Tell us about your personal "canon"

also my canon was missing sailor moon, somehow

this didn't really take off did it? I guess "Personal canons" are just not part of the ILX canon...

― Party With A Jagger Ban (dog latin),

It's such a tough question! I don't know if there's any answer that doesn't somehow feel false or reductive.

I'm talking about works whose appreciation has come to make-up part of your character, or stayed with you for so long it's an intrinsic part of who you are, or acts as a marker to which you measure and compare other things?

To me = 'bottomless reflecting pools I have plumbed in search of myself only to find that I do not exist.'

The best/only way i can see to approach this quesion is as one of those Buzzfeed quizzes like 'which Pokemon are you?', just mindless fun. And i feel like that would be somehow disrespectful, given the thoughtful responses of others idk

Canadian TV PSA's, the California Raisins, and Bazooka Joe comics

To me = 'bottomless reflecting pools I have plumbed in search of myself only to find that I do not exist.'

Love this, can I steal it?

Tangerine Dream - Love on a Real Train

I'm genuinely quite touched by the answers so far and it's making me want to delve into everything everyone is talking about.
Funny really that ILX has been such a massive font of knowledge, culture, inspiration and (yes I'll say it) excellent taste that in many ways ILX has been a bigger influence on my canon than anything else in my adult life. Biggups all of you x

Appreciate this isn't the easiest question to answer because of course influences come from other places. And we all get obsessed by small things as much as big things. I wonder if I'm still susceptible to some new thing coming along and changing my worldview. I hope so

I wonder if I'm still susceptible to some new thing coming along and changing my worldview. I hope so

I definitely am. I only started listening to South African jazz in 2018 and now I'm aware of a whole network/ecosystem of artists down there, doing absolutely phenomenal stuff. And because the social/cultural/political context is so totally different from the one in the US, it makes me think about the music in ways I never would have if the artists were from Chicago or Detroit or L.A.

books: albert camus, james kelman, raymond carver, the big 3 irish modernists, raymond chandler, vargas llosa, bolaño, dfw (big red flag on the top of the very male sundae)
tv: as with ian above - star trek tng and ds9. x files, sopranos, columbo, weir's way.
films: taiwanese new wave, pre-terminator 2 james cameron, the road to movies, gattaca, italian neorealism, godard's 60s and 70s work. groundhog day, 70s altman
fashion: ivy league preppy stuff - chinos, oxfords, penny loafers, polo shirts. west coast outdoorsy - patagonia shorts, sensible footwear, sandals with socks, fleeces. 80s truck driver: beaten up lee storm rider, old pendelton and woolrich flannels, old oilers hat, old levis 501s
music: beethoven, ecm, albert ayler and ornette coleman, sophistipop, reggaeton, jaco pastorius, disco, neil young, west end records, balaeric, midwest emo and indie of the 90s
comics: mafalda and condorito (sublime and the ridiculous here), o. schrauwen, dash shaw

This idea of a canon, as opposed to favorites, is interesting. Louisa May Alcott isn't a favorite, but she's in my canon because she's part of a shared language and set of references among me and my aunts and cousins on my mom's side of the family. Springsteen is a current favorite, but it feels a little early to put him in the canon.

It turns out to be a complicated process, testing things to see if they belong in my canon or not. I've been thinking of one work after another, asking not "Do I love this?" but "Is it part of me?" "If it didn't exist, would I be different? Would I write differently? Would I think differently? Would my context for understanding the world be different?"

And it gets even more complicated when I come to all the works I've added to my canon as an adult, because there I'm talking to some degree about choices I have consciously made. There's something weirdly revealing about saying, "With all of the vast artistic and cultural offerings of the world to choose from, I have chosen to shape a substantial part of my adult identity around Rudyard Kipling, John Prine, and Homicide, Life on the Street.

So hard to grapple with this, but some things come easily to mind. I don't love all of these quite as much now, but at the time I would have died for any of them. Music-heavy because I am, and because I have my library to look at whereas my film collection is all over the place and my books are mostly in storage.

