"One of my favorite filmmakers is an Italian director named Mario Bava. His most famous movies have titles like Black Sunday and Black Sabbath and all that, but the one that really was astonishing at the time was a picture called Blood and Black Lace, which is one of the most gorgeously lit Technicolor movies I’ve ever seen. And it’s a whodunit kind of thing — a murderer in a fashion house and models are being killed in various gruesome ways. This is the early ’60s when you could get away with a lot more in the way of explicitness than you had been able to before, and these movies still basically played grindhouses. But it’s such a beautiful movie to look at, and the juxtaposition of beauty and death is really perverse in it. It runs through all his works, but in this particular movie, which I think is one of Tarantino’s favorites, it really comes to the fore. It’s a very entertaining picture, and very violent. Bava was completely unknown when he was actually alive. Almost nobody except, you know, the most extreme film buffs ever saw those movies. But now, as often happens to people when it’s too late for them to enjoy it, he’s now revered, and people see his movies who didn’t even know they existed before."

"The name alone does it for me. It's so evocative. The first thing I heard off this record was via the Super Furries. I think they'd supported the Furries in the States early on. Gruff told me, "You've got to hear this song, it's called 'Indian Bones'." The title was heavy enough – what the hell was the record going to sound like? This record is transcendental guitar music; super heavy, properly blistering. Maybe a record like this stretches the definition of psychedelia for some people, but I don't think so. I think of Black Sabbath as an acid-folk band. Ozzy has one of the best folk voices ever. If that's what you believe and it works for you, then that's fine; it's how I've experienced this music and it is why this list works for me. Psychedelia is otherly music, whatever the instrumentation, however heavy, however soft. This Dead Meadow record just happens to be super, super heavy."

"One of the first records I ever bought was Chubby Checker's 'Twistin Round The World'. He was a cultural phenomenon because the twist in those early days was a really big thing. He had an afternoon TV show every day called where he would show people how to do the twist. All it was was a green screen in those days and him doing all that stuff. I studied him, like anything else. Ernest Evans was his real name, and Kal Mann wrote those records, but the irony is that 'The Twist' was not originally recorded by Chubby Checker. It was recorded by Hank Ballard And The Midnighters, that was the original and he sounds just like Chubby. Chubby changed his name from Ernest Evans to Chubby Checker after Dick Clark's wife says, 'He reminds me of a young Fats Domino'. Fats, Chubby. Checker, Domino. Again, 'Twistin Round The World', with the globe behind it and everything, it showed me that this was a global phenomenon. That told me something. That's when I started to be aware that there are songs, then there are artists, and then there is the informational gathering of how you tell people how big you are, how famous you are. I remember later on that I saw an advertisement for Sabbath in Rolling Stone, and the ad said: 'Black Sabbath: Louder Than Led Zeppelin', I thought that was genius. It didn't say it was better, just louder. Chubby Checker had so many hits. Obviously 'The Twist', 'Let's Twist Again', 'Pony Time', 'The Fly', 'Limbo Rock', lots of stuff! He must have had 20 hits. Great music isn't just songs; it's also a social tool, like a favourite song that people used to get married or something like that."

"I suppose I always thought the Melvins were cool because they felt like a band that kind of came out of nowhere. They felt quite alien to me and I always like bands where it feels like the band are an alien product of a weird environment. It's like it was almost an accident that the band came about and made the record they made and that they weren't under any outside influence. When you hear about Can going to Cologne or living in some weird countryside village and making the kind of records they made, I think that kind of applies to Melvins as well. It's so warped. Although you can see how it came out of America, you can't as well. Because it seems like it's on another planet. I guess Josh would probably agree with a lot of the records on this list, he's into a lot of the stuff here and Melvins are one of his favourites. And I like anything that's got a hint of Black Sabbath in it really."