The first song I remember hearing
Oscar Brand – ‘Little Brown Jug’
“It’s all about drinking, which explains a lot! My parents had his album, ‘American Drinking Songs’, and I remember the cover had a photo of McSorley’s one it, which is one of the oldest bars in New York.”
The first album I owned
The Beatles – ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’
“I was about 10 years old and a neighbour gave it to me. Eventually, I traded it for a bunch of The Who‘s singles when I was really getting into them. I loved pinball and it was the visuals from ‘Tommy’ and ‘Pinball Wizard’ that did it for me. As I got older, I’d really gravitated towards their ‘fuck you’ attitude. The Beatles were soft, you know, The Who was hard!”
The first gig I went to
The Kinks at Fox Theater in Atlanta, 1980
“I remember that Dave and Ray Davies got in an argument and it was weird. They kept being pissy with each other on-stage… My friend Glenn knew this scam [to get in for free] where you would go and volunteer to be an usher. You just had to have a white shirt and black pants and they provided a red vest. And then you listened to 30 minutes of a guy telling you what to do… The scam was that we had different shirts and shorts on under our [uniform] and as soon as the music started, we took our vests off, changed tops and ran into the crowd. And that was that!”
The song that reminds me of home
Jay-Z – ‘Empire State Of Mind’ feat. Alicia Keys
“When I started spending more and more time in London for work… I started to palpably miss New York [where I live]. When this song came out [in 2009] I was filming [TV comedy] The Increasingly Poor Decisions Of Todd Margaret… and I’d almost feel patriotic [when I heard it]. It would just really, really make me want to be back in New York.”
The song I wish I’d written
The Prodigy – ‘Smack My Bitch Up’
“Wouldn’t it be cool if I’d never written any music apart from this? Me and the Prodigy boys had just got together and come up with this. And what if all I came up with was that ‘smack my bitch up’ line? Like, they wanted to say ‘fuck my bitch up’ and I was like, no make it more specific, make it ‘smack’.”
The song I do at karaoke
‘Weird Al’ Yankovic – ‘Eat It’
“I have a fairly good singing voice which people might not expect. Often, with ‘Eat It’, people think you’re gonna do ‘Beat It’ [by Michael Jackson] and sometimes they will start dancing and then when they find out it’s ‘Eat It’, they get upset. It happened when I was on tour in West Virginia. We were in the middle of fucking nowhere, in a random bar in this tiny town that was advertising karaoke. I did ‘Eat It’ and some women got up from their tables to dance – like ‘yay, I love that song!’ – and then when they realised [it wasn’t ‘Beat It’] they were pissed and had to go grumbling back to their table.”
The song I can’t get out of my head
‘The Little Mermaid (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)’
“It’s specifically because of my daughter. We went to see the new version and she loved it. I’ve heard it a lot of times.”
The song I can no longer listen to
Queen and David Bowie – ‘Under Pressure’
“It was playing in the moment when I was going through a very emotional breakup a long time ago. We subsequently got back together for a year, but when we were going through that really difficult time… that song came on as we were sitting talking in a bar. She started crying and ran away.”
The song that always makes me want to dance
Fugazi – ‘Waiting Room’
“It makes me move, regardless of where I am, especially when the chorus comes in… I’ve been in a ton of mosh pits and I’ve had a few injuries in my time. I had to go get an MRI scan once in LA. I went to see [US alt-rockers] Buffalo Tom and there shouldn’t even be a mosh pit at a Buffalo show, but there was one and it was fun. I pulled my hamstring and had to limp out of there. I was only about 35.”
The song I want played at my funeral
Elton John – ‘Candle In The Wind’ (covered by Cannibal Corpse)
“I’m not going to have a funeral. There can be a party or a wake-type of thing but no funeral, no parading of a casket or anything like that. People can get together at a Holiday Inn banquet room if they’d like. They can have some beers and, you know, remember me. If I had to choose a song it would be this but covered by [death metal band] Cannibal Corpse.”
David Cross’ standup tour ‘Worst Daddy In The World’ comes to the UK in September 2023