Arthur Getz Hamilton Duck
George Selden A Cricket in Times Square
Madeleine L'Engle A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind at the Door
Tove Jansson's Moomin books, esp A Comet in Moominland
1970s Doctor Who TV and books
The Goodies
Robert A Heinlein
Arthur C Clarke
first two Star Wars movies
Billy Joel The Stranger
Jeff Wayne The War of the Worlds
Fleetwood Mac Tusk
Susan Cooper The Dark is Rising sequence
David Lynch The Elephant Man
ITV Children of the Stones
John Wyndham The Day of the Triffids, Trouble With Lichen The Midwich Cuckoos
Michael Jackson Off the Wall, Thriller
Spike Milligan's war diaries
INXS Shabooh Shoobah, The Swing
George Orwell 1984
Michael Radford 1984
Eurythmics 1984 (well, 1982-85 I guess)
Prince Purple Rain, Parade, Sign "O" the Times
The Cure 1979-1989
Cocteau Twins 1982-1990
Alfa-Romeo cars
Bruce Robinson Withnail and I
Pao Hsueh Li Blooded Treasury Fight
Eric B and Rakim Paid in Full
De La Soul Three Feet High and Rising
The Breeders Pod
New Order Power, Corruption and Lies, Substance, Technique
Stereolab
Kraftwerk Computerwelt
Throwing Muses Throwing Muses, House Tornado, Limbo, Throwing Muses
My Bloody Valentine You Made Me Realise, Isn't Anything, Glider, Tremolo, Loveless
Palace Music
Will Oldham Arise Therefore, Joya, The Broken Giant
Slint Spiderland
Slowdive Pygmalion
Autechre
Broadcast
Bedhead
The New Year
Seefeel s/t
Stanley Kubrick
Paul Thomas Anderson Magnolia
Clint Eastwood A Perfect World
Mazzy Star So Tonight That I Might See
Opal Early Recordings
Boards of Canada In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country
Radiohead Kid A
Cat Power Moon Pix
Mary Margaret O'Hara Miss America
Underground Lovers Rushall Station
Neu! Neu! Neu! 2
The Breeders Title TK
Glenn Gould The Goldberg Variations (both recordings)
The Mighty Boosh
Michel Gondry Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Sufjan Stevens (Come on Feel the) Illinoise
David Foster Wallace Infinite Jest
Talk Talk Laughing Stock
Joni Mitchell The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Hejira
Bill Evans Sunday Afternoon at the Village Vanguard, Waltz for Debby, The Last Waltz
Gillian Welch Time, the Revelator
David Chase The Sopranos
Matthew Weiner Mad Men
David Simon The Wire
Tina Fey 30 Rock
Hideo Nakata Dark Water
Kelly Reichardt Old Joy
Kendrick Lamar good kid, m.A.A.d. city
Grouper A I A: Alien Observer, A I A: Dream Loss, Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, Ruins, Paradise Valley
CAN Future Days
Lynne Ramsay Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin
Akira Kurosawa High and Low
Yasujiro Ozu Late Spring
Hirokazu Korēda After the Storm
Perfume Level 3
The xx xx
David Bowie Hunky Dory, Low, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), ★
Yukio Mishima Patriotism
HTRK Psychic 9-5 Club
Frank Ocean Blond
Charli XCX Pop 2
Tyler the Creator Igor
Tierra Whack Whack World
Chloe Zhao The Rider

oh god sorry it didn't look that long in the "compose" box

The Moomins are also in my canon, I can't think how I forgot them.
Also Spike Milligan's war memoirs, probably.

god, Velvets, Laurie Anderson, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson, JAMES JOYCE, how can I bear to stop

Birthday Party Junkyard
Celtic Frost Tragic Serenades EP
Stockholm Monsters Alma Mater
Aja
Candi Staton "Young Hearts Run Free"
Yolanda Adams "Victory"
Bobby Womack The Poet
Mercyful Fate Don't Break the Oath
Summoning Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame
Joni Mitchell, at least three albums
Method Man "Release Yo Delf" remix from the Amp 2 disc
AbC How to Be a Zillionaire

I can't make a list like this, because I feel like my opinions on anything should be ready to change anytime. A canon weighs a ton.

