"I got a cassette from a cousin of mine that had The Offspring, Smash, on one side and Nirvana's Bleach on the other. That was definitely the wake-up call of rebellion and antagonism, but the first record I really got into from thereon was Surfer Rosa. It felt so alien but so familiar. It really clicked on a bone marrow level that felt like it had pre-existed for me. I bought Death To The Pixies at the same time on tape from HMV in Oxford and I just became obsessed with that record. I listened to it again recently and it reminded me particularly about how I could connect with Frank Black's lyrics despite not being aware of any real narrative when I was much younger. I don't think Foals would exist without the Pixies. I love the oddness and the strangeness of the Hispanic/punk/pop influence - it should be wrong, it shouldn't work but it does, really well. More recently I re-listened to his lyrics and appreciated how humorous they are, which reminded me that things don't need to be too obvious or narrative-based, they can be just fragments of thought. It opened the gateway into everything that then consumed me for the next ten years (Oxes, Albini, Sonic Youth, Godspeed - the American guitar alt/post-hardcore/post-rock world). Without Surfer Rosa I may have stayed with Nirvana and The Offspring…"

"Really Red are from Texas and they released Teaching You The Fear in 1981. My friend Smithy and I had a fanzine called Attack and that was one of the records that came through. Our first band Mr. Epp eventually played with them. There's a lot going on in that band for a so-called hardcore punk band. There was a lot of cool stuff coming out of Texas in the early 80s like Big Boys and The Dicks, a little later the Butthole Surfers. Really Red was quite a political band. So many political punk bands were really strident like Crass but in the wake of Maximumrocknroll fanzine many of them were 16-year-old kids spouting shit about stuff they didn't really understand. And who wants to take advice from someone with a very small worldview? Really Red were a little older, maybe five to eight years older than me, and I know this because Ronnie Bond eventually moved up to Seattle and I got to know him a little. Those guys were old enough that when The MC5 came through Houston in the early 70s they hung out with them. Really thoughtful guys but most importantly kick-ass songs. Kelly Younger was a really unique guitar player. They also referenced Nico and The Velvet Underground as well as political punk stuff. They just seemed a little broader than a lot of things that were happening at the time in the hardcore scene in particular."