One of the best parts of the 617 Q&A series (Six Questions; One Recommendation; Seven Somethings) is the one recommendation portion. Typically, if we haven’t flipped them already with our somewhat standard interview portion, it’s when the artist really comes alive and often provides some deeper insight into what they’re buzzing about off the stage as we ask them to tell us what they’ve been into recently that isn’t their current project.
Over the years, we’ve had some doozies, from a stone-faced Billy Duffy from The Cult telling us to drink more water, to Ash’s Tim Wheeler advocating for Muay-Thai while casually revealing he’d spent time in Bangkok training intensely in the full-contact martial art. Sometimes, the nut is harder to crack as our subjects can’t get out of self-promotion mode, whether it’s pimping the band that’s opening the current tour, or pushing some vanity endeavor on the side – like Dave Mustaine and his wine business.
The past 12 months were no different, as a wide range of conversations left us running to make purchases online, stream a film or artist, and getting introspective during a period when everyone could do with some looking inward. Here are 10 of our favorites recs, in order of when we chatted with our interviewees.
Marty Friedman on Cap’n Crunch Arctic Crunch
Ex-Megadeth guitarist Marty Friedman has been living in Japan for more than two decades now, carving out a career as a bona fide multi-genre, multimedia star. But while the move may have expanded his cultural awareness more than most of us could ever fathom, it hasn’t taken away his penchant for all things junk food – especially sugary breakfast cereals. When he was back on these shores for a run of solo dates last winter, he was excited to indulge in the latest limited edition offering from General Mills.
“Cap’n Crunch’s Arctic Crunch cereal is awesome!” he enthused. “I just picked it up on the tour here in the U.S. I wish they had it in Japan, but sadly, cereal in general is not really a thing over there.”
Josh Carter of Phantogram on Sacred Spirits
When we sat down with the electronic rock duo Phantogram, Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter, it was a lively conversation with two people who obviously have a lot of mutual respect and reverence for one another. The latter was particularly high on his friend’s band, Sacred Spirits, though his recommendation was tinged with a bit of frustration.
“I think he should tour and play,” Carter said. “He made an album called Some Stay, and it’s just Incredible. I love it. From front to back. He made it, like, 10 years ago, and I’m like, ‘What the fuck? How could somebody this talented and who writes such good, cool songs not be touring it or be bigger or big at all?’ So, go listen to Sacred Spirits.”
We’d be remiss not to mention his bandmate’s recommendation, which was ice baths. Unfortunately, that had already been advocated for by Gavin Rossdale in a 617 Q&A a scant few months prior. Informed that the Bush frontman had also lauded the circulatory benefits of a cold plunge, Barthel said, straight-faced, “We have so much in common, we should probably get married.”
Earl Slick on ‘being open to influences’
Guitarist Earl Slick has performed with some of the biggest heavyweights in music, from David Bowie and Mick Jagger to Robert Smith and John Lennon. And, as he told us ahead of his appearance at Berklee as a featured performer at “Music and Meaning in the Works of David Bowie,” he might not have had those opportunities were he closed off to outside elements.
“I am affected by art and fashion for sure,” he said. “I also think that if you’re going to be, say, in a band or you’re going to be somebody that plays live, it’s something that you kind of need to pay attention to. And I do draw from things. I do draw from art, and I even draw from out-of-the-box stuff. So yeah, it’s all, to me, if you talk ‘out of the box,’ I think that music and fashion and all of that are so intertwined, especially for a live band. And one thing inspires the other. Even what I wear in any particular situation it happens to just be where my head is at the time. So, I just do whatever that is.”
Eloise Wong of The Linda Lindas on drinking hot water
One would think trying to keep four members of The Linda Lindas on track during an interview would be akin to herding cats. It was quite the opposite, though, when the punk quartet – three of them still in grade school – proved to be more mature than some acts twice their age. Each had their own individual recommendations, but it was bassist/singer Eloise Wong who stuck out with a call back to the aforementioned Billy Duffy’s endorsement of drinking water, but with a twist.
“I really like to drink hot water,” she said. “That’s one thing I would recommend. Or warm water, I guess. But I like it pretty hot. It’s like, nice. I mean, I don’t really drink it to help with singing…I don’t know, but I really like to drink hot water. I think it’s ‘cause I grew up drinking hot water with my grandparents. But yeah, I would recommend. And, also, it feels really cool when you’re at a restaurant, and then they ask you, ‘Oh, what drink do you want?’ And you go, ‘Oh, can I have hot water?’ And it feels like a treat. And you don’t even have to pay for a drink because it’s just hot water, you know what I mean? You could get a lemonade, or you could get hot water for nothing.”
Given some of the cold snaps New England has already experienced, with winter still a couple of weeks away, we’re finding Wong might be onto something.
Jamie Hince of The Kills on ‘You Got Time and I Got Money’ by Smerz
When guitarist Jamie Hince declared, “I think romance is back” at the outset of his recommendation, his bandmate in The Kills, Alison Mosshart, laughed as if someone unexpectedly poked her in the side. Unfazed, he proceeded to tell us about a song that became a favorite jam of 2025.