Giving more than they had
The process had begun
the tape cassette was spun
'Ready for the 80s' by YMCA was the one

I started writing a song about Chris Gentry and ended up writing about Dennis Hopper, Johnny Cash... Norman, Norbert, Funky Donnie Fritts, Billy Swan, Bobby Neuwirth, Jerry Jeff Walker, Paul Siebel…and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott had a lot to do with it

At swim-two-birds
Rhapsody in Blue
Stardust
Fear of the dark (live)
The blacksmith (late late show b/w)
Angel from montgomery (bonnie)
Catch-22
The wire
Tinker tailer (book, series & movie)
Whole of the moon
Mirror in february
Clough to revie
Greenstreet to bogart in falcon
Raines to everyone in casablanca
The lust for the drink in the thin man series
Kerrygold adverts about toxic parenting
Richard harris mocking frank mccourts memoirs
Burton's elegant defiant regret looking back on it all
Young tina
Julie london lounging around the beat
One more try for the schmaltz and execution
cant find my way home for the posh falsetto rock
the aul triangle acapella in germany from the dubliners
the parting glass at the goilin singers club
Sally o brien and the way she might look at you

Short stories of kevin barry
Lord of the rings
Every second of oasis first two albums
Elvis going quiet on suspicious minds live
The painted sets of willow
My rifle, pony and me
Ten cent westerns (strange, edson, lamour)
The volleying technique of david ginola
Brandos singing, sinatras acting
Billy flynns ethics and valjeans life decisions
Yeats precision and tennysons drama
Etta

The sheer playful felinicity of darin doing beyond the sea live

Rather than make a shopping list of my entire canon (not that there's anything wrong with y'all doing so just that I'd be on this all night), I'll stick with things that entered my life up through let's say age ten and which had such a seismic impact upon me at an impressionable enough age that they've maintained some degree of influence upon my tastes in the decades since:

the career of Jim Henson
The Monster at the End of This Book
also, the aesthetics of '70s Sesame Street
also, just mid-century modern design in general (orange and lime green 4-ever)
the recorded output of the full Monkees foursome
the G.I. Joe cartoon
The Beach Boys - Love You
Garbage Pail Kids
Cyndi Lauper - She's So Unusual
seeing Heavy Metal at way too young an age
Stephen King - Night Shift (yes, I was reading Stephen King by age 10)
Pee-wee's Big Adventure
the creature and production design in the Star Wars movies
The Making of Thriller
the b-side of Amii Stewart's 'Knock on Wood' single, entitled 'When You Are Beautiful'

nice, much better than me backing up the dump truck
and Jim Henson, my god yes

man, idk, what a question

I think the only thing on this list is FLCL

It's a good question, but the answers here seem are oddly unrevealing. I think it's difficult in sparse list form, and stripped of context.

I really love autobiographies where someone talks about their influences, as long as they do it interestingly. Quite often, if it interests me, I'll explore what they were discussing and appreciate it myself all the more from their enthusiasm and viewpoint. Sometimes it provides a way into areas that have previously been huge unexplored opaque areas to me, such as the Blues.

I quite enjoyed Adam Buxton's Ramble Book for that. For a mainstream funny-book he didn't ever seem to shy-away from getting super-nerdy about his love of obscure new wave music and horror movies. His impression of David Byrne's Knee Plays in the audiobook format was especially niche

Some obscure things from family lore:

- A cassette recording my Dad made of the chart countdown in 1982, announcer clipped-off by the pause button. Songs by Musical Youth, Yazoo, PhD, Shakin' Stevens, Culture Club, Men At Work, Dexys, Toni Basil etc.. Played on every family car trip from then until about 1992. Probably impacted my musical taste much more than I care to admit.

- Paul McCartney's "Frog Chorus", but more than that, the two extra video songs that came on the VHS, "Seaside Woman" and "The Oriental Nightfish", both sung by Linda and both featuring incredible animation. My sisters, my brother and I must have watched these till the video didn't play any more, and we even quote little snatches of the songs at each other today.

Fallen into recent lore:

Sweet As Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes from the Horn of Africa, a compilation of music from Somalia which I bought a couple of years ago and became a near-permanent fixture on the household turntable. It's already totally worn out and skips a lot. I think I need to buy it again.

Plustwo - Melody a fairly obscure Italo Disco song from the early 80s which I think I foudn out about through ILM and is p much my aesthetic in a 4 minute nutshell.

Mandy (Panos Cosmatos) Don't often go and see films alone. But the second the title screen came up and the opening chords of King Crimson's "Starless" started blasting out, it felt like I was watching something that had been designed especially for me.

Thinking of stuff that had a major impact at an early age, not just favourites: 

- Enid Blyton's Secret Seven and Five Find-Outers series which led to a lifelong love of murder/mystery fiction (Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew etc.)

