"I’m still trying to learn the pickpocket techniques demonstrated in this Sam Fuller classic. It was my introduction to film noir—a late-night-TV memory that wouldn’t let me go back to sleep. I am still trying to be as brave and cocky as Thelma Ritter, or as wanton as Jean Peters in the clutch—“Sometimes you look for oil, you hit a gusher.” And if I ever have as satisfying a bowl of chow fun as they do in South Street’s Chinatown . . . I’ll die happy. This is supposed to be a little McCarthy-era rant against the Reds, but it’s really about “civilians” versus the lumpenproletariat, artists on the game, loyal to a code that the squares will never understand."

"One of my all-time favorite bands. What I admire about them so much is that they ‘learned to unlearn.’ Jimmie Vaughan had perfected techniques on the guitar to the point where he could keep up with the best of them, as had the rest of the lineup. They recognized the idiom of the blues as an art form long before people talked about it in such a way. Everybody in the band had done their homework and figured out that this wasn’t some simplistic, sports bar music; this was serious business. But they dished it out in a way that was both fierce and casual. I think this is one of the finest interpretations of the blues that has ever found its way to the marketplace. Not a bad moment anywhere. It’s a beauty."

"Again, this song is totally inspiring from a production point of view. It’s hard to choose just one song from Les Paul and Mary Ford, but this stood out. It’s a great song, despite not being a Les Paul and Mary Ford original. When people think of Les Paul they tend to think of the guitar the Gibson Les Paul, but Les Paul basically invented multi-track recording and a lot of recording techniques that so many of us use today. The stuff that he did on ‘How High The Moon’ and anything from the early ‘50s is just so, so far ahead of its time. It’s all guitar, even the drums are just him tapping his guitar and not in a cheesy, Newton Faulkner kind of way, it’s serious musicality. He was basically recording in hotel rooms, using bathrooms as echo chambers and the like. The arrangement on this track is crazy. It is a bit silly, a lot of the stuff sounds silly because it’s all plinky-plonk, all very high-pitched, mandolin-like guitars, but you’ve got to remember this was in the ‘50s. It makes Rock ‘n’ Roll, which was often just three chords, sound very unimaginative. This kind of track was jazz chords and guitar orchestra, basically. I’ve definitely robbed some of Les Paul’s techniques over the last few years. On the new record there’s some sped-up guitar, half-time drums and things like that, where you basically slow down the tape and create a whole different instrument almost. If you haven’t seen [the Les Paul documentary] Chasing Sound, I highly recommend it. It’s about how he invented the first electric guitar, using a telephone microphone and putting it on a bit of old railway track, putting and stretching a string across it and amplifying it. That was literally the birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll."