Soundtrack of Your (Early) Life

Ava's first pop star crush is Johnny Marr, particularly the Electronic era. One of my proudest moments was hearing her, aged 3, dreamily singing the riff to The Fall's Dead Beat Descendant in the backseat of the car, unprompted. So, yeah, I've been throwing stuff at her since day one, seeing what sticks. Dancing to Janacek's Sinfonietta, called an ambient Pan Sonic piece "music for sad ghosts", throwing a tantrum cos I wouldn't let see the video for Propaganda's P-Machinery again, singing her own words to Sagittarius songs, Beefheart, Neko Case, Autechre, Orbital...

Lulu ploughs her own strange furrow. Sometimes I think she might be the more musical of the two, more inventive, but a lot of noisy or atonal stuff freaks her out. She's more into kiddie stuff (she'll go for a CBBC song over a pop video).

Back in the early '70s, it was Mouldy Old Dough, Brain Salad Surgery and Son of my Father than shaped me.

I haven't made any people and am unlikely to do so for the foreseeable future, but when I was a newly made person I am told I was quite taken with Kenny Rogers, Blondie's "One Way or Another," and various Sesame Street and Muppet records.

Not quite on topic: I loved watching records play but naturally wasn't allowed to touch them. So once when I was three or four and the babysitter fell asleep, I pulled a bunch of records out of their jackets, spread them out on the floor, and walked on them in my bare feet. I don't actually remember doing this, but the footprints are there on the records. I guess you always hurt the one you love (particularly at that age).