- Beetlejuice and Winona Ryder in particular was v important to 6-year-old me; ditto 90s The Addams Family and Christina Ricci, Terminator 2 and Edward Furlong, Edward Scissorhands and Johnny Depp (as you can see, I had a type even at a young age)

- I had two much older siblings and so, much of my early tastes were influenced by their adolescence. I cannot imagine my childhood without them playing Madonna, Janet Jackson, Prince, En Vogue, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Duran Duran, Smashing Pumpkins, Robyn, Boyz II Men, Guns N Roses, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Queen, Jamiroquai, The Offspring... Just so much pop music on, all the time.  

- The movies that were always on and that I could probably quote verbatim: Indiana Jones, E.T., The Princess Bride, Airheads, Top Secret!, Clueless, Star Wars: A New Hope

- Malaysian boyband KRU was the first act I really got into all on my own. I love boybands still (K-pop has been a godsend) 

- Would I be the same person without The X-Files, a TV show I loved so much that my friends and I used to pretend to be Mulder and Scully in our backyards, and every story we acted out would end up with one of us being abducted by aliens? Probably not. 

- Growing up in Malaysia, books were either expensive or limited in choice. My mother's American friend had a daughter who was around my age and they would send me so much 90s YA/kidlit: RL Stine, Christopher Pike, The Baby-Sitters' Club, Laura Ingalls Wilder, etc. A lot of this is pretty basic I guess, but it helped develop a very healthy love of reading that I will forever be grateful for, as well as a large amount of useless knowledge about U.S. culture and experiences than I know what to do with 

- My early teens coincided with peak TRL/MTV era, so music videos have always been integral to how I experience music (once again, Kpop has been a godsend). I was so obsessed with those late 90s/early 00s video directors like Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham, Hype Williams, Sophie Muller, Jonas Akerlund. Collected all the Directors' Label series once I was old enough.  

- After a childhood diet of radio pop/rock, music videos also helped nudge me towards more electronic/experimental stuff - from Daft Punk and Basement Jaxx to Aphex Twin and Squarepusher

- I joined a dance club in high school, which led to choreographers: Bob Fosse, Fatima Robinson, Tina Landon

Loads of other things I'm forgetting I'm sure but these were among the most formative, I think

Roguelikes and their variants-- Moria, ADOM, Dead Cells, Dark Souls
Tetris-- and 8-bit era Nintendo music
2001: A Space Odyssey and its soundtrack-- and the Strausses, Ligeti, and the school of classical music from which Khachaturian sprung (Mussorgsky, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Prokofiev especially)
Eurythmics-- and other 80s synth pop-- and transmasc aesthetic-- Lennox, Sinead, Samantha Morton
Tori Amos, Alanis Morissette, Lisa Germano, Björk, PJ Harvey, Sam Phillips, Diamanda Galas
The Thin Red Line-- and any art that clumsily seeks for big meanings
Building LEGO projects and leaving them on display
Vatcharin Bhumichitr, Delia Smith, Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, Yotam Ottolenghi
Mishima, Nabokov, Joyce, Joy Williams, Flann O'Brien
Anne Carson, Ted Chiang, Ursula LeGuin, Octavia Butler
Xiu Xiu, US Maple, Brian Eno, Electrelane
Laurie Spiegel, Wendy Carlos, Pauline Olivieros, Mica Levi
Bill Callahan, Destroyer, Cass McCombs, The Mountain Goats
Crossword puzzles, Yorkshire tea, bridge, etymology, Wikipedia
Bach solo violin sonatas and partitas, Bach solo cello suites
Brass chandeliers, Le Creuset, candles and candlesticks, cloth serviettes
Let The Right One In, Peter Strickland, Jonathan Demme, Nicole Holofcener

Video games. Were important to me until I was about 15. Then just in the last three or four years, I rediscovered how great they can be. I can think of three which have taken-on an almost numinal aura for me:

Earthbound
It wasn't released in the UK, and I only discovered it in recent years. The offbeat humour and the whole aesthetic instantly clicked. I started putting together playlists and DJ mixes inspired by some of the settings in the game, and even started a boutique club night called Club Stoic, named after the beachside bar in one section of the game.

Chrono Trigger
Like Earthbound, I didn't discover this until fairly recently, but it really blew my mind that a 16BIT topdown RPG could be so involving and enveloping. I'm an especially big fan of the music, so much so that, to my embarassment, "Wind Scene" made it to the top of my Spotify most played tracks list two years on the trot.

