"Fuck, I was so excited when I heard this song. I was staying up late one night - I can’t remember what radio show I was listening to, it was a radio that would play new songs - and I taped it off the radio. It was just so fucking cool, [sings “Dy-Na-Mi-Tee”]. I think that was the first song I heard where I thought ‘I could write a song.’ “After that I did my first ever performance in public. I’d done a school performance before that, but I did a performance with a garage MC who asked me to sing and I was ‘Lady K’ [laughs]. I sang in Croydon at a pub or something and I was doing the garage thing for a bit. That was the biggest music scene at that time in the UK, pirate radio was bigger than normal radio. I would go clubbing in Watford, I would grind in the clubs and I would get CDs from the DJs there who would have all new stuff. “That sort of reminds me of punk in a way, it was just kids in their bedrooms and they were running the clubs. I felt Ms. Dynamite did something really meaningful and she felt like a political artist to me. I don’t think I knew that at the time, but I think that’s why I was drawn in by her. I was looking at lyrics in a different way then too, thinking about the world a lot and wanting to help the world, maybe being political and not realising it. I wanted to write about the fucked up shit in the world."

"There is an embarrassing story flying around about me faking appendicitis when I was eleven years old. Sadly, it’s true. The upshot of the experience is that whilst I was in hospital my parents bought a beta VCR player. So on the way home after being released, we stopped at a very small garage (or gas station) which had a few shelves of movies. There were no video stores yet. We hired The Sound of Music for two weeks and I watched it repeatedly, several times a day, while I recovered. Needless to say, I know every word and love it dearly. I guess I love the way the family slowly embraces Maria. She has such a good heart, and it finds the perfect home. How do you solve a problem like Maria?!"

"I guess anyone who's read any sort of Nick Cave book will tell you this story, but when they finished this record his girlfriend at the time, Anita Lane, did the painting for the sleeve and he thought it was really, really shit but he let it be the cover anyway. But I like it. I'm a sucker for painted roses for some reason. When I was first in The Horrors, The Birthday Party were definitely one band that we all collectively liked, other than 60s garage bands. They are a fantastic band. In terms of Birthday Party-related things though, I think one of my favourites is Rowland Howard's first solo album called Teenage Snuff Film, but that isn't an illustrated cover so I didn't include it. But Rowland Howard is one of my favourite guitarists and that's probably what I liked most about The Birthday Party."

"We all lived in this house in Los Angeles when we first started the band. It was Shannyn [Sossamon], Emily [Kokal], Theresa [Wayman] and myself. David Orlando, who became our drummer years later, lived in the garage. I’d go over to practise and he’d play me records. I didn’t realise how much I loved Jah Wobble’s bass playing; he’s also on my list of all-time greats. That was over 10 years ago and I’d already developed a style of playing by that point but I’d been told by a few people that I kind of reminded them of him – well, they called me Jen Wobble. I didn’t grow up listening to PiL or anything and wasn’t entirely familiar with his style before we lived in that space. I get the comparison now. When I was in high school I was a fan of the Pistols’ hits, but that was more to do with teenage rebellion. The Pistols were great, but PiL have the edge."