I am 38, the funniest age:

I don't follow this site closely enough, so I'll have to take your skepticism at its word. But, c'mon: I mean, I could see some kid thinking that The Specials invented ska or something, but THE NINETIES?

I really, really doubt he actually thinks ska was invented in the 90s, so there's no need for your attempted condescension. He clearly means that, in the U.S., its main presence was as a subgenre of alternative by then: cf. Fishbone, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Rancid, Sublime, Evan Dorkin going through a phase, etc.…

I just looked at his Wikipedia page—I had no idea he'd produced so many albums, including a few that won Grammies, that Costello/Toussaint compilation, etc., etc. Given that my two favorite albums in 1990 were Shuffletown and the first Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, I'm glad to have backed at least one winning…

Featuring, by the way, the only solo I've ever heard by Ornette Coleman on anything resembling a rock song. If you've ever had to connect Madonna to Ornette in just one degree, Joe's your man.

It's funny that I've read two reviews of this, and nobody's mentioned that a) Joe Henry's a pretty damn good singer-songwriter (I like Shuffletown and Trampoline best), and b) maybe the best song he's ever recorded (on an otherwise so-so album) is about Richard Pryor: http://www.youtube.com/watc…

Aw I liked Rat Race.

This comment is idiotic. "Fear" is one of the most carnivorous albums ever created.

I concur with all three points.

They are not nearly as bad—I read all three again briskly and without pain, although all I really retain from them is A) Stile is short, B) All serfs are naked, and C) Most of the stuff about the Game Grid.

Yeah, I went back to them for the first time in 20 years a few years back, and was delighted to find that, if anything, I liked them more. The funny thing was reading the Introduction again, where he talked about being inspired by the Crosby/Hope road movies—a reference that made zero sense to me as a kid, but let me…

Top 10, the Alan Moore comic, is set in a world where everybody has a superpower. It is quite fun, and only marginally immature and pervy.

You know what really holds up from the 70's? Peanuts, and more specifically Peppermint Patty, and even more specifically Charles Schulz's explicit advocacy for Title IX.

I'll say this for Piers Anthony: at his best, he was basically Martin Gardner for horny, confused 11-year-olds. I learned about the Prisoner's Dilemma from…I think Golem in The Gears? One of his books introduced me to cellular automata, though I have no idea which. Omnivore or Ox, I think, though I remember nothing…

Also, thanks to Christgau, I learned that his son is the one who originally welcomed us all to the Terrordome.

Yeah, it's weird how long it took me to discover Jimmy Smith accidentally, through a friend putting him on while we were drinking/recovering from helping him move. Never seen him written about, but Back at the Chicken Shack has become one of my goto hangout albums ever since.

Unless you're Prince, in which case you just release Lovesexy on CD as one long track.

Black Velvet Flag were a cute, inconsequential mid-90s joke band, but their cover of this was their one stroke of true genius: I still get their version of the chorus stuck in my head like once every week or so. The first time I heard John Mulaney, my initial thought was that he sounded kinda like this guy.

I considered it more of a perk.

The difference is that, in one case, you're getting to actively choose to listen to the one particular song/album you really want to, which back in the old days meant you'd probably pay some money. Pandora's in an interesting grey zone where algorithmically there's much more choice than in even satellite radio's 500…