"I’m not in love with John Ford’s movies. They are staples, and it’s like saying you don’t like bread—Ford’s films are in all filmmakers’ foundations, somewhere, it’s inescapable. But when it comes to being in love with movies, I’m more of an Anthony Mann girl. Having said this, Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln is one of the most beautiful films ever made. The images early in the film of Henry Fonda in his thick, unruly, natural environment of rivers and briars and brambles strike my heart in ways so deep I can’t even explain. The majestic landscapes Ford would be later known for are much more grounded here, more personal. What he shot reminds me of a home so far ago lost. And there is a feeling of that, deeper than nostalgia, running all through this film. It’s like a grand American ache. Henry Fonda explains on the commentary how he initially turned the film down, then the screenwriters went to his house and READ HIM THE SCRIPT! Out loud! What balls! I can’t imagine anyone doing that these days. Then he said yes to the part, did the screen test with the fake nose and flipped out when he saw himself as Lincoln and felt he couldn’t do it—he couldn’t play someone with that weight that Lincoln had and still carries and holds. Well—I won’t spoil it for you—you MUST hear what very simple ingenious thing grumpy old Ford said to get Fonda to do the role. Supporting Fonda’s performance is an incredible cast—Alice Brady in her final performance before her early death, Ward Bond, and Richard Cromwell (whom I had a real sweet thing for)! The booklet is just as poetic as the movie, with essays by Geoffrey O’Brien and Sergei Eisenstein between the pages of lovely quiet stills of a very accessible yet long-gone American landscape."

"This is from that same period. He's such an unusual artist. I could have chosen the first album but I'll choose Shooting At The Moon because I saw him play when I was in Coventry and it was just absolutely extraordinary. It was the group that had Herbie Flowers, David Bedford, Mike Oldfield... This was another John Peel thing. I heard 'Joy Of A Toy', 'The Lady Rachel', 'Stop This Train' with Robert Wyatt playing drums, and all that early Soft Machine stuff which he liked. It's beautiful, things like 'May I?', incredibly gentle, beautiful love songs. Sexy. That gentle and sexy thing has always been there in Wire. When you think of 'Blessed State', which is Bruce's song, absolutely beautiful. There's always that temptation to make it simple; Colin with his white hat and us with our black hats, that's the tension. It's not as if we haven't been accused of being obscure on occasion, or opaque. But usually it's the things that people think are opaque are the things that are straight reportage. People do it, you see it, you write it. Real life is stranger than fiction but it seems as if in popular song it's not - it makes real life really dull and not about love, negotiation, and mess, and passion."

"I love all the early stuff - the work rate was insane. In the time we took to do two hi hats on Hysteria they'd done an entire album. Mott was when they really got it together. I didn't think the album they did with Bowie - All The Young Dudes - was a great album. It had its moments but you could tell Bowie had put all his efforts into the one song: the rest of it was a little bit thin. Cut to a year later and they're in on their own and they're basically pushed to the deep end - sink or swim. Everybody in the media had said 'what are you going to do without Bowie?!' but Ian stepped up to the plate, he really did. He came up with truly brilliant songs. Stuff like 'Violence' was taken to a completely new place, with Graham Prescott playing violin. He'd worked with Elton John. Then it ends with the most beautifully understated song 'I Wish I Was Your Mother' - the lyric, the title even. It's a really well made record. I remember Mutt used to test speakers with 'All The Way From Memphis'. As did Roy Thomas Baker, as a matter of fact. They proved they could stand alone with this one."

"To live in New York is to live in a place that is both heaven and hell, kept from dissolving into economic and racial chaos only by the maintenance of a minute-by-minute decency, respect, and understanding. Spike Lee spends a good amount of time, early in the film, dousing a Brooklyn neighborhood with gasoline, as we hold our breath to see who will strike a match. Making perhaps one of the twenty-five greatest dramas of the past thirty years, Lee is in Sidney Lumet territory here, by way of Paddy Chayefsky, by way of Huey P. Newton. The acting is, at times, as raw as you see in film. Danny Aiello, in the self-immolating role of the pizza shop owner who strips away decades of spiritual growth in a matter of minutes, gives one of the great performances in contemporary movie history, and both he and Lee, as screenwriter, were nominated for Oscars. Giancarlo Esposito, Ossie Davis, and John Turturro are riveting. Ernest R. Dickerson’s photography is memorable, as is Bill Lee’s music. But it’s Spike Lee, on his way to making films like Malcolm X and Clockers, who knocks you on your ass so hard you have trouble getting up at the closing credits."

"It's simply a favourite piece of music. There are a lot of associations. I was listening to it around the time my daughter was born. She used to fall asleep to this occasionally. It reminds me of travelling around America back in the day when you had to carry around bags of cassettes and Walkmans. It's brilliant for train journeys and even now when I find myself on the motorway, Octet is the perfect listen for me. It reminds me of driving from Bath, where I lived at time, to London, to Richmond. It's just stuck with me for most of my life. Growing up we had Drumming in the house, my dad got that for next to nothing from the same charity shop. That's just repetitive patterns for a few hours, it's hard going really. If you came to Steve Reich from that idea, you'd think it was just academic music and not for enjoyment's sake and dismiss it. I was lucky to pick up a book from a book shop in St Helens, New Sounds: A Listener's Guide To New Music, by this New York radio presenter, John Schaefer – it was like the holy grail for me. I found that book in about '91 and it was a pretty rare thing at the time in that it had measured discussion on things like Stockhausen. We've got The Wire now, for good or bad, but to find that book at the time in St Helens was amazing really. By the time I got to America I had a shopping list of things I had to hear, like Paul Dresher, early John Adams pieces, things like that. I think the common thread with things like this is that you're constantly looking for the up and down stream of things – the connections, where something came from and what came out of it; how it got finessed or improved or whatever. I think with Octet, I'm not really that interested, it's just that piece of music. It's another world in itself."