Tell us about your personal "canon"

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

Print the list!

I got five on it is a great shout tbh

hitler

piss christ

morris minor & the majors

Apocalypse Now (& Mark Baker's 'Nam) /The Stand
Dune /Arthur Clarke's 'Childhood's End'
the Good, the Bad & the Ugly /Godfather I & II
Double Nickels on the Dime (WATT) /Who's Next
Electric Ladyland & Maggot Brain
Bitches Brew & In A Silent Way
The Incredible Hulk

Oh yeah and Rush.

Well, not mine - but Bobby Gillespie's:

The singer lets us into his cultural life...

I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors...

Jean Genet, William Blake, Francis Bacon, the poets Thom Gunn and Anne Sexton, photographer William Eggleston, Huey P Newton from Black Panther, Karl Marx, James Connolly the Irish radical socialist, Raquel Welch (around the time of One Million Years BC and Myra Breckinridge), Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, the poets John Donne and Vladimir Mayakovsky, Claudia Cardinale, Jane Fonda, Jennifer Lawrence, Angela Davis, Camille Paglia, Ash Sarkar, Diego Maradona, Klaus Kinski, Nastassja Kinski, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the actress Hanna Schygulla, Valerie Solanas, Hank Williams, Yuri Gagarin, Divine, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Philip Roth, the director Bill Douglas, Chico, Harpo and Groucho Marx, the Cockettes (San Francisco radical multisexual dance and street theatre group), Germaine Greer, Lucian Freud, Anita Pallenberg, David Litvinoff (1960s cultural guru and underground facilitator), the film-maker Kenneth Anger, the director Nicholas Ray, the actresses Jane Russell and Ava Gardner, Frank Sinatra, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Huston, the novelists Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor, Slavoj Zizek, Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht.

And I’ll put on this music...

The music would consist of compilation album CDs on the Soul Jazz label such as New Orleans Funk Volumes 1-4 and Saturday Night Fish Fry.

Poor Zeppo…

Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy and The Long Secret.

UK art rock of the Roxy/Ferry/Cale ilk.

A school of female-fronted American R&B.

Wallace Stevens' late poems.

Olivier Assayas.

I love The Long Secret! One of my favorite books.

I wouldn't fancy being in the same room as Zizek and Greer

fender rhodes, vibraphones, coffee, white graph patterned shirts, cypress trees, fog/cloud covering, john varvatos vintage, “the seventies”, marijuana, bowling alleys, red light, nighttime

Books
Wonderful Wizard of Oz - L Frank Baum
Small Sacrifices - Ann Rule
Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris
Homer - The Odyssey
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
It - Stephen King
Oscar Wilde - Picture of Dorian Gray
Herman Melville - Moby Dick
Flannery O Connor - The Violent Bear It Away
Carson McCullers - Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Gilead - Marilynne Robinson
Neal Stephenson - Cryptonimicon
William Gibson - Neuromancer
Raymond E Feist - The Magician
Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian
Don DeLillo - Libra

Movies
Sound of Music
James Bond movies
Spielberg esp Close Encounters
Scorsese esp Goodfellas
John Carpenter esp The Thing
Hard Days Night, Alien, Star Wars Trilogy, Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, Die Hard, To Live & Die In LA, John Wick, The Long Goodbye, Point Blank, Silence of the Lambs, Little Women (90s), When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, Julie & Julia, ok Nora Ephron everything
Heavy Metal Parking Lot
Repo Man
Night of The Comet

Music
Johnny Cash - Live at San Quentin
Olivia Newton John - Greatest Hits 1&2
Cyndi Lauper - She’s So Unusual
Madonna - Like A Virgin
Michael Jackson - thriller
Billy Joel - Innocent man
Def Leppard - Hysteria
Metallica - Ride the Lightning
Enuff z’Nuff - Enuff z’Nuff
Bon Jovi - New Jersey
Meat Loaf - Bat Out of Hell
Guns N Roses - Use Your Illusion 1&2
Icehouse - Man of Colors
Australian Crawl - Sirocco
INXS - The Swing
Cold Chisel - East
Pearl Jam - No code
Nirvana - In Utero
Chris Cornell - Euphoria Morning
Patti Smith - Easter
Nick Cave - Tender Prey
Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street
Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks
Nine Inch Nails - Downward Spiral
White Stripes - De Stijl
The Beatles - Abbey Road
Rush -2112
Saturday Night Fever soundtrack
Iron Maiden - Number of the Beast
AC/DC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

i will hate this tomorrow but it’ll do for now