Death Stranding
This is a Marmitey game, but to me it is sublime for so many reasons. I feel like this is one of the few AAA games aimed squarely at grown-ups as opposed to young adults. The story is arcane, surreal, frightening. The gameplay is less about shooty thrills and all about stealth, time, forward-planning, enjoying the view etc. The characters are not young or classically good looking. And there's a sense of duty, even drudgery throughout which appeals to the monochromatic mindset. There are other games. There are better games. But this is MY game that I am invested in and I don't care if other people don't like it.

gonna throw out a special mention to the stuff that aired on afternoons on comedy central during the mid-00s, which was mostly '90s saturday night live re-runs and heavily edited versions of movies like the big lebowski, office space, and coming to america

I don't think I've ever found anything more bracing and redolent of impending thrills spills + chills than this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9N9AByVnZ4

A masterclass in stoking anticipation. The fact that it was usually followed by something like Moscow on the Hudson is beside the point.

And just like the aesthetic/semiotics of old school previews and promos and interstitials in general.

Continually expanding still.
But some touch points put in by childhood and earlky to mid teens.
I love the music i was getting into at the turn of my teens still for the most part.
Mid 60s mod and garage as well as soul , r'n'b and jazz and stuff that I was becoming aware of at teh time but only touched on part of is still something I'm filling in a lot more. As is the psychedelia I was touching on at the time.
& the punk and post-punk stuff I had heard at roughly the same time. Still expanding what I know on that and the stiff leading up to it.
Velvet Underground are a band that I used to walk around singing songs by when I was 14 since I heard tehm through my elder brother though not sure he went beyond the 1st lp. Stooges too.
I got into the Brthday Party at 16 just too late to have missed tehm live. But couldn't get enough of them at teh time I picked up on them and they still have a large influence on what else I've listened to I think.
I was turned onto both Pop group and Pere ubu and possibly captain Beefheart through journalists association of teh bands. Still love all taht stuff.
& then I caught the New york wave of noise bands in late 83 and throughout 84 thanks to taht association too.
I was also rreading my way through a pile of turn of the 80s NMEs and related taht my brother had left behind when he went to University. & picking up from reviews at the time. I now have a number of thsoe papers here which i should peruse again. BUt definitely added to what I was picking up on.
I know I got given Sun Ra's Strange Celestial Road by my borther after having listened to a copy he had. So love that 78-83ish deep space funk stuff especially when it comes to him.
I hada love of preCountrypolitan country that I picked up somewhere which was probably enhanced by having artists named in relation to the Gun Club who I saw for the first time in late 83 though i may have actually met an earlier incarnation of teh band. I later woudn up goig to Son Of Redneck th eclub behind Selfrdiges though that is more 88ish. & I think there was more l;ists of country & blues artists from a book on influences on Bob Dylan taht I got from a local library. & for blues i also listened to the Alexis korner show when it was still on the radio.
I had listened quite heavily To David Rhodigan when he wa son capitol radio not sureto what extent I was picking up artists names though.
Not sure what point I really started picking up reggae stuff. I think I have mainly concentrated on 70s roots stuff throughout though.
Love the Sanctuary era trojan 2cd sets I think they are a really great starting point. Not sure if later simnilar sets have been anywhere near as good.
I had been driven around to morris events by one of my mother's friends asa preteen, not sure if taht was why I picked up on folk later or if it was just an earlier recognition of liking similar music. Did get pentangle's basket of light back in the late 80s and a coverless compilation thing of them a while earlier though hadn't really followed up on discovering who they were.
Did have a fantastic 2nd hand record shop that I would regularly scour , like go right through all the racks and try to get stuff from .
So got turned onto a lot of things that way but probably had that fed by the pile of NMEs, Christgau's book of the 70s, the Red Rolling stone Record Guide and probably at least a couple of other sources. & later things like Forcedexposure's record reviews.
Brother turned me onto Can in the early 80sd and possibly Hawkwind though I didn't pik up on them until a lot later. Certainly had most of Can since mid 80s though and picked up Funkadelic in a sale towards teh end of teh decade. Found almost a full run in a sale in teh 2nd hand record shop.
Somewhere also picked up a taste for a lot of African and other roots music. Especially love African psych

Style, I like clothing based on mid 60s rock styles and turn of the 20th century, possibly slightly earlier European fashion. I make it in waxed cotton for an African tinge. As well as some other colourful fabrics. S0ome drapery, upholstery and other sourced fabrics.
I ought to be in the middle of making a frockcoat but need to get started.

