the other candidatesI've tested out only Nirvana's Nevermind roared into certaintop 10 status (and if you're keeping score, as I know a few of youare, that would seem to make both of those A plusses, end ofstory). Alphabetically once again, the remaining candidates are:L.L. Cool J's Mama Said Knock You Out, Stern's Africa'sSenegalese The Music in My Head comp, Liz Phair's Exile inGuyville (which did seem a little thin musically first time out),Amy Rigby's Diary of a Mod Housewife, Lucinda Williams's CarWheels on a Gravel Road.enddate2021-05-19fromSergio ThompsonlocSalem, OregonqIf you made your own music, what kind would it be? Who would it soundlike?aIf my dream life is any indication, I'd be the leader of a postpunkrock quartet. On a number of occasions, I've had dreams in which Iplayed such a role, although as I believe I've pointed out somewhere,I've also had dreams--long before my current semi-lameness, let meadd--in which I could walk in 12-foot strides, and once it was thesame dream. And then there's what I dreamed last night, after I'd readthis query: that I'd somehow been hired to visit a college and play mysongs, accompanying myself on an acoustic guitar. This was a terribledream without being a nightmare: having arrived at my destination, Ifailed to call my contact and instead began gabbing with a woman Iknew while avoiding all thoughts of a) not knowing how to play guitarand b) never having written a song. Hours passed, my appearance timeneared, and the whole deal was so annoying I woke up to be out of itat 6:30, which is early for me. But at 7:45 I got back into bed andsoon found myself in a slightly revised version of the samedream. None of this was fun. I blame you.enddate2021-04-14tagTaste vs. judgment, the (somewhat) enduring appeal of Leon Thomas, the diminishing appeal of Green Day, reading about if not listening to Joanna Newsom, and the hymnals of Judee Sill and Todd Sniderurl -sez-april-2021fromDavid WasserlocSwarthmore, PennsylvaniaqIn your Auriculum podcast you differentiated between taste which issubjective and judgment which involves, I gather, someobjectivity. You also discuss your own preferences in music--e.g. fast over slow and happy over sad. How do you reconcile thosepreferences in the taste/judgment continuum?aTaste, obviously. But within those tremendously broadcharacterizations inhere countless gradations, none of which willdetermine in themselves my or anyone's aesthetic responses to anindividual piece of music or portion of same. This means that even atthe crudest levels they should generate questions like, "If I'm such abig fan of happy music how come I hate the Kars 4 Kids ad even morethan you do?" or (to choose an example from this past March 17) "ShaneMacGowan takes 'The Band Played Waltzing Matilda' so slow, why am Isitting there after the dishes are done doing nothing but listeningsix minutes in?" I go into this in some detail in the Sonic Youthpiece"Rather Exhilarating" in Is ItStill Good to Ya?, which includes the following slightly editedpassage: "One concept the non-old have trouble getting their mindsaround is the difference between taste and judgment. It's fine not tolike almost anything, except maybe Al Green. That's taste, yours to dowith as you please, critical deployment included. By comparison,judgment requires serious psychological calisthenics. But the factthat objectivity only comes naturally in math doesn't mean it can't beapproximated in art. One technique is to replace responsereports--'boring' and all its self-involved pals, like 'exhilarating'or the less blatant 'dull,' with stimulus reports." Which is to say,I'll now go on, physical descriptions of the music, best accomplishedfor the lay reader with colloquial, non-musicological language.enddate2021-04-14fromLeelocBrooklynqDo you really think Leon Thomas's Legend album is an A record?Listening back on it after many decades myself, Thomas's admittedlyunique voice seems more a novelty than anything else and the albumitself more clunky than swinging.aMy records indicate that I Consumer-Guided just two albums by the manwho sang Pharoah Sanders's "The Creator Has a Master Plan," neither ofthem Facets--The Legend of Leon Thomas. Both are from 1970: The LeonThomas Album, an A, and Spirits Known and Unknown, a B plus. But bythe time I did the '70s Consumer Guide book I had hedged Thomas overinto theSubjects for Further Researchaddendum, where I pointed out that his solo career had disappeared by1975 and expressed reservations about his "muddle-headedness." So Icouldn't tell exactly what you were talking about. But with my memoryjogged I went to Spotify, so much faster than excavating my vinyl, andstreamed Spirits Known and Unknown. Not clunky by me, a