"I bought this at university, mainly because of the cover art, I admit. I had a very small record collection then. You did in those days, and because you didn't have a lot, you'd play every record again and again. My dad, Tom, was a bandleader, so there was a lot of jazz in the house. He liked people like Count Basie and Woody Herman, but he stopped at Coltrane. He found the modernism of it difficult, but I loved it. It felt like a big thing for me, when I was a precocious teenager. The first jazz I had found for myself!

This is a real fork-in-the-road album for jazz, too, from 1958, a proper boundary between hard bop and the future. The three-part horn arrangements are something I tried to emulate on the first track of [Everything But The Girl's 1984 album] Each And Every One, too – in my own way of course. The album was only his second, and him early on as a session leader. There's so much life in it, and so many ideas. 
"

"We’re going to go with number four, Toy Story. Of course, the first computer animated film. Wildly original in concept, in creation, in everything about it. And it is a kids movie that resonated with adults because you cover things like betrayal or jealousy, all set within this small, childlike world. It had me in stitches toward the end as they’re trying to catch the moving van and faces are blowing, and it all goes bad, and they light the rocket with Buzz’s helmet. They worked together to get back to Andy, get back to the box. And there was just something magical about that as a kids movie that felt entirely fresh at the time. And of course Pixar is… Have they ever done anything that’s not exceptional? Not that I know of, but this was the first. and we like to talk about computer animation, which was incredible and groundbreaking at the time, but if you look at the dialogue and the performances… Again, it’s Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, and all of the other characters. It was magical."

"This was a life changing experience for me. I went to one year of college at a small college in Minnesota, and during that year I befriended an older student named Tim Streeter who I hung out with a lot. He played Tom Waits for me and handed me On The Road by Jack Kerouac. Since I’m from this small farming community, I wasn’t exposed to a lot of unusual art. I had seen The Seventh Seal when I was a kid on PBS. One night [Tim Streeter] said “There’s a movie playing at the student union and you should go.” It was Harold and Maude, and I was amazed by it. There’s no dialogue for the beginning of the film, and it begins with Harold killing himself. His mother berates him for it. Bud Cort’s performance is so great, that this is when I began to become a Hal Ashby fan. I could name his films as all of my Five Favorites if I wanted. Being There is certainly near the top. I chose this one because it was so formative for me. Ruth Gordon, when she tells Harold to go out and love and have experience and give him something to talk about in the locker room, it’s such a great thing, such a beautiful moment. When Ruth Gordon throws the ring or piece of jewelry that Harold’s given to her, and she said, “Now I’ll always know where it is,” I think it’s in that scene where the camera catches a concentration camp number on her wrist that’s never mentioned or talked about. It gives me chills because it’s so affecting and subtle."