"This book is about the principles of timing and repetition—about preparing yourself for luck, really. He talks about a hockey team, and how the players born in January had a year up on the guys born in December. They were fortunate that their birthday was early, but they also practiced—they put the work in. The book resonated with me because I was born at a time when there was an influx of incredible music into the culture, and I was lucky that my mom and pop were huge record collectors. In my house, I had music by Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, Prince, and the Commodores, and I'm listening to it every single day."

"Only because it’s everybody’s number one choice. I kinda feel, in this day and age — not to be sounding bad in any way — we live in a culture where something’s good, and some people will say it’s awesome, and they may not have even seen it or they didn’t like it. But they want to agree with the cultural zeitgeist. I feel like that movie has stood up to time [and] criticism, and yet everybody can find the exact same reasons as to why it’s awesome. I mean, it’s so well-written. It’s a slow movie that you’re still riveted by. It’s [got] character development unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. And of course, the performances are wild."

"It’s known as the lost Scorsese movie. It’s a documentary he made about his friend Steven Prince, who worked in the music business in the ’70s – the height of their drug use. Marty, who was already a hot filmmaker then, is in it and talks 200 miles a second. The main character is fascinating, and so honest, snatched out of the Hollywood and music business and drug culture of that time. Steven Prince tells the story that Quentin Tarantino used for the needle in the chest in Pulp Fiction (1994); it had happened to him, he had put a magic marker on a girl’s chest and plunged an adrenaline needle into her heart."

"McCarthy are indie icons of ours – we’ve covered at least three of their songs. They showed how you could fuse music and politics. They were one of the great protest bands but it was never the gurning, spittle-in-your-face confrontational stance that some bands take. There was always some kind of sarcasm in there that would cut its subject down to its knees, and this lyric is a perfect example of that. It talks to working-class disaffection and foreshadows New Labour’s obsession with gentrification and trying to drag people into the new culture with Wi-Fi and coffee houses everywhere: “Once there was class war/ But not any longer/ Because, baby, we are all bourgeois now.”"

"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."

"Like I say, it all happened at the same time when I was 18, when I suddenly discovered all of that 60s culture. Really, The Beatles should be there as well but I wanted to avoid putting stuff on the list that was too obvious. Also with this list, I wanted some stuff that was formative, as opposed to just the stuff I listen to a lot and there's something about that album, Forever Changes. I don't know what it is about 1967, I hadn't really thought about that. 69's a good year as well. 64 was a really good year, 59 was a good year. 73 was a good year."