B plusat the very least--the yodeling rousing, the scatting spectacular. Andwhile the rationalist I am remains well south of agnostic about theGuy, Gal, or Both with the Master Plan, he fervently believes Thomas's"Disillusion Blues" should bebrought out of retirement if there's anybody out there with the chopsand spiritual wisdom to shout and yodel it.enddate2021-04-14fromAidan KinglocCape Elizabeth, MaineqHey Bob, I'm curious why you haven't reviewed the last few Green Dayalbums. I know you didn't like American Idiot and 21st CenturyBreakdown all that much, but I'm just wondering why we haven't gottenreviews of Uno, Dos, Tre or Revolution Radio. Have you gotten bored oftheir shtick?aElementary, really. When I give two consecutive albums by an artist Ionce liked C's, you can assume that I checked out the next one onlybriefly if at all, and chose not to find another way to hoist saidartist on his or her own petard. In fact, said next one sounded likemore of the self-important same, and I'm not sure I got all the waythrough the one after that, although I have a dim memory of tryingbriefly once. Nor has what little I've read about these albums givenme any reason to believe I've missed anything. Punk is so tied up withthe disillusions of growing up that punks do often age poorly.enddate2021-04-14fromCathal AttylocDonegal, IrelandqI'm curious as to whether you have any thoughts on Joanna Newsom'slast few albums; or did you merely file her under over-indulgence andlogorrhea after Ys?aIt seems to me that the answer to this and many similar questions isobvious: duh. (See Green Day directly above.) The reason I'mreprinting it here is to report that a year or two ago I received aletter that began: "Joanna Newsom is the greatest artist of the 21stcentury. Your misogyny is showing in your refusal to acknowledge herwork." Such rhetoric is only to be expected when you're a criticbecause most people don't know what good criticism is, but though thiscorrespondent was obviously only in her mid teens it was stilldisheartening--I am so not a misogynist. The second reason is to alertyou to the superb and adulatoryErik Davisfeature on Joanna Newsom in the 2007 Da Capo Best MusicWriting anthology (those were the days), which I edited. Immenselylong. As I explain in the book's intro, I read it in one 45-minutegulp, because I do know what good criticism is, and even though Newsomreally ain't for me however much I appreciate her debut, this wasclearly it. Different strokes, you know how it goes.enddate2021-04-14fromKeith SheltonlocSan DiegoqAny thoughts on the Judee Sill revival?Your reviews were spot-on, thegrades maybe a little low (given how grades have morphed since 1972, amoot point). My knowledge of non-gospel Christian music begins andmercifully ends at Amy Grant, so I was grateful for her gorgeouslyrendered, way-out-there perspectives in a genre I'll never care enoughto revisit.aHaving had no idea there was a Judee Sill revival, if there is, myfirst thought is how glad I am not to feel obliged to worry overmuchabout such wavelets in music's vast sea. Clearly this is a time whenevery moderately gifted female singer-songwriter in creation awaitsrediscovery, and Sill was a distinctive one. But where I was curiousabout how Leon Thomas might sound today, I found I could do withouthearing Sill again. An overstater, a militant if fundamentally humaneChristian--life is too short, especially when you're turning 79.enddate2021-04-14fromJon LaFollettelocIndianapolisqI've spent several Sunday afternoons enjoying Todd Snider'slivestreaming shows--even bought a shirt to chip in for thecause. During a recent performance in which he playedAgnostic Hymns in full,he claimed it was his best record. That was news to me, given how fewof those songs have been worked into his recent live sets--he didn'tplay anything from it when I saw him in 2019. I even recall reading aninterview where he seemed pretty ambivalent about it. It's always beenmy favorite of his (got lucky on eBay once and found a promo copy onvinyl for pennies on the dollar), so it was neat to hear Snider agreewith me. I was wondering if you felt the same. Best to you and Carola.aExpecting consistency fromTodd Snider is like expecting pie inthe sky when you die--this is a guy who probably changes his mindwhile he's tying his shoes. We listen tohis albums quite a bit aroundhere given the wealth of alternatives, and the only one over the pastcoupla years I thought maybe wasn't a full A was East NashvilleSkyline, which I expect was because I wasn't paying attention atthe right times. Can't swear we've played Agnostic Hymns,however. Did definitely play both discs of The Storyteller in recentmemory, and got Nina to listen to the entirety