Xgau Sez: June, 2025

Stopping the car for the Beach Boys, choice Leadbelly collections, best of the '80s, Hong Fat and Michael Hurley remembered, and dud vs. neither (Warren Zevon edition).

I’ve enjoyed your reviews for many years, Robert. As I’ve aged, I’ve grown more fond of the early Beach Boys. When you write about the classic bands of the ‘60s, I’ve noticed that many of their albums are designated “A Basic Record Library; CG80: Rock Library: Before 1980.” But you start your reviews of Beach Boys albums after they peaked mid-decade. Don’t a few of their early albums (not Pet Sounds—I read what you said about that) merit that designation, too? At the very least, I think All Summer Long and Today! are classic albums from a lost golden age. — Daniel Nappo, Martin, Tennessee

Especially in the wake of Brian Wilson’s death, it’s conceivable that were I to replay the Beach Boys’ by all means likable albums of the early ‘60s, I’d admire them more enthusiastically than I did back when I was just starting out in rock criticism in 1967. But they were definitely what we called a singles band until the Beatles and the Stones reset the goalposts, whereupon they upped the ante with Pet Sounds and the glorious “Good Vibrations,” which I can remember stopping the car for on 10th Street driving home from Brooklyn so I could concentrate first time I heard it. In my opinion their peak will always be 1967’s Wild Honey, which at some point (don’t really remember the details) I slotted an A plus. Still love it, not least because in the summer of 1972 my new girlfriend Carola, who had never given the Beach Boys a moment’s thought, fell head over heels for it. Hadn’t played it in a while when I put it on at dinner tonight, when “Darlin’” and “I’d Love Just Once to See You” and the rest sounded as great as ever to both of us. But if you’d like to explore the band more thoroughly I suggest you find a copy of Beach Boys fanatic and recent And It Don’t Stop contributor Tom Smucker’s Why the Beach Boys Matter, which I helped edit.

In a 2013 interview you named Lead Belly as one of the non-jazz artists you listened to before discovering rock & roll, yet there seems to be scant available writings by you on his work (at least that I can find). Do you still enjoy/ appreciate his music? Are there any specific compilations of his work (CD or vinyl) that you would recommend? — Rogan Hely, Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia

I own 10 Leadbelly CDs on such labels as Rounder, RCA, Columbia Legacy, and especially Smithsonian Folkways. The two I’m most likely to play occasionally are still in jewel boxes (with shelf space at a premium around here, most are in plastic slipcases): Where Did You Sleep Last Night and Shout On, both on Smithsonian. I also reviewed Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell’s recommended although somewhat partial 1993 The Life and Legend of Leadbelly for the NYTBR. Let me thank my first girlfriend, ID’d as Miriam Meyer in Going Into the City to protect her privacy, for introducing me to both Leadbelly and the Weavers, crucial figures in my early musical development. She was an enthusiastic jazz fan as well, but also more of a folkie than I ever was.

Hey, I found the link to your favorite albums of the 1980s, and it was disappointingly only a top 10. Considering how you typically have A+’s in your top 10 lists, did you exclude London Calling because you simply prefer those ten albums more or because it was initially released during 1979 in the UK? — Rolando Simon, State College, Pennsylvania

That list was coughed up, with some checking around I’m sure, for an end-of-decade special edition of the Voice. If you’re that interested, and I’m flattered that you are, I see where new and used copies of Christgau’s Record Guide: The ‘80s are available at Amazon and hopefully less exploitative sellers. The after-matter does provide A Lists for every year of the ‘80s; London Calling tops the 1980 A List. No longer remember my reasoning as to that omission from my end-of-decade list, but it was, after all, 35 years ago that I published that book, whose dedication reads “Nina–I’m done. Wanna go to the park?” My nephew Julian Dibbell, no longer a rock critic and now a legal partner in Chicago, helped a lot organizing that book (his early explorations of the digital world My Tiny Life and Play Money are still available). Those were the days.

Hi, Bob, I am a nostalgic person. Even if we are in different places, I always find some resonances with my culture when reading your articles, such as the Hong Fat restaurant on Mott Street that closed many years ago mentioned in your biography, the black bean sauce beef you ate with your grandfather when you were a child, and the winter melon cake you bought in your article. Can you tell us about your story with Hong Fat and these Cantonese restaurants? — Mike Chan, Guangzhou, China

In the Queens where I grew up in the ‘50s and ‘60s the Chinese people who have long dominated the Main Street area of my native Flushing were still exotic and Chinese restaurants rare although fairly busy on Sundays. My beloved grandfather Tom Snyder lived a few miles closer to Manhattan in Forest Hills, already a relatively Jewish neighborhood, and in his open minded way explored the culinary offerings of Queens Boulevard, which is how he came to take me to the place he called “the Chinese.” I have no doubt I ordered what he recommended when he did. Hong Fat, however, was another story. I was introduced to it by the great editor Clay Felker, who gave me my start in magazine journalism, when circa 1967 I gave him a lift in my car from the downtown offices of what I think was called the World Journal Tribune to his snazzy 57th Street apartment and he suggested we stop for a bite in Chinatown, which was then almost entirely south of Canal Street. That I should a) own a car in NYC (whence I commuted to Newark so I could work for the Star-Ledger there) and b) be able to find a place to park it in Chinatown (those streets were short and narrow) was highly atypical even for the time. But Clay knew his restaurants and directed me to the now long-gone Cantonese Hong Fat, 63 Mott Street. Hong Fat definitely had a rep as both cheap and good and I subsequently ate there many times. There are now Chinese restaurants all over Manhattan, although we’re still scrounging around for a first-rate one in our nabe. But there are few as mythic as Hong Fat.

Were you made aware of Michael Hurley’s passing? I was a big fan of his work, but did not get to know about his death a month after the fact. — Nissim, Bombay, India

I was aware of his passing early and was in fact interviewed about him by a mag connected to my New Hampshire-based alma mater Dartmouth College. Check him out on my site, where I make clear enough that his late work is a lot creakier if still often fun than the masterful Have Moicy! On the other hand, much of the early music was pretty damn good.

Seriously, Warren Zevon’s Mr. Bad Example is a dud? It’s all cement factory sunshine, beer drinking in the toxic sunshine down on the corner. That’s at least an A, man. — Martin Moeller, Vejle, Denmark

I don’t really expect amateurs to fully grok my grading “system,” but let me make two points. First, much better to say “at least an A minus,” because “at least an A” implies “maybe even an A plus,” and A pluses are too rare to make unlikely claims for. Second, that little face next to the album you have every right to adore because your taste is your own, doesn’t indicate Dud, it indicates what I like to call Neither. The little bomb next to Learning to Flinch indicates Dud. Under these circumstances I feel no obligation to relisten to these albums unless you get the Warren Zevon Fan Club on the job and maybe not then either—though I did appreciate your putting the effort into those somewhat obscure beer and cement metaphors.