"Again, a similar time in my life; I was listening to a few American psychedelic bands. There was a band called Long Ryders who did a track called ‘Looking for Lewis and Clark’ that I played, learned, used to sit and sing although I had no idea what the lyrics were. I was pretty much singing nonsense, although the song did get me into Tim Hardin! Anyway, they were one of a few bands [that were important to me], like Opal, Screaming Trees and Rain Parade, but Rain Parade was the one that changed me. This album was like an explosion in my mind. I don’t know what program it was, but I saw them perform ‘No Easy Way Down’ on TV, a filmed concert, and it was like, ‘Here is something I can fully get behind.’ It’s a slow, sludgy, drone rock anthem; the guitarist is doing the Kevin Shields tremolo thing with the guitar, but in 1985. It’s just incredible, and I have to say would have been pretty influential on the early Ride sound for sure."

"The Damned were the first music that I felt I owned. The band you found on your own. The group that your friends don't know. ‘Hayman likes punk music! Ha-ha, what an idiot.’ But the Damned were a terrible punk band; they were too silly, too stupid. I don't like debut albums, all that mindless, directionless energy. I don't like bands at the end of their careers either; the Damned especially do not seem to be able to grow old gracefully. I like bands when they’re in transition. When they try and escape what made them and start to grow into what they always should have been. The Damned were a pop band, and this is their Revolver, not as obvious as their more significant record ‘Phantasmagoria’. They haven't quite ironed out the kinks, and they all hate Captain Sensible who is about to leave them to become a failed star. Strawberries has more tunes than an Elephant Six album. They never play any songs from it now."

"I was living in Cornwall just after art college and lots of mates back home in Cardiff were really getting into kosmische stuff. One mate sent me a tape of this album. Amon Düül were a radical commune band, something which seemed a pretty out-there idea when you're living in Falmouth. I love this album, it's so varied. It's got pastoral music and very hard psych stuff on there side by side. I heard this record before hearing bands like NEU! and Cluster; it helped me get into the fact that the German bands of that post-war era had a year zero which was very appealing – by disregarding American rock & roll they created these amazing new templates. As with so many of these records, I'm drawn in by the artwork. The sleeve for Wolf City is amazing. I found out years later from Andy Votel that they created the sleeve by taking a photograph of an image created by several slide projectors overlapping onto a wall. You'd spend ages trying to get that right in Photoshop."

"If you go back and listen to the early stuff they did, when they were The High Numbers, they weren't exactly a power band. [Pulls out phone again, shows photo of The Who playing a club in Chicago, presumably The Kinetic Playground, in August 1968] I had their singles, too. When I was still in high school I used to subscribe to Melody Maker and I got it by airmail - it was $105 in 1965. That was a lot of money. That's where I read about all this stuff. I'd see all the bands when they were playing clubs, which was the way to do it: you could really see how the bands worked. The sharp, 60s era of The Who is version I like best. A band I was in, The Grim Reapers, opened for The Who just before that photo was taken. They were just wild, the best live band I've ever seen. Hendrix was different: he was cool. Townshend was just exciting, even besides the smashing the guitars."