The first album I ever owned - on tape - was Michael Jackson's Bad, which I can remember buying from Woolworths when I was about 10. I was a bit obsessed with MJ back then: practising the Moonwalk at every opportunity, putting plasters on my fingers for no reason etc etc. The last thing I bought was Jukebox, by Cat Power. In between I've listened to the following:Al Green | Alejandro Escovedo | Alela Diane | Animal Collective | Arcade Fire | Band of Horses | The Beach Boys | Beastie Boys | The Beatles | Beck | Beirut | Big Star | Bjork | Boards of Canada | Bob Dylan | Bonnie 'Prince' Billy | Brakes | British Sea Power | Bruce Springsteen | Buck 65 | Buena Vista Social Club | Calexico | CAN | Cat Power | cLOUDDEAD | David Bowie | DJ Shadow | De La Soul | The Decemberists | Dusty Springfield | Electrelane | Elliott Smith | The Flaming Lips | Four Tet | Giant Sand | Godspeed You! Black Emperor | Iron & Wine | Jeff Buckley | Jim O'Rourke | Jim White | Joanna Newsom | Johnny Cash | Josh Rouse | Joy Division | The Killers | Kings of Convenience | Kraftwerk | LCD Soundsystem | Lambchop | The La's | Laura Veirs | Loose Fur | Low | M. Ward | Martha Wainwright | Marvin Gaye | Mercury Rev | Miles Davis | Mogwai | Mum | My Bloody Valentine | The National | Neil Young | Neu! | Nick Drake | old Motown stuff | Pavement | Pixies | Primal Scream | R.E.M. | Radiohead | The Rolling Stones | Ryan Adams | Sigur Ros | The Smiths | Smog | Sonic Youth | Sparklehorse | Spiritualized | The Stone Roses | Sufjan Stevens | Tom Waits | Tortoise | The Velvet Underground | Wilco | Willard Grant Conspiracy | Yo La Tengo | et cetera.
The Straight Story | Vertigo | Three Colours Red | The Big Lebowski | Cinema Paradiso | Chungking Express | Pan's Labyrinth | 21 Grams | The Shawshank Redemption | Zatoichi | The Deer Hunter | George Washington | Sideways | Touching the Void | Withnail & I | A One and a Two | The Thin Red Line | It's a Wonderful Life | Blade Runner | Bonnie & Clyde | Short Cuts | Lost in Translation | Taxi Driver | 2001: A Space Odyssey | Groundhog Day | Together | Wild Strawberries | The Last of the Mohicans | Schindler's List | Pi | Mulholland Drive | Hero | Etre et Avoir | Assualt on Precinct 13 | Donnie Darko | Dekalog | The Killing Fields | The Royal Tenenbaums | Brokeback Mountain | Planes, Trains & Automobiles | Hidden | Beautiful Girls | Spirited Away | Secrets & Lies | Heat | etc
The Sopranos!
Lately: The Wild Places - Robert Macfarlane | Heat - George Monbiot | Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Granta 99 - What Happened Next | Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad |All-time: On the Road | White Noise | 1984 | Ulysses | One Hundred Years of Solitude | Beloved | The Great Gatsby | Heart of Darkness | Midnight's Children | everything by Geoff Dyer | The Outsider | Invisible Cities | The New York Trilogy | Disgrace | Straight is the Gate | Great Expectations | To the Lighthouse | Atonement | The Crying of Lot 49 | The Corrections | Howl & Other Poems | The Waste Land | Bonjour Tristesse | The Emigrants | The Trial | The Little Prince, and so on..
Bill Murray | Jack Kerouac | Bob Dylan | Lance Armstrong | Michael Palin | Toni Morrison | Aung San Suu Kyi | Tom Hurndall | Ray Mears | Bill Hicks | Ansel Adams | Louis Theroux | Wayne Coyne | Bill Watterson | Geoff Dyer | Ricky Gervais | Steve Coogan | Freddie Flintoff |