"As obtuse as this whole list may be, what drew me to Chromeo was their name. Being a hot-rod head and a car fanatic, I loved the name. It could have been a terrible record and I would have loved it, because you ain't got nothing unless you got a lot of chrome. 

My taste doesn't run too far into dance or disco but in the grand scheme of things, and for those who are attempting to perceive what ZZ Top is, it's good on occasion to find an unexpected surprise. On occasion we'd be lumped in with southern rock bands, but we're really not – it's Texas. Which is quite a bit different. Texas is down south, but it's certainly a far cry from South Carolina or Alabama or Georgia."

"Ives's 114 Songs has been a major source of inspiration for me (particularly for my 69 Love Songs and 50 Song Memoir). But that wasn't all he wrote: from 1887 to 1926 Ives wrote 193 songs, and here they all are on six CDs: lullabies, Christmas carols, German operetta emulations, mortal laments, parlor ballads, cowboy dirges, and even election-day commentary on 'Nov. 2, 1920 (An Election)', and 'Vote for Names! Names! Names!', of which Ives says, ""The [three] pianos represent three political candidates, each uttering his own 'hot air slogan'; the singer represents the disillusioned voter."" The texts come 80% from poets (Keats, Kipling, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and many anonymous sources) and 20% from Ives himself, whose aw-shucks Americana (as on 'Slugging A Vampire') and gleefully jarring harmonies keep the surprises genuinely surprising. "