Films, pretty wide taste i think. I like film noir, documentary, sci fi, and several other genres.

Books
Very wide tastes. Currently reading a lot of decolonisation and stuff.
but doi read pretty widely. Across history of writing, need to get back down and actually read teh lucian that I bought recently.
NOt really read much fiction recently but do like quite a bit.
Mainly been reading BIPOC oriented non-fiction, & some music biographies and memoirs. Currently don#t have the temptation of going into charity shops and leaving with an armful of things that look interesting then not getting thropugh a lot of them but enjoying those I do.
Wonder if I will ever catch up with the backlog of books I have bought and not read yet. Always stress the yet.

not completely answering the questions but here are 10 songs that i will always be able to play on the piano no matter how long i go without practicing
debussy - clair de lune
randy newman - simon smith & the amazing dancing bear
steely dan - gaucho
allman brothers - jessica
stevie wonder - golden lady
brahms - ballade no. 4 in b major (at least the first bit before it switches to 6/4)
ray charles - hard times
the smiths - this charming man
the rolling stones - loving cup
zombies - care of cell 44

"golden lady" is also my favorite stevie wonder. i'm not all-in on classic stevie but that song is incredible.

and i was just thinking the other day that "loving cup" is now my favorite song on exile

get vaxxed up, we'll have a sing-along

🎵 just siDANG in front of the FIRE 🎵

I think this is just Bunnicula and Eerie, Indiana for me.

The book and the TV series respectively. Def not the other way around.

canonicity intersects too much with my mortal enemy, nostalgia, maybe, for me to want to think about it

Yep, that and "identity". Ugh

Plus it's all too easy to canonize a building with a couple of nice bricks.

*cannonize

Twin peaks, mdma, crosswords

irish times cryptic crosaire when derek crozier still set them

Formative stuff that has influenced me both aesthetically and ethically:

The first 5 or so books of Jeff Smith's Bone. Robert Wise's 1963 version of The Haunting. The Legend of Zelda series, but Ocarina of Time and its grotesque twin Majora's Mask particularly. The Sega Dreamcast and its library of strange and colorful games, especially Shenmue, Jet Grind Radio, Crazy Taxi, and Skies of Arcadia.

Continuing on the videogame tip, the entire written & video'ed corpus of tim rogers, from the early 00s Insert Credit era on.

Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. The collected work of Jorge Luis Borges.

There's lots more, but that's about all I can care to think of right now.

I won't be exhaustive, I'll just focus on some important shifts in my life.

Steve Ditko was a massive deal to me as a teenager. I learned that heroes didn't have to be all extreme bulging muscles to look cool, backgrounds could be a joy, smiles could look like real muscles were being used, the creepy stuff was great, inking your own drawings is better.

Bernie Wrightson, Graham Ingels and Richard Corben got me fully into horror after a too long absence and shattered my overly sanitized ideas about beauty.

Moving from men's magazines to actual top shelf naturally-hyper-voluptuous stuff and finding that it wasn't just more nudity, it was worlds apart in multiple ways and again shattered my overly sanitized ideas about beauty and they glorified things that are often considered ugly.

Getting into Slowdive, Low, Red House Painters, Cocteau Twins, Lycia, Black Tape For A Blue Girl, Yes, Genesis, Frost etc... discovering that the received "wisdom" I got from the major british music magazines was almost worthless. Things that seemed taboo and embarrassing are actually often the best.

Getting into Goya, Bosch, Fuseli, Dore and seeing more modern artists like Albin Brunovsky, Remedios Varo, Ernst Fuchs, Andrzej Masianis, Robert Venosa and more as the next levels above my teenage favorites.

books

pat mccabe's bog gothic
trainspotting
douglas coupland - girlfriend in a coma, microserfs

film

alan clarke in the 80s
hitchock in the 60s
scorsese in dudes rock mode

music

cult american rock
house music all night long
the smiths

I typed up a really cool list but it was so “cool” and I just felt lame... so I’ll just say

Luniz - “I Got Five On It”
IOcean of Sound by David Toop
Calvin and Hobbes