"London Calling is probably my favourite rock record of all time. It’s incredibly powerful and diverse, it’s social, political and has all sorts of musical genres - punk, rock, ska, ballads, jazz and dub - rolled into the song arrangements. The Clash were at their peak when they made it and the kick-off track is the most anthemic song they ever wrote. It’s got everything, brilliant lyrics, a brilliant performance, it just sounds killer and Mick Jones’ guitar playing is phenomenal, when you hear that guitar riff it’s like a fire alarm going off. ‘London Calling’ is like a call to arms, it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time I hear it, it’s that powerful. I went to see them on that tour at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago and it was absolutely rammed. The second they started playing the entire room started jumping up and down and I thought the building was going to collapse, you could feel the whole place shaking. It was an old theatre and I was watching from the balcony, thinking we should maybe get to a safer location but I became so immersed in the music I forgot about it, it was a fantastic show. There were obviously differences between the British and US punk bands and some of that is in the sound of the records. The British records had a bit of a darker sound to them and that could be due to technical stuff in the mastering, but a lot of it had to do with the performances. To me, the British bands have always been ground-breaking, as a whole there were better new wave and punk bands coming out of the UK than the US, it was like the second British invasion. There was a great scene in New York, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Television and Blondie were ground-breaking at the time, but England, a country with a much smaller population than the US, had a larger percentage of iconic bands from that era."

"""2001: A Space Odyssey. What I love about that is, in a similar way to Spinal Tap, it trusts the audience to have the patience that there’s gonna be something fulfilling in there. Not only the visuals. I think if you watch it now, with 21st century eyes, it can seem to some people like a very slow movie, where nothing happens for a long time. Visually it’s very innovative, but we’re so used to 15 cuts a second now that we’re not used to things being played out with that much pace and that much finesse and style and patience. I think, to watch it now, it’s seeing filmmaking with such confidence, the fact that he can hold those shots for as long as he holds them, and he can trust the audience to come along with him on the ride. It can be slow. It’s always visually breathtaking. But I think, to see it now, it looks like filmmaking from such a different time. If it was made now, it would be an assault on the senses. Everything would be very quick, everything would be breathless, everything would be very frantic, but Kubrick was such a confident filmmaker that he was able to play that whole story out with such pace and such style and trust that the audience was smart enough to be dragged along for the ride and stick with it until the end. That’s what I love about it, the pace of it. The respect for the audience’s intelligence. I like to feel part of those clubs and I think 2001 is the ultimate example of that kind of club where, if you understand why this is brilliant, then you’ll do for me. If you understand why this is brilliant, then you’re my kind of guy. And I like being involved in those miniature elite subcultures. 2001 is the perfect example of that."