Desert Island Discs

If you don't know the format, this is a long-running BBC radio show where guests have to choose their 8 discs to take with them to a desert island. I will be more generous and allow you to take a full album, but only one 'entire' piece of music from it is allowed. So no compilations, greatest hits etc. Ideally, you should comment on reasons for choices.

You also get the Bible, or any equivalent book of your faith, but you can choose not to accept any. You also get the compete works of Shakespeare. You can choose a book and one luxury to take with you. The luxury cannot be anything to escape the island or to communicate with the outside world. You also have to choose the one disc you would keep if you lost all the others.

Here are mine:

Blue : Joni Mitchell (greatest album from greatest female singer/songwriter)

Radiohead : OK Computer (a dirge, but what a dirge)

Supertramp : Crime of the Century (first album I ever bought)

American Pie : Don McLean (my best mans favourite album, which he played to me incessantly at university)

Bach : Partita in D Minor for unaccompanied violin (was quite a good violinist in my day before I stopped playing, always regretted not getting good enough to play the Ciaconne at the end, which is possibly the greatest work ever written for the violin)

Beethoven : 9th symphony (if you can sit through a performance of the last few minutes of this piece and not feel uplifted, you are either deaf or dead)

Mozart : Requiem Mass. Watched it, sung it, played it and I have to take something by Mozart.

Shostakovich : 5th symphony. For a compete change of mood.

Religious text : I will take the Bible.

Luxury : a full set of golf clubs and balls (at least when I am rescued I will be the best bunker player in the world)

Book : Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

Disc I would keep : Beethoven's 9th.

Over to you.

I also wonder if we ought to warn scacchipazzo about this, for the sake of his health. I think his head might explode when he is asked to narrow his choice down to eight, let alone one!

🙂

Music choices:

Frank Zappa: Guitar (1988). No lyrics to tire of. Twenty or so sonic sculptures.

Grateful Dead: Live Dead (1969). I have spent half a lifetime collecting everything they ever released plus 1,700 concert recordings in the hope that I would hear something equal to this performance of Dark Star. Never did. But it's been great chasing it.

David Bowie: David Live (1974). The fact that Bowie cannot remember making this and disowns it, gives this album a certain air of Je ne me souviens pas de le faire et je le renierai.

Keith Jarrett: Bregenz Concert (1981). Like the rest of his solo piano albums, e.g. The Cologne Concert, he made this up as he went along for about an hour.

Lloyd Cole: Mainstream (1987). Once spent 5 weeks - at the age of 24 - travelling around Europe on my own and accidentally only packed 2 cassettes, this being one of them. Did a lot of thinking to these tunes. I have no idea if they are any good objectively speaking. It was panned by the critics.

Kenneth Leighton: Veris Gratia Op.9. (1950) here is something both terribly sad and yet uplifting about this piece. Conjures up black and white photography of the end of WW2.

Robert Wyatt: Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard (1976). Due to my high school best friend's older sister being an art student, when I was in my mid-teens I was listening to Zappa, Wyatt, Brian Eno rather than ELO, Genesis, Queen.

Torbjorn Sunde: Meridians (1998). This was the album I listened to on headphones in the corridor of a Japanese hospital as my first child was born.

Religious text : no

Luxury : My guitar

Book : Voltaire's Bastards by John Ralston Saul

Disc I would keep : Grateful Dead: Live Dead (1969)

Originally posted by FMF
Music choices:

Frank Zappa: Guitar (1988). No lyrics to tire of. Twenty or so sonic sculptures.

Grateful Dead: Live Dead (1969). I have spent half a lifetime collecting everything they ever released plus 1,700 concert recordings in the hope that I would hear something equal to this performance of Dark Star. Never did. But it's been great chasing it.

Dav ...[text shortened]... ltaire's Bastards by John Ralston Saul

Disc I would keep : Grateful Dead: Live Dead (1969)

I just read Voltaire's Bastards.

Originally posted by Rank outsider
If you don't know the format, this is a long-running BBC radio show where guests have to choose their 8 discs to take with them to a desert island. I will be more generous and allow you to take a full album, but only one 'entire' piece of music from it is allowed. So no compilations, greatest hits etc. Ideally, you should comment on reasons for choi ...[text shortened]... f the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

Disc I would keep : Beethoven's 9th.

Over to you.

radiohead - ok computer, i hate to copy, but its a classic album.

billy bragg - brewing up with billy bragg, sound of my childhood and my leftie parents.

r.e.m. - lifes rich pageant, most of rem's early albums were good, this is my favorite.

joanna newsome - milk eyed mender, this girl is a lyrical genius and plays the harp like a woman with satan in her finger tips.

kristen hersh - hips and makers, an album with deep, rich, interesting lyrics and amazing acoustic guitar. there would always be something new to find when listening.

arctic monkeys - whatever people s.i.n.t.w.i.a, very funny, witty album with classic indie songs that remind me of my teenage life.

british sea power - decline of british seapower, my favorite album ever. interesting, clever songs about the weird relationship between man, military and nature. 'carrion' a song about a sunken ship, still sends shivers up my spine.

heather nova - oyster, its not my favorite album but was a useful weapon employed in the wooing of my wife. heather nova has an amazing voice, blew me away when we saw her live.


religious text: the bible, ill need something to burn.

luxuary: can i take my dogs?

book: i was going to try and sound brainy, but ill be honest - the history of the runestaff - michael moorcock.

disk to keep - decline of british seapower.