of "KK Rider Story,"which as a comedy fan she loved. But since it came out our surprisefave has been 2019's apparently ramshackle Cash CabinSessions--have enjoyed it so much so that we entered it in ourprivate Rolling Stone best-of-all-time sweepstakes. In thatcompany, true, he did admittedly fall somewhat short.enddate2021-03-17tagGroove with a side order of vocal emotion, soul with a (small) side order of jazz organ, Queen with less kitsch and more camp, and parody with honor. Plus: two movies, one a must a see.url -sez-march-2021fromEduardo MujicalocColombiaqI notice how over the years you have reviewed music in languages thatyou (presumably) don't understand. How do you approach this kind ofmusic and what is your mindset when you enjoy it?aI enjoy it as music merely, kind of the way I enjoy jazz--whichgenerally entails harmonic details in musical languages I don'tunderstand either. This means that when lyrics are prominent, as theyare in a lot of non-Anglophone pop, I tune out--even when the lyricsare in French, which I can speak and understand well enough to find arestaurant or the train station, but not to follow lyrics. All ofwhich is to generalize broadly, with numerous exceptions. But for surewhat I usually respond to in non-Anglophone music is groove with aside order of vocal emotion or affect. Because I recognize andtreasure the African contribution to the Anglophone rock-etc. at thecenter of my pleasure zone, and also because I've long been aware ofhow decisive African culture is in American culture generally, I'vealways been eager to hear what African music I could, and so paidattention to the few compilations that began to surface in the early'80s, starting with the great John Storm RobertsAfrica Dances collection ofthe mid-'70s, which for whatever reason delighted me from the firsttime I heard it and prepared me for the trickle and then flood thatfollowed; see the 1991 Rock & Roll & called"Afropop Without Guilt" for moredetails. But over the years many other grooves and even tune familieshave spoken to me. In Colombia itself it's been cumbia mostly, whichdidn't take long. For some reason, though the dominant horn parts arecertainly part of it, I've never really gotten into Puerto Rican salsaeven though I love Puerto Rico, which I've visited many times. Butonce in the south of the island I watched entranced for half an houras a cumbia band entertained near the town square.enddate2021-03-17fromChris RogerslocMissouriqWhat are your favorite albums featuring jazz organists? I'm guessingthat Jimmy McGriff, Charles Earland and Booker T Jones must be some ofyour favorites but what albums by those artists or others do you turnto when you crave soul jazz or a keyboard master jamming out onelectronic organ?aTo my surprise, since I never ever "crave" soul jazz or Hammond B-3,you guessed right. As I discovered by utilizing the Google Searchfunction on my site, I've actually given positive reviews to albums bybothJimmy McGriff andCharles Earland. Stax mastermind andhidden genius of Willie Nelson's Stardust that he is, BookerT. doesn't have a horse in this race--soul jazz has never been whathe's about, which is fine by me because I've always found that callingtoo schlocky by a factor of three. Jimmy Smith in particular I'veavoided for half a century. Cornball, cornball, cornball.enddate2021-03-17fromOscarlocJohannesburg, South AfricaqI'm asking this because I'm a sucker for Queen, but what is youropinion on Queen--if you've ever listened in retrospect? You prettymuch wrote off their albums, yet you later said their music has "thehigh gloss of committed kitsch" and Freddie Mercury was a "truequeen." It's strange you've rarely mentioned them, especially becauseof the enduring popularity of songs like "Bohemian Rhapsody," "We WillRock You," and more, plus their endless popular Live Aid set.aI've definitely softened on Queen since I started to figure out thatthere was camp and joy in their overstated virtuosity as well asvitality and endurance in their tunes. I have both ClassicQueen and Greatest Hits in my iTunes, but not thephysicals, presumably because my daughter Nina squirreled them away inher CD folders back in the pre-Spotify days. Since Nina comes overmost weekends I thought I'd burn a CD of the latter just to play it atlunch and maybe come up with a grade and some wise words about music Inow both enjoy and respect without loving it the way you and Nina bothdo. As I recall--this was just this past weekend--she observed thatshe would have liked to hear more of their early stuff, but that wasas far as we got. Are they worth some kind of A by me?Conceivably--we'll see how it goes. But even given this query, which Ionly opened Sunday, it's a tossup whether