"As a kid in the middle of Illinois, it was really a culture vacuum. I mean, we had the Eagles on the radio and John Denver, which are fine in their own right, but you want a little more variety, especially if you’re going to end up being an underground hedonist like myself. When Mel Brooks movies came my way, it was just like, “Holy shit. These were made in heaven and sent straight to my VCR.” You know, come on, just Mongo. If you’re 12, all you care about is Mongo farting and punching out a horse. Literature does not become any more refined than that of the great Mel Brooks."

"Now I’m in New York, in a band with Chris Frantz and his girlfriend, Tina [Weymouth], and we didn’t have a super-duper plan. I had ambitions to be a fine artist and show in galleries, but I was also writing songs. This club, CBGB, had opened around the corner, and there were bands like Television playing, and Patti Smith was doing poetry readings. We thought, If we learn some songs, we can play there. I had a day job as what was called a “stat man” for a company that designed Revlon counter displays. So I worked in a little dark room in the middle of this office—which meant I had a little radio in there, and I could listen to music. And nobody else would bother me. Bowie was on the radio a little bit, and he was a huge influence for a lot of people. I was aware of all the Ziggy Stardust stuff, and then him moving onto the Berlin stuff. Somewhere around this time, in the late ’70s, after we made our first record, we met Brian Eno, who had worked with him on Low, and that was very cool for us. In 1980, I went with Toni Basil to see Bowie in The Elephant Man. He was reading the collected speeches of Fidel Castro at the time, and he gave me the book and said, “You might enjoy this.” I dutifully read it. Castro could really ramble on. Really ramble on."

"I found out about Serafina through the radio show. It was right at the beginning of the Sunday Service and I was trying to be diligent and listen to all the records that I was sent, but it quickly became apparent that was never going to work and I was getting depressed that there were so many bad records. I was down in the dumps and then I put on her album Change Is Good Change Is Good and I really liked it, it made me forget the previous eight hours of boredom. I went to see her do a concert at Cafe Oto, and really enjoyed it. Again it's a bit like Bill Callahan, it's melodic and the words are good but structure-wise it goes all over the place, I'm always impressed by and a little bit jealous of people who can do that. We got to know each other a bit, I got to play on a couple of things, and when she was getting her next record together she asked if I would produce it. So I produced this record and I know it very well, but I wanted it to be in there because it's been a very important thing for me, she's now in the Jarv Is band and is very involved in the music of that. I've got the radio show to thank for us because I'd probably never have been aware of her. I discovered a lot of great music through the show and this led to a creative partnership."

"I'd only heard the singles on the radio in America, and my mother happened to be going to Germany. I said to her: "Get me any copies you can of Jimi Hendrix." Because I loved the shiny covers that you guys got in Europe, unlike the crappy covers we got. This was 1967. The first time I heard him was 'Hey Joe', on the radio. The playing was so fluid. I kept wondering how many people there were in the band. I got to meet them on their very first tour. [He pulls out his phone, and shows a photo of Hendrix, taken on Febuary 28 1968, at a club in Madison, Wisconsin, followed by a photo of the poster for the gig, at which he was supported by Soft Machine]. It was $3.50 to get in, and I got to see two shows - a six o'clock and a 9.30 show. The photo is backstage at that show. I was thinking: "Man, a guy who looks that cool …" It was the best ever show. I've been around so long that I ended up knowing the guy who was his bodyguard - he worked for us for a while. He wasn't a sweet guy, he was a "sleep with the fishes" kind of guy. He said he used to go out with Jimi and they would goof off, and there was nothing mysterious about him. Hendrix had it all: the voice, the songwriting, the guitar playing, and the weirdness. He was from outer space."