Originally posted by stellspalfie
radiohead - ok computer, i hate to copy, but its a classic album.

billy bragg - brewing up with billy bragg, sound of my childhood and my leftie parents.

r.e.m. - lifes rich pageant, most of rem's early albums were good, this is my favorite.

joanna newsome - milk eyed mender, this girl is a lyrical genius and plays the harp like a woman with ...[text shortened]... e history of the runestaff - michael moorcock.

disk to keep - decline of british seapower.

Sorry, you are allowed no companionship and that includes animals.

I am afraid you have to choose again.

Originally posted by Rank outsider
If you don't know the format, this is a long-running BBC radio show where guests have to choose their 8 discs to take with them to a desert island. I will be more generous and allow you to take a full album, but only one 'entire' piece of music from it is allowed. So no compilations, greatest hits etc. Ideally, you should comment on reasons for choi ...[text shortened]... f the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

Disc I would keep : Beethoven's 9th.

Over to you.

You've certainly put some unusual parameters on this. Otherwise, I might have found room for items such as "Shostakovich: The String Quartets (Fitzwilliam SQ)", "Miles Davis: The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1966" and "Thelonious Monk: Monk Alone".

The following have all stood the test of time for me (except for one exception), so I expect they would continue to.

"Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster"

Thelonious Monk - "Alone in San Francisco"

Jackie McLean - "Let Freedom Ring"

Leimgruber/Roidinger/Hauser - "Lines" (remarkably open improvisation with the finest drummer I've ever heard)

Such [Iwamoto/Tilbury/Prevost] - "The Issue at Hand" (2+ hours of improvisation by masters of the shakuhachi, piano and drums)

Skogen "Ist Gefallen in den Schnee" (relatively new acquisition but an exquisite example of composition meets improvisation)

Morton Feldman - "For Bunita Marcus" [Hidegard Kleeb] *Disc I would keep*

Morton Feldman - "String Quartet II" [Ives Ensemble] (Almost 5 hours of Feldman's sound world where the SQ at times sounds like an accordian or alternately an organ and never like a traditional SQ)

Originally posted by rwingett
I just read Voltaire's Bastards.

Na und?

The Lodger: David Bowie (got to have a Bowie, and this neglected classic, third in the 'Berlin trilogy', is appropriate for a desert island setting, while the off-kilter, somewhat aleatory music never seems to dull)
The Seer: Swans (a veritable sonic Aufhebung from reluctant prophet M Gira, summing up 30 years of work, which doesn't look like being exhausted anytime soon)
Your Funeral, My Trial: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (always on repeat in my head … the bluest bruised blue funeral blues, epic as the sky, generous as the grave)
Behaviour: Pet Shop Boys (elegiac party music; 'cos I won't be being boring)
Diesel and Dust: Midnight Oil (sometimes it's good to stomp around the yard)
Musick to Play in the Dark, Volume 2: Coil (tiny golden books of aural enchantment lure the listener away from any comfort zone)
The Pearl: Harold Budd and Brian Eno (with Daniel Lanois) (sundowners!)
Live at the Olympia: Paco Ibanez (poetic flagellation for the flagging spirit)
Ulysses: James Joyce (the audio version: 'cos it's music to the ears) / (if Ulysses is rejected by the panel) Desire: Bob Dylan (songs about entrapment and escape: very desert island)
Bach – The Musical Offering (I expect it'll take me an eternity to grasp the elegance of Bach's dainty little fugues)

Religious text: The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna (Garfield translation)
Book: Douglas Hofstædter – Gødel, Escher, Bach (to expand upon the Bach)
Luxury: a katana

Disk to keep: The Musical Offering

Originally posted by FMF

David Bowie: David Live (1974). The fact that Bowie cannot remember making this and disowns it, gives this album a certain air of Je ne me souviens pas de le faire et je le renierai.

First Bowie album I owned (vinyl, sides 3 & 4 printed the wrong way round), I love it. The arrangements were gorgeous (Moonage Daydream far superior to studio), the cover photo offended my dad, the suit was to the ultimate detriment of my sartorial sensibilities, but let that rest.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Na und?

?

Originally posted by rwingett
?

What do you think of it

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
What do you think of it

Well, I had mixed feelings about it. While I certainly wouldn't take it to my desert island like FMF, it was thought provoking enough (although it bored me in parts). I thought it was a little meandering and could have used some tighter editing, but I generally agreed with his argument. In the interest of full disclosure, though, I must confess that I didn't actually make it all the way through. I got about three quarters of the way there when it was due at the library. I felt I had gleaned enough out of it and didn't bother renewing it. I had other books I wanted to get to.

Perhaps FMF can fill me in on whether I missed anything essential in that last quarter, or whether it was just more of the same.

Originally posted by stellspalfie

book: i was going to try and sound brainy, but ill be honest - the history of the runestaff - michael moorcock.

Big Moorcock fan (underrated genius), but I'd have chosen The Dancers At The End of Time, or the Pyat books (Byzantium Endures, The Laughter of Carthage, etc).

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Big Moorcock fan (underrated genius), but I'd have chosen The Dancers At The End of Time, or the Pyat books (Byzantium Endures, The Laughter of Carthage, etc).

i did most of my moorcock reading in my early teens, dancers at the end of time and the jerry cornelius were too much for me then, i should give them another read, i might be able to get my head around them now. never read any the pyat books, ill give'em a try.