I'll ever get that far. Ishould definitely check out the movie sometime. Nina loves it.enddate2021-03-17fromJames DoumalocAmstelveen, The NetherlandsqHi Mr. Christgau, I came acrossthis piece in a New Yorker anthology of humorous prose and thoughtyou might get a kick out of it. An affectionate parody of the CG andyour style, so it seems to me.aVeronica Geng, who died of brain cancer when she was just 56, wasamong other things a renowned parodist, so much so that to be parodiedby her was an honor. That piece, a Consumer Guide to imaginary albumsspun off Nixon's impeachment, was included in a 1984 collection ofhers called Partners. She invited me to the book party and giveme an autographed copy: "To Robert Christgau, From a little clerk,Veronica Geng." Hmm. As I recall, she told me I was harder to getright than she'd expected, but looking back at the piece, I think sheapproximated my stylistic tics or shall we call them methods betterthan I had any reason to expect: long, grammatical sentences burstingwith parentheticals and festooned with slang and wisecracks. It's asweet memory that reminds me how sorry I was when left us so soon.enddate2021-03-17fromJ.M. WelchlocElmira, New YorkqWhat did you make of former Village Voice staffer Joan MicklinSilver's 1977 Between the Lines? I thought it was interestingbut a bit out of touch for something produced THAT particular year(little by way of punk or disco--but maybe Boston was provincial likethat then?), yet it had some nice riffs on rockcrit feminism. You'rementioned in the credits fwiw, but I've never seen you hold forth inprint anywhere and searching your site didn't turn up anythingeither. Thoughts/comments?aFirst of all, although Micklin Silver did apparently write for theVoice before I started Rock & Roll & in 1969, I don'trecall her byline and doubt she was ever a "staffer" there. She gaveme $500 (??) to be some sort of musical consultant on Between theLines, which I thought was cool because I loved HesterStreet. I have a distinct but undetailed recollection of callingher from a pay phone in the course of a vacation road trip andadvising that she include the Bobbettes' "Mr. Lee" in the film. Didshe? Dunno. Insofar as it purports to depict the interior life of analt-weekly I didn't think it had an especially penetrating feel,although it was certainly plausible. But that was a long time ago, andafter attending the opening I never saw it again.enddate2021-03-17fromMark BradfordlocBrooklynqNo-frills question (or just topic): Steve McQueen's Lovers Rockfrom the Small Axe pentad. Have you seen it? If so, thoughts?aYou should follow me on Twitter, where I got so excited aboutLovers Rock I dashed out an instant lateish-night rave that gotplenty of lateish-night response, the most flattering from veterancritic Ira Robbins, who immediately sat down and watched it himselfpast midnight and then tweeted that he was as knocked out as Iwas. It's not just that it's the music sector of Small Axe,every installment of which I think is terrific. As Robbins noticedtoo, it's how formally audacious it is--an unprecedented masterpiece,I'd say. It has no plot in the usual sense. Instead it's structured asa documentary about a London reggae house party, from food and soundprep to individual partygoers dressing up to transportation to theshifting, organic interactions of the party itself. I find mostcinematic party scenes, especially club-action ones (which this isn'tbecause of the house setting) garish, corny, overstated, stupid. Herecharacters and relationships emerge, crises arise and resolvethemselves. There's even an ending--several, in fact, each not exactlytopping but inflecting what's gone before. Like all these five films,it's so humane; like most of them, it goes places you absolutely donot foresee. I thought what McQueen made of Twelve Years aSlave was excellent. But these films, set in a U.K. McQueen knowsvery well indeed, have a transcendent quality so remarkable I hopeMcQueen gives himself time to regroup before essaying anything tooambitious--hope he takes a few deep breaths and rests on his laurelsfor awhile.enddate2021-02-17tagOn writing (or not) a history of popular music, consumer guiding (or not) the '60s (and Aretha) (and James Brown) (and the Dead), and Drake (or not). Plus organizing CDs and vinyl.url -sez-february-2021fromChucklocUpstate New YorkqYou were once planning on writing a book on the history of popularmusic, going back to ancient Egypt, I think. Why didn't you write it?The pieces that were informed by that research are among my favoritesof yours:the first section of Is It Still Good toYa? And "In Search of JimCrow" in Book Reports, the best thing I've ever read aboutminstrelsy.aThe reason I didn't