Marshall McLuhan is the greatest prophet if all the things we’re experiencing today. I’ve read Jules Verne, Arthur C. Clark,  Orwell, Huxley and Asimov - no one comes close to the influence McLuhan is to my life and to this society. Of course, McLuhan was a theorist, not a fiction writer, but still, books like 1984 had a major impact in the way we foresaw life and society some decades ago, so I guess the comparison is valid. Global village, the medium is the message, the concepts of archetypes, and even the famous 15 minutes of fame, wrongly credited to Andy Warhol - it all came from him.

I discovered McLuhan relatively late in my life - I was 16, 17. It’s probably the only important author that the library my father left me was missing. And he was incredibly important to me, particularly this book, The Medium is the Massage (an invetory of effects). Not a typo, it’s Mass-age alright, see? It made me understand some disorganized feelings and theories I had about people and life, besides pointing me to several interests like Semiology and Media. Obviously, it has a magnificent typography composition, with blow-up images - some of them created with letters. I remember being so excited about this book that I started reading it again after finishing it for the first time.  McLuhan became an obsession for a few years, I was calling bookstores all over the planet to find second hand copies of the titles I haven’t read yet. Folks, there was no Amazon.com at that time ok? And then, one night, I was watching late movies on the telly when Annie Hall started. I’ve always been a fan of Woody Allen, I was excited. Halfway through the film he cites McLuhan and invites him into the story. Glorious moment that was - everything made sense. Viva McLuhan.

In 1992 this local record shop started a sale on import cassette tapes, foreseeing its decline in popularity. I would save money all week, including walking home from school instead of taking the bus, so I could buy a tape every friday. The first one I bought was Joy Division Still. The second, Kraftwerk, The Mix. The third, KLF The White Room.

The whole record was sensational. It had dub, ambient, ravey-techno, rap and choir chants. It was really adicitive - it still is - but the reason it belongs to this collection isn’t the music, unfortunatelly. This tape’s liner notes, in the inlay, were incredible. The typography came from the same places I came, san serif, heavy black, swiss style. The way every musician was described as humourous and incredibly precise - saying for instance, who said which phrase or shout in the track, and the samples used - a first, so far. And at the very end, the blueprint for Shalalá Records…

Most people think Shalalá Records was inpired by Factory Records. But it wasn’t. Factory Records, to me, when I was a kid, was a established record label. This tape and its ‘previous album releases’ section made me wonder for a few years about the whole thing. It made me feel there was a connection, e.g, a band name like The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, a sentence heard in several tracks of The White Room.  So all the bands in the KLF Communications label were, in fact, The KLF - and that was so exciting. They were the label, they did the artwork, the myth behind it, the story… This tape made all the McLuhan books I’ve read make sense and it still holds a special place in my collection.

My obsession for garlic reached its peak in 1992, when my neighbour and best friend Carol got me this Garlic Baker - brought from the States by her mother. Basically, I was already having garlic with everything, but this terracota piece made it possible for me to have it as a meal.  And that’s what I did. The following day, I went to school, and after a while, maybe an hour, my body started to swell with horrible red spots. I was sent to the hospital with a severe Garlic overdose. I still love Garlic though, and I still have this baker somewhere in my kitchen.

I wouldn’t be lying if I said that Howard Chaykin changed my life. Although I knew him from before, the splendid Black Kiss, it was on American Flagg that he opened my mind to a world of possibilities. Graphically, he was by far ahead of everybody else in the time - he abused of newer graphic design schools in his comics. Conceptually, also. He had a ‘cast’ of ‘actors’ which would re-appear in all his stories. So Reuben Flagg was played by the same ‘actor’ that appeared on ‘Black Kiss’. It’s confusing, it’s genius. And the stories were incredibly mature, even for a graphic novel. Sex wasn’t treat as a big deal, and every character had shades of grey. The future described in American Flagg is incredibly chaotic, corrupt and exciting! He predicted loads of cultural phenomenons, like censorship over things we would never imagine, and the video generation. Also, coined the term Tromplography™, used a lot in the 2008 american presidency election, with Obama and McCain being superimposed in CGI over other people’s bodies. Mañanacillin™ - the penicillin for the day after, antibiotic and contraceptive, it kills every disease you may have gotten the night before, but its extensive use leads to sterility. I wanted to live in this world. The Jews for Jesus, interspecies romances, subliminal messages, hot babes selling machine guns, bootleg sport videos, illegal cable channels, it was all there. And there was this particular episode, when he’s surprised on a stakeout, watching a meeting he wasn’t supposed to… the henchmen ask, how are you, when he replies: I’m Pete Zarustica, a Russian jewellery smuggler…

It was 1990 and my personal heroine was going though hard times. We needed money, and my mum decided to sell my father’s record collection. This bald man came to the house to put a price on it and I didn’t want to let it go. My mother said I could choose one record, and I got this. It wasn’t my favorite, but it was too hard for me to go though his musical estate and choose one. The same records I used to listen with him, with big ass white headphones. So I picked to first one in the row and kept it to me. Never listened to it, until this day.

This was the very first album I bought with my money. It was late 1988, early 1989 and I had spent my holidays in Nova Friburgo (Neue Freiburg) with my adored godfather, six months before he died. My cousin had the record and I was addicted to it. Of course I knew The Smiths, but this record was special - I used to listen to it beginning to end, night and day. When I got back home, my mum took me to Sears and I bought it with some money my family gave me. She also sat down very patiently on the couch with me and my friend Berdowls and translated some of the lyrics for us. She was a bit shocked though. It features the great Viny Reily on guitar, and I was so fascinated but this ‘new’ sound that later I bought a couple of Durutti Collumn records in the dark, as they say. I was already, obviously, a New Order fan, but it was Morrissey that showed me Manchester. At that time I didn’t know about the importance of Factory Records, or Tony Wilson. About the city and its energy. The only person who would mention my beloved city was Stephen Patrick Morrissey.