• "What were you listening to when you were 15? 20? 25? Have you rediscovered anything from that time and how did it sound to you today? Jacqui: I was obsessed with music. I had a little record player next to my bed when I was 4. My favorite songs were “St. James Infirmary Blues” and “Sleeping Beauty.” In my house there was Duke Ellington, Beethoven, “Mack the Knife”, Big Bad John, and records by the Weavers. I got into the Beatles and the Stones as they happened in elementary school. The first single I bought was “Jumping Jack Flash” when I was 11. A girl moved from Pittsburgh got me into Motown and Sly Stone. My older sister had a great record collection so when I was 13 I was hearing everything from Beefheart to the Velvet Underground. In high school Sally and I were turned onto free jazz, Bartok and Ives by a jazz pianist friend. Another friend figured out how to rent Cocteau films for school and got us into Rimbaud. We subsequently discovered Patti Smith before she did Horses because she was doing some Rimbaud thing in NYC.
• Another friend had an incredible avant-garde record collection and we’d hear stuff there. I was really into the blues especially Robert Johnson, Howling Wolf and Skip James. Some pivotal records were: Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde and Highway 61, the Velvets’ Banana album and White Light White Heat, Hendrix Are You Experienced?, Coltrane’s Live at Birdland, Don Cherry’s Complete Communion and Mingus’ Devil Woman. In NY around the beginning of Ut I got this Tony Conrad record, Outside the Dream Syndicate by chance and loved it immediately. I was really into Television’s first single ‘Little Johnny Jewel” —and that sound inspired Ut. I’d take records out from the library where I discovered this Daglar wedding song which was in fact the saddest song I’d ever heard. I taped [the song] and carried it around in early days of London exile but I misplaced it long ago. I’ve always been inspired by music. I remember knowing I liked the guitar sound on the Stones’ “Last Time” when I was a kid. That was the first compulsion for a sound — the first awareness. Then when I was 14 I was in a van with some older people from California and there was this music playing —I don’t know what it was but it totally arrested me. It was like Beefheart’s “Kandy Korn” —circular guitar change which has remained this seminal illusive music for me, something I am always trying to capture. I am interested by most music even when I don’t like it. It is a continuing education. Sometimes I am more open, sometimes I am intolerant of certain sounds and phrasings. I get into different things all the time. I go through phases —in ‘85 I got really into 20th century classical music and Duke Ellington —really thinking about the structures and sounds. Sometimes I listen in this acute way. Sometimes I can only listen to jazz, sometimes I fanatically listen to Sly Stone or Al Green. My favorite music is probably Arabic and Turkish because I am always in the mood for this tonality. There have been many crucial songs that have influenced me but the one that captures so many things that I aspire to is “Early in the Morning” recorded at a penitentiary in the 40’s by Lomax.

Pop-culture item(s) that mean(s) a lot to you (that’s not music)?Jacqui: I was fascinated by everything and am always reading and investigating things. I thought a lot about revolution, how things grew and evolved. I’ve always written and many books and films have been essential. Emerson, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Rimbaud, Artaud and Genet were seminal. Godard and films like Mean Streets, The Mother and the Whore, and Pierrot Le Fou. "