write the book you describe--to research which Ifaithfully pursued immensely enlarging 1988 Guggenheim and 2002National Arts Journalism Fellowships--is that it was too ambitious bya factor of I'll never know how much. Were I to have devoted my entirelife to it I might have come up with something but also never heardmost of the A albums I've scouted out for so long. As it stands,however, what I did come up with was the essays and lectures youreference--plus, less obviously, the 1992 Details piece "B.E.:A Dozen Moments in the Prehistory of Rock and Roll," the BookReports review of Bernard Gendron'sBetween Montmartre and the MuddClub for Bookforum, and many other book reviews; much of mywriting on "world music," African music especially; the introductoryclass of my NYU course, which went back to Egypt via Ishmael Reed'sMumbo Jumbo; somewhere there's the unfinished 6000 or somethingwords on Greece that I put together for the NAJP; and I have to beforgetting stuff.enddate2021-02-17fromJimlocFairfax, CaliforniaqHow do you organize your huge CD collection? Do you file everythingtogether in alphabetical order or do you have separate sections forvarious-artists albums and genres like African, jazz, blues, reggae,etc.? If you file everything together, isn't it difficult to identifyall your ambient albums, say, or locate your favorite various-artistsCDs, or to find an assortment of jazz artists to load up your CDchanger with jazz? For example, can you confidently say what yourfavorite various-artists CDs are without looking at your site?aI file everything by individual artists together. Organizationally,there are two classes of CDs (and vinyl too)--the hallway and, I don'tknow, the permanent collection. Permanent collection albums byindividual artists are filed alphabetically by artist in the livingroom, the part of the hall that leads from the living room to myoffice, and my office. How many? At a guesstimate put the CDs at10,000, the Honorable Mention stuff mostly in skinny flexible vinylsleeves sans slug line for space, which is fast disappearing thoughthe ever-increasing paucity of physical promos has opened up shelvingthat after weeks of shifting stuff around should solve my spaceproblems for a while; in addition I've recently invested in two setsof wire CD shelves that I believe will get pending physicals off thefloor where I've lined them up since I was young enough not to worryabout bending for them or tripping over them, concerns I'd better takeseriously as I near 80, now just 14 months away. (Wow, was it surrealto write and then read that final clause.) Then there are themultiple-artist CDs, every one catalogued and marked by genre in mycomputer. The good ones are crammed into shelves in my officealphabetized by title, with B stuff out of reach sans ladder on top ofthe industrial shelves that hold both vinyl and CDs. I can name thetitles of many multiple-artist CDs off the top of myhead--Indestructible Beat ofSoweto, Tea inMarrakech, AmericanGraffiti, on and on--but some titles are hard to remember,like that great hard bop comp, so I search JA (jazz, get it?) and in aminute I find it (Roots of JazzFunk, dumb name). And then there are . . . box sets.enddate2021-02-17fromChris PeterslocTacoma, WashingtonqI've been subscribing to And It Don't Stop since its inception and Ihave two requests. Is there any chance we'll see another essaycovering one of the pre-Consumer-Guide years, similar to one you andDavid Fricke wrote for Rolling Stone about the best albums of 1967?Also, I've seen mention onrobertchristgau.com of playlists you created for theRhapsody streaming service. For those of us who don't subscribe toRhapsody, would you consider publishing those song lists in anothervenue (e.g. Substack or Spotify)?aDoubt it. To deal with the Rhapsody playlists first, I no longersubscribe to Rhapsody-now-Napster and can locate no trace of theplaylists in my computer, which is too bad because I found them solabor-intensive I'm curious and also hate to throw that work away. Myman at Rhapsody--which paid me quite decently for several years to useConsumer Guide reviews on its site before it hired its own editorialpeons--thought it would be a nice gesture for me to toss off aplaylist periodically, but I found the work taxing: you have to listento what you recommend so you can check out how it holds up and flows,or anyway I do, and that's very time-consuming. Those 1967 reviewswere also time-consuming, though more fun--I did the first one duringthe year-plus when I was on salary at Rolling Stone, the secondbecause the editor was a good friend who offered me a decentstipend. But to tackle any other '60s year would be major task,especially since the CD reissues often add diluting "bonus tracks" orsimply don't exist at all and the vinyl would be much harder to dowithout the changer I retired many years ago. To a similar query fromIndiana's Sidney C-W, I'd say that individual artist rundowns might bedoable as well as more fun, although let me say right now that sortingout Aretha's Columbia box would be madness and '60s James Brownliterally impossible. To a similar query from David Bjordemmen of BlueBell, Pennsylvania, I'll say that sorting out the Grateful Dead's '70soutput would involve frustrating-to-bewildering immersion in theirendless live Deadhead catalogue, plus the regular-release albumsweren't so hot. Maybe the '60s albums would be worth a shot, though,and there's also a box I've never had the gumption to address. Thelive one we play around here isEurope '72 more than the early A+Live/Dead. Which of the threediscs I don't recall.enddate2021-02-17fromJameslocLiverpool, UKqAny thoughts on Perfume Genius's latest album Set My Heart on FireImmediately? I remember you enjoyedNo Shape.aI've streamed it three-four-five times by now. Haven't deleted it frommy ever-lengthening Spotify one-more-time list, some of which I'lleventually if not soon shitcan without further notice. But Idefinitely haven't grasped it, and when I replayed No Shape forcontext I began to wonder whether I admired that one more than Ienjoyed it. In related news, I hadn't thought about Sophie for yearspreceding her death by poetic misadventure. No new product, for onething. So I pulled her two albums out.Oil of Every Pearl'sUn-Insides in particular sounded great.enddate2021-02-17fromJessicalocqWhat do you think of Taylor Swift re-recording her old stuff? I knowshe's mad at that Scooter guy, but it seems like a waste of time for astill-vital artist in her prime. Sinatra re-recorded some of hisCapitol songs for Reprise, but never quite captured the magic of theoriginals.aWithout actually going back and checking, my guess would be thatSinatra's rerecordings suffered when he ditched Nelson Riddle to workwith Don Costa, a capable but relatively anonymous schlockmeister, andBilly May, whose blaring brass renders him just about unlistenable byme. But in general this kind of rerecording is not a goodidea--Lucinda Williams tried it with Sweet Old World to littleif any positive effect. That said, Swift's voice retains a great dealof freshness, which can't be said of Williams or even the nonethelessmasterful early Reprise-era Sinatra, who proved on many occasionsthere that he didn't need it (he was freshest in his twenties, but wasdrowned regularly by his Columbia arrangements, though not by Dorsey'sRCAs earlier than that). And Swift is also very shrewd. Can't imagineeven so that I'd lay out money for the re-recordings unlessRob Sheffield convinced me.enddate2021-02-17fromAndrew JuddlocLos AngelesqHi Mr. Christgau, thanks once again for the truly singular role youplay in the pop media landscape. You'veexpressed disappointment that Drake,despite his talent, is ultimately a pretty dull pop star. My questionis what, to your ears, makes Taylor Swift more than gifted andslightly uninteresting?aMelody. Also gender.enddate2021-01-20tagGoing underground with movies and the Velvets, saying yes to sampling and no to Sidney Bechet and the War on Drugs, and putting "Brown Sugar" out to pasture.url -sez-january-2020fromAndy DitzlerlocAtlantaqI was delighted to read in Going Into the City of yourexperience with Lenny Lipton screening underground films in New Yorkin the '60s. (And thanks for mentioning the wonderful Kucharbrothers.) That period and milieu of filmmaking is inspiring to me andI'd be grateful for other memories you could share. I figure you musthave had contact with Jonas Mekas, although if I'm right your time atthe Voice came after he left. This brings me to ask also aboutthe Velvet Underground in their early days, since they were soinvolved with underground film. Were you aware of them during theircirca 1965 Angus MacLise phase, when they accompanied film screenings?Or perhaps the Exploding Plastic Inevitable shows where the VelvetUnderground and Nico played alongside Warhol's films?aActually, I did rub shoulders occasionally with Mekas during my1969-1971 freelance tour with the Voice, but only because heknew me from the Popular Photography story my high school palLipton assigned and I interviewed him for, as I should have. He wasthe kingpin of that world and a genuinely remarkable man in many ways,but not one who had much use for me once my pop proclivities were onthe table--he had no interest in "movies" at all. So while I was happyto help Lenny run the Eventorium's Friday-night film series up on West100th Street, and sat through many hours of experimental cinema fromStan