My desert island discs

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I recently learned that the radio show Desert Island Discs is available in podcast form. It’s good! I recently listened to the interview with Laurie Anderson.

The gimmick is that you list the 8 records you would take if you were stranded on a desert island, and the format is that a person is interviewed for about a half hour, and every few minutes during that period the interviewer (in recent years, Lauren Laverne) asks for a disc recommendation.

I’ll never be on this show myself–I guess the closest was my appearance on the BBC show More or Less–so I might as give my Desert Island Discs right here.

Following the format of the show, I’m not going to choose my 8 favorite records or the 8 records I would literally take to that desert island–more on that below–but rather 8 records that represent what music has meant to me during different parts of my life.

1. Antar (Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov)

My dad loved music–just classical music, not pop or jazz. The way he’d listen to music was not to play it in the background–it’s not like the radio was on playing classical music when we were in the house–; rather, he’d play records, or sometimes listen to music on the radio (we subscribed to a magazine that had the schedule of what the local classical-music station was playing during the forthcoming week or month, so he’d know when to tune in if they were going to play something he wanted to hear), and he’d sit still on the couch and listen, not reading or tidying up or otherwise occupying himself at the same time. I’m not saying he was rigid about it–he’d be willing to hold a conversation, and he wouldn’t get bothered if we were to walk into the room–; it’s just that he would sit and listen to the music, in the same way as one might watch a movie or read a book.

Anyway, his love of music was always in the background to me, as it were, but at some point in my teens he introduced me to some pieces. One of the first that I really loved was the symphonic suite, Antar. Not that the story had any particular meaning to me, I just liked the music. I still do. Even though almost always when I listen to music, it’s in the background, as for example right now a record of Scriabin piano pieces is playing as I type.

2. The Rite of Spring (Igor Stravinsky)

My dad played me this one too. I remember that there was a point where I was really getting into music–I bought a boom box and a bunch of blank tapes–as I recall, they cost about $2 each and held about 45 minutes on each side–and was taping lots off the radio, Haydn symphonies and Schubert piano pieces and all sorts of things that those radio stations were playing. One day my dad played his record of The Rite of Spring, saying something like, This sounds different from what you’ve been listening to, but you might like it. I did, of course, and I remain a Stravinsky fan–who isn’t?

3. You Talk Too Much (Run-DMC)

It was about six in the morning one day in college when I was walking across the bridge and into Boston to catch the train to the airport, and I heard this rap coming out of some stranger’s boombox. It was amazing–I’d never heard anything like it. It was only a few months later that I was at a party and heard some rap record playing. I asked someone about You Talk Too Much, he told me it was by Run-DMC . . . this was all new to me. It’s still a great record; I’d bring it to the island.

4. 20 Years From Now (Chutney)

Some friends in college had a band which they called Chutney (for no good reason, just some inside joke about something that happened in an Indian restaurant). They never cut any records, nothing like that–they just practiced a lot and performed in the Battle of the Bands in college a couple times. In grad school one year I was in charge of the dorm committee and I got Chutney to play at one of our parties. It didn’t go well, and at one point I came close to getting in a fight with some asshole who was heckling them. I never played with the band myself, but I did have a drum set–I love music but I’m very unmusical, tone deaf, can’t hold a tune, etc., so the drums were the instrument for me!–and I practiced with them a few times. Anyway, they had a bunch of good songs, and perhaps my favorite is 20 Years from Now. It’s a Tom composition, highly R.E.M.-influenced.

5. So. Central Rain (R.E.M.)

A bunch of us went to see R.E.M. perform in Worcester in 1987. At the time, I didn’t know their music at all, indeed I didn’t listen to much pop music at all. But my friends were going and they invited me along. I didn’t get much out of the experience–to enjoy a live concert, it helps to already be familiar with the music or else be in a receptive mood–but over the years I became a fan, and now R.E.M. is my favorite band, which makes me feel kind of apologetic since it’s prototypical dad-rock. I can make myself sound even worse by confessing that the first R.E.M. record (actually, CD) I bought was Automatic for the People, and that, yes, I like their earlier songs where you can’t make out half the lyrics, but I like their later stuff just as much. There’s no particular R.E.M. song that I’d pick above the others; So. Central Rain is as good a choice as any other.

6. Innocent When You Dream (Tom Waits)

Sometimes I hear music which sounds nothing like what I’ve heard before. That was the case for Antar and the Rite of Spring–hmmm, I guess it was more that I had heard that music before but had never actually listened to it–and certainly with You Talk Too Much. Other examples: many decades ago I went to the local public library and saw that they had records you could check out. I happened to notice Highway 61 Revisited. Believe it or not, I’d never heard any of those songs before–at some point I’d heard Blowing in the Wind and Mr. Tambourine Man and a couple others, but not any of Dylan’s snarly classics. Starting with its very first beat and continuing all the way to the end of the album, Highway 61 Revisited was a revelation. I felt the same way a few years later when hearing London Calling for the first time. Also Tom Waits, who I wouldn’t call one of the major figures of pop music, but I happened to have a roommate in grad school who was an avant-garde musician and was a Tom Waits fan, and I listen to his CD of Franks Wild Years and, again, this was nothing like anything I’ve heard before. So I take this particular song to capture that feeling of hearing an entirely new sound.

