"To live in New York is to live in a place that is both heaven and hell, kept from dissolving into economic and racial chaos only by the maintenance of a minute-by-minute decency, respect, and understanding. Spike Lee spends a good amount of time, early in the film, dousing a Brooklyn neighborhood with gasoline, as we hold our breath to see who will strike a match. Making perhaps one of the twenty-five greatest dramas of the past thirty years, Lee is in Sidney Lumet territory here, by way of Paddy Chayefsky, by way of Huey P. Newton. The acting is, at times, as raw as you see in film. Danny Aiello, in the self-immolating role of the pizza shop owner who strips away decades of spiritual growth in a matter of minutes, gives one of the great performances in contemporary movie history, and both he and Lee, as screenwriter, were nominated for Oscars. Giancarlo Esposito, Ossie Davis, and John Turturro are riveting. Ernest R. Dickerson’s photography is memorable, as is Bill Lee’s music. But it’s Spike Lee, on his way to making films like Malcolm X and Clockers, who knocks you on your ass so hard you have trouble getting up at the closing credits."

"I was obsessed with them when I was in The Edmund Fitzgerald, so much so that I'd try to get on every bill with them. They were the most incredible live band I'd ever seen and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why they didn't change the generation in Britain. They definitely changed a lot of things for me. When that record came out, not only did I love the sound of it but also that it kind of made it feel possible to make a record and put it out. What's becoming clear to me as I go through this list is that there's something to do with people's voices that connect directly. All of Charlottefield were incredible musicians but there was something so animalistic about Thomas [House]'s scream - both live and the way they captured it on the first record. It's just so raw, there's something about his scream in particular - I could never quite grasp what he was singing about or what he was singing, but there was something searing about that scream that made me wanna play guitar obsessively and play shows and get on bills with them and made me wanna lose myself in music even further than I had done at that point."

"I think to this day that whole album, Fly Or Die is one of my top buys for so many reasons - every time I go back to it there's other things I hear in it. Even bigger than that, it was Pharrell and what he did with N/E*/R/D. It was the first thing that I identified with. I used to skateboard, and I always felt like what I was doing was ‘other’. And then I saw that and I was like ‘Oh. Sick.’ Someone gets it. There’s another black guy, skateboarding and they were into rap and hip hop and making beats and he plays drums. It was like there's room to do what I do, you know what I mean? This has never sounded old, like some records do. Some records of that era you listen back and they don’t age well. But I feel like that particular one, it's still very raw, still very honest. That was one of the first CDs I got in secondary school. My brother went to America and brought it back. And I was like ‘What dyou get for me?’ and he was like ‘Uhhhh... here.’ I’m glad I asked that question."