Brakhage (always interesting, occasionally great) to GregoryMarkopoulos (horrible and subsequently withdrawn from the so-calledNew American Cinema canon and indeed circulation by the egomaniacalMarkopoulos himself) because underground movies did continue tointerest me, it was the New American Cinema's meager pop wing I wroteabout: in particular the Kuchars, who remained friendly with Lennyafter they all relocated to the Bay Area, and Stan VanDerBeek. Myfirst glimpse of the Velvet Underground was at a St. Marks Place clubcalled the Electric Circus, I believe under a Plastic ExplodingInevitable rubric that featured the whip-dancing of Gerard Malanga,who didn't impress me (at all). I think this preceded the release oftheir first album, which took me a while anyway; it wasalbum three thattruly converted me. I witnessed theirlegendary 1970 Max's run multipletimes. Lenny, who became a successful inventor specializing instereoscopic imaging, remains a friend although not a close one;aphoto of me he took when I was 20 has appeared on this site. Ihope to see him the next time I get to Los Angeles, which I hope isrelatively soon. Knowing someone for 63 years is worth celebrating,believe me.enddate2021-01-20fromZachlocWashington, D.C.qWhat would you say to an older musician if they were hesitant aboutgiving permission to a younger artist who wants to sample their music?aThat obviously depends on many things--how prominent the sample is,whether or not the originator of the music likes the way it sounds inits new context, and what your commercial ambitions and prospects are,to name just three. At the very least you can offer to acknowledge thesample in your packaging and agree to give him a small piece ofwhatever profits ensue from the recording, which these days are ofcourse negligible much more often than not but you never know and theoriginator probably knows even less. Plus you should argue thatsampling is a practice that has real artistic merit, recontextualizingboth new music and the musical history sampling explicitlyacknowledges. I miss it terribly myself--a big reason trap generallyfails to reach me. I wrotea piece about sampling that'snever been collected, though I regret not shoehorning it into Is ItStill Good to Ya?enddate2021-01-20fromSamlocRidgewood, New YorkqOne musician you've never reviewed was New Orleans clarinetist SidneyBechet. With his improvisational prowess and warm tone, I would thinkthat an Armstrong fan like yourself would have recommended one or twoof the albums in his immense discography. Is his singular style ofmusic not in your wheelhouse and if not why?aI've asked myself this question for years, gave up on the four-CD RCAcomp The Victor Sessions: Master Takes 1932-43 a while ago butstill spun the single-disc Ken Burns Jazz once in a while. ThisI've done three-four more times since your question arrived, but stillconcluded that for someone of my musical education his soprano sax wasnot distinctive enough sonically, improvisationally, or conceptuallyto demand my attention. Not that I'm skeptical of his reputation; farfrom it. And the music sounded pleasant enough. To double-check, Imade sure Bechet was also within earshot of household jazzbo CarolaDibbell, who has intensified and helped articulate my response toColtrane, Davis, Rollins, and Reinhardt, among others. So this morningbefore I sat down to write I asked whether she noticed the old jazzI'd been playing and she told me she had. So why hadn't she mentionedit, as she so often does? "I thought it sounded good, but not stop thepresses." So that's probably it for that.enddate2021-01-20fromAll Best, ChrislocqI admit to bias but could you re-review War on Drugs and Kurt Vile andthe Violators at some point? I remember one comment you made onGranduciel's songwriting and something about KV with CB but that'sall. They are both incredible live bands and all-around greatsupporters of the scene here in Philly.aSorry, but I'm not going back there. Retrospectively, I figure the Waron Drugs to be in a class with the 1975, an even more admired band Ihave no use for either. And Vile I've tried and tried with--as withGuided by Voices, that's the seminal example, he's a revered songsmithwhose oeuvre has never made the slightest dent on my auriculum. Bothmay well be great live bands and scene stalwarts, but as a stalwart ofthat scene yourself you're more prejudiced than I am, because thosesongs have had a very different kind of chance to dent yourauriculum. Enjoy if you like, more power to you--people like what theylike, that's fundamental. Courtney Barnett obviously did, and musthave helped in some way you're better equipped to suss out than I am:
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