"Let’s do Preston Sturges and the greatest comedy of all. This film hasn’t aged a day from 1941 when it came out; it’s amazing — especially with Hollywood in mind. It’s the ultimate inside Hollywood movie. It’s about a guy searching for meaning in his art who’s had all this success in Hollywood… The human dynamics of it are very true to life. I mean, it’s a comedy and it’s all pitched at that point, but Preston Sturges was such the master of dialogue and delivery that the whole tone and pitch of it is totally unique. It’s amazingly contemporary. This character’s desires and the timeless subject of, say, art versus commerce is one of the best film depictions of that you could ever find — and in a very comedic way. He has a project that the studio doesn’t want him to make about homelessness — this is coming out of the Depression — and he’s a spoiled rich guy and he has a project he wants to make. Of course, the Coens made a film with that name, O Brother, Where Art Thou? That’s where that comes from. And it’s kind of a ridiculous desire to say something that has social significance and meaning about suffering and all that stuff, but he’s really kind of desperate to make a comedy. He ends up on a chain gang by a series of misadventures… So he really is suffering. It’s just a brilliant movie and surprisingly contemporary."

"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."