"Jesca Hoop is a friend of mine. And she said there's this girl in town, you've got to see her band: "They're amazing and I want to see if they are the real deal." So I say okay, and we went down to the movie lounge, and we were both absolutely knocked out. We hung around afterwards and then got the band signed. Listen to 'Low Low Low' and that will tell you exactly what I love about them. They are raw and they are real and she sings from her heart, and she has a big troubled heart. She plays guitar amazingly and she sings with real guts and they're just a fantastic band."

"The story of singer Sally Bowles in the Weimar Republic, which came out late in 1972, into a very dreary Britain. I think of it as a glam-rock document, really: all those fantastic songs, confined to the stage, plus the brilliant makeup, in this frightening city. The notion of “divine decadence” was very intriguing when you were an 18-year-old student from Newcastle, recently arrived in London. It also had an impact on punk – look at Siouxsie Sioux: obviously influenced by Liza Minnelli. My friends and I would listen to the soundtrack in our Tottenham student flat, back-to-back with Lou Reed’s Transformer and Roxy Music’s second album. It had the same impact."

"An absolute fucking testament to paranoia, to anger, and to blame. It's fantastic. 'They're out to get me, they won't catch me, I'm fucking innocent'... that's just fucking brilliant, absolutely brilliant. It's a youth anthem. Things like this weren't really addressed: the paranoia of it all. The dark side of life wasn't really looked at in rock, apart from theatrically, with Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper. It wasn't really looked at sociologically, and in my opinion Guns N' Roses were one of the first bands to tackle it properly. All the fantasies and romanticism that had gone before were there, but there was also a gritty side to it. The comedown side to it. The real side to it."

"This is really a sneaky way to list all of Criterion’s editions of Wes Anderson’s films. Tenenbaums is by far my favorite, but Rushmore, The Life Aquatic, and the new edition of Bottle Rocket are all pretty fantastic, too. I’m always immediately won over by the artwork and illustrations that tie all his films together. Even with different artists (Ian Dingman and Eric Chase Anderson) there is a consistency, due in no small part to Wes Anderson’s own particular aesthetic, that makes these films feel like four stories from the same hyperreal, idyllically melancholy world. There’s an interview in the Tenenbaums supplements section with artist Miguel Calderon that’s totally worth a listen."