“I’m really liking this Danish pop act called Smerz, and it’s a song called ‘You Got Time and I Got Money,'” Hince said. “I really like it. It’s not the sort of thing that’s going to bash you over the head and go like, ‘Oh my God, what is this?’ But it’s just sort of beautifully bloomed inside me. This kind of ‘Soft DIY Romance’ is what I’m calling it. It starts off kind of a lo-fi vocal, almost like something that would be on a Bikini Kill record, the vocal, and then everything around it just kind of grows and grows and strings come in, and it’s just the more kind of beautiful and hi-fi the music is, it kind of changes the way you listen to the vocal.”
Richard Blade on Adolescence
Legendary Los Angeles-based DJ Richard Blade is directly responsible for breaking so many UK bands in the States, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, and The Police, among them. But when we asked him for a recommendation, he veered into another medium.
“A four-part series that blew my socks off, and I’m so pleased it got, I think, 11 Emmy nominations, is Adolescence on Netflix,” Blade said. The most genre-breaking show I have ever seen because it’s four episodes and each one is shot in one take, so the camera starts rolling and that’s it for an hour. There’s no edits in it. And I hadn’t read anything about it apart from, ‘It’s good.’ After I finished watching it, I did a deep dive into it, and they did three weeks of rehearsal for each episode. So, if you like that scene in Goodfellas with Martin Scorsese where they walk through the kitchens and then out into the showroom without an edit, that’s what it’s like for an entire hour. There’s very little editing needed, but just the same, the way that show is written and structured makes me just go, ‘Oh my God, that is fantastic.’”
Ian Astbury of The Cult on Daughter Minotaur
Normally, when someone pushes a significant other’s venture, it stinks of nepotism. That was hardly the case, however, when Ian Astbury told us to dig into Daughter Minotaur, the musical project of his wife, multimedia artist Aimée Nash. In fact, The Cult frontman was late to our interview because he had become so enraptured with the livestream of her performance during the showcase for designer Ann Demeulemeester at Paris Fashion Week.
“[It gives] you a taste of the dark, futurist, orientalist, romantic, femme, the wave that’s coming,” Astbury said. “That’s Daughter Minotaur. That’s Aimée. And that’s not because she’s my wife. That’s because she slays. She slayed in front of her peers. It was her, and that was magnificent. All day long.”
Art Alexakis on swimming
When Everclear frontman Art Alexakis announced his multiple sclerosis diagnosis back in 2019, the last thing anyone might expect was for him to be banging out 100-date tours six years later. But there he is, doing the 30th anniversary run for Sparkle and Fade, currently in Australia and continuing in the States well into 2026. How does he do it? One of the reasons, as he told us in his 617 Q&A, is swimming.
“The reason I swim is because I used to run, but I can’t run anymore because I’ll fall down,” Alexakis said. “I have what’s called drop foot. I have three lesions on my brain. I have two on my spine, and the ones on my brain are on the left side. So that affects my right side. And so, I have to be very careful when I walk or when I can’t run. I used to love to run, but I always enjoyed swimming. And the thing about swimming is with MS, you’re not supposed to get overheated. Heat is bad. Cold isn’t great, but heat is really bad. So, I can swim and not get [overheated] and really get a lot of really hard cardio. Plus, swimming is just great exercise for everybody. It’s no impact. Low impact. I do exercises like physical therapy exercises they give me in the pool for water resistance and stuff.”
Craig Wedren on Eddington
Post-hardcore fans were pretty amped about Shudder to Think being on tour for the first time in 17 years, but as frontman Craig Wedren told us, one of the things he was most thrilled about in recent memory was the latest Ari Aster film, Eddington, starring Pedro Pascal and Joaquin Phoenix.
“I thought it was the most exciting, refreshing, first movie made by a young artist that was about our sociopolitical moment without being didactic or feeling like I was being preached to,” Wedren said. “I felt like, ‘Okay, finally, we’re in a new era where everybody doesn’t feel like they have to be an activist on one side or the other with their political messaging.’ You can just express the absurdity of our times and of our humanity, which is always equally absurd, but is in a current particularly ridiculous shape and form, no matter what your beliefs or allegiance is. And I so appreciated that about that movie, and that it just kept taking these hard left turns, which at first I was like, ‘Oh, no, I’m not going to have anything to hold onto or grab onto.’ But the more absurd it got, the more invested I was in it, and I just thought it was a really unique movie.”
Colin Hay of Men at Work on making pasta aglio e olio
When Men at Work frontman Colin Hay provided his recommendation, it was of the culinary sort, a dish he made from scratch. And, no, it didn’t involve Vegemite.
“I was very excited about making a very successful pasta aglio e olio last night,” Hay said. “It was delightful and delicious. And one of my friends said, ‘Oh, this is like Michelin standard.’ So that was pretty cool… It’s just a nice pasta dish, is what it is. So, I would recommend learning how to make pasta aglio e olio. It’s really good when you come home from somewhere, and you haven’t really had dinner. And it takes about 30 minutes to make a good one. But once you do, it’s very satisfying.”