"Oklahoma City was a test city for MTV, and this compilation of US and UK punk rock bands – XTC, the Cramps, the Dead Kennedys – came out around the time, and had that same spirit. One song each, blam-blam-blam. You didn’t know who was American and who was English and it didn’t matter – what did was every band was doing it themselves and looking bizarre. And in a world where you knew you could never be the Beatles, here was John Cooper Clarke performing to 50 people and being fantastic. That felt huge. Seeing the energy coming off the audience when he made that effort really did something to me."

"I first encountered Alex Cox’s sci-fi slamdance when I was a sullen, unworldly, unformed teenager—which is the perfect time to find a movie both as rageful and as hopeful as Repo Man. So much of the film’s DNA has been Brundlefly’d with my own—from its hardcore-punk soundtrack to its corporate-conspiracy mindset—that I rewatch it at least once a year, just to make sure I can still connect with Otto and his legion of goons. And the cover artwork, by the great Jay Shaw, is absolutely my favorite bit of Criterion edition art (I’m still trying to track down a poster on eBay)."

"The ‘60s things we’ve discussed were a really big influence on me - it almost seemed like an early dream - but then I got into the Bowie, glam rock thing, which was my first choice of things in a way. That led me into New York punk rock and that’s the bit that made me pick up the guitar. I’d played the guitar a bit, but along with Television, Talking Heads made me want to be in a band and that whole scene inspired me much more than English punk rock. That time very much felt like a new chapter - ‘out with the old, and in with the new’ - and I guess that’s what punk rock was, but I thought a lot of the English punk bands were a bit crap. There were a few good ones and a lot of people talk about The Clash and The Pistols, but for me it was Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Blondie, MC5, New York Dolls and Iggy Pop. I loved all that stuff and it somehow seemed to fit with glam rock, with Bowie, Roxy Music and Marc Bolan and led me into Talking Heads and that whole thing. When I was an unemployed kid I’d get the bus into town, wander around and meet loads of people who wanted to form bands. There weren’t many people into The Velvet Underground back then, which I was at the time and I was a bit of a misfit in many ways. Matthew Street in Liverpool was a run-down area of empty warehouses then and there was nothing much there, but I met a lot of likeminded people around a warehouse called The Liverpool School of Music, Dream, Art and Pun and that was where I first met a lot of the guys who ended up in my first band. Opposite to that there was a record shop called Probe, a tea rooms and a club called Eric’s, and they became the centre of my everyday existence. Eric’s was set up by a guy called Roger Eagle who had been in Manchester. He was a Northern Soul DJ and a music aficionado and was heavily involved in the scene. Although those bands weren’t mainstream at that point, I got to see them all at Eric’s, which was brilliant. We got let into the gigs for free in return for helping them to carry amps and I got to chat to all of the bands that I loved at the time. As a song, “Psycho Killer” really stood out. It was very compelling and there was the whole idea of how David Byrne looked like he was a college professor or something, he was so awkward and gangly, but he had brilliant words. I remember thinking at the time ‘He’s not singing about the usual things, how are these words in a song? How do you do this?!’"

"When I was 15 and living in Conneticut, me and my friends started creeping into New York and going to nightclubs in '80, '81. You'd go into New York specifically with the intention of seeing punk rock bands, but a lot of the clubs at the time like Danceteria, Fall Out Shelter, they'd have a punk rock band playing but the DJ before would be playing dub reggae, and the DJ after would be playing early hip hop and electronic music. There was a radio station in New York called WNYU, and they had this three hour long show every afternoon called The New Afternoon Show where they just played new music. I remember them playing 'Der Mussolini' or 'Alles Ist Gut' and having that same reaction as I did to many of my favourite records at the time, which was 'I've never heard anything that sounds like this'. Another reason I loved D.A.F. was because at the time I was living in this very depressing, boring American suburb and I would listen to D.A.F. and imagine how cool it would be to be in Berlin, making weird electronic music with these German guys who only wore black and made songs that, I didn't know what the lyrics were saying, but they sounded cool. I just re-bought Alles Ist Gut, I have the vinyl and CD and just bought the iTunes version of it, and it still sounds amazing."