7. Don’t Worry Baby (The Beach Boys)

Just my favorite song, so beautiful. It makes me wish I could play music.

8. Wuthering Heights (Kate Bush)

I know someone whose teenage niece is an excellent singer–she sings all sorts of things on her own and also takes singing lessons. One of the recent songs she learned is this one that Kate Bush wrote at the age of 18. According to wikipedia, “The music and lyrics establish a duality between the real world and the afterlife. The real world is associated with the past tense and a tonic of A major, whereas Cathy’s afterlife is associated with the present tense and a tonic of D♭ major. The song also uses unusual harmonic progressions and irregular phrase lengths.” As noted above, I’m tone deaf, but I can still appreciate that the song sounds cool, not just a Ramones-style bang bang bang (not that there’s anything wrong with that; indeed we performed I Wanna Be Ablated at the gong show a few years ago). Anyway, I heard my friend’s niece sing it, and it sounded great–indeed, in comparison I found Kate Bush’s performance to be a bit overwrought. I’m including this as my final Desert Island Disc to represent the creativity of individual performance.

36 thoughts on “My desert island discs”

  1. I’ve been teaching my kids about music history starting from the dawn of widespread modern recording tech, let’s call that 1945.

    anyway, I’ve got a get them up and feed dogs and make breakfast so heres a list off the top if my head of stuff id want.

    Kind Of Blue
    Blue Train
    Karma
    A Love Supreme
    Mingus Ah Um
    Sgt Peppers
    White Album
    Abbey Road
    What’s Going On
    Curtis (Curtis Mayfield)
    The Rainbow Goblins
    The Police, I’m not sure which album
    She’s So Unusual
    Dire Straits
    Graceland

    I’m well beyond the count already… And I haven’t even come close to an acceptable well rounded collection… Bitches Brew isn’t even on there, and nothing by Alice Coltrane! Oh well have fun with it.

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  3. When I lived in England back in the 1960s, I used to listen to Desert Island Discs, because, unlike the cricket matches or “The Shipping Forecast” broadcast on BBC radio, I could (sort of) comprehend the content. The program has been running forever so I naturally wondered if there has ever been a guest on who was a statistician. Accordingly, I verified Ben Cooper’s comment that Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter appeared on the program in 2022. Predictably, no practicing or retired astrologers turned up.

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  4. Six views of the Blues (Jimmy Smith + Kenny Burrell)
    Kenny Burrell + John Coltrane
    Sonny Stitt – The Verve Years
    Blows the Blues + The Hard Swing (Sonny Stitt)
    Grant Green – The Complete Quartets With Sonny Clark (and Art Blakey !!!)

    Velvet Underground + Nico
    The Grateful Dead movie soundtrack (1974, the last wall of sound concerts)
    Going Back to Brooklyn (Dave van Ronk)
    Richard and Mimi Farina – Best of
    Court and Spark (and everything else Joni)
    Binging ii All Back Home, Highway 61, Blonde on Blonde
    Cowboy Junkies – Lay it Down, Trinity Sessions

    Rubber Soul, Revolver
    John Barelycorn/Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys (Traffic)
    Blind Faith
    Disraeli Gears
    John Mayall – The Beano album (Clapton), Crusade (Mick Taylor)
    Sticky Fingers
    Everything Hendrix.
    Surfing with the Alien

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    • Oops. I left out:

      Tom Rush – Circle Game (Every song on this album was a major hit in the Boston area college/folk radio scene in 1968/1969. A bit over produced with too many guest musicians, but despite that, it worked.)

      Al Kooper Super Session (Stills and Bloomfield)
      Everything Hot Tuna
      Everything Jefferson Airplane (but not Starship)
      Quicksilver Messenger Service – their first album plus Shady Grove (Nicky Hopkins at his best)
      The first two The Doors albums. IMHO, they never got close to these after them, but lots of people liked the later stuff. Go figure.

      Stuff that was great but will be left behind:
      Al Kooper’s early (first?) band Blues Project. They didn’t play much blues, but had a bunch of good songs.
      Everything Canned Heat
      Everything Paul Butterfield (maybe I’ll change my mind on the first two albums)
      The women singers covering folk songs: PPM, Judy Collins, Joan Baez. Sure, amazing singing, but it ain’t their music they’re singing. (Baez was closer to the music than the others, of course. And she’s still hanging in there. Father was visiting one of his fellow workers in the Boston area musical instrument repair world, a bloke who also repaired guitars, and Ms. Baez was there. “She’s one high-strung bloke” was father’s comment.)

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  5. > it’s just that he would sit and listen to the music, in the same way as one might watch a movie or read a book

    I really try to make time to do this as well. And a fun consequence is now and then I’ll catch some nuance about a song I’ve heard a hundred times before.

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    • Really.

      I’ve been doing that in two ways. I blew for a subwoofer so I can hear the bass more clearly. I find it helps for jazz wherein bass players are way too quiet. And doing humongously intersting things. Quietly.

      For other reasons, I bought a pair of cheaper Sony bluetooth over-the-ear headphones, and while the sound isn’t all that great, for some reason the clarity of the individual instruments is flipping amazing, and it’s really easy to hear how the players are relating to one another. Great fun for jazz (piano vs. bass vs. soloist interactions) and Grateful Dead (with their two guitars and hyperactive bass player). Over the speakers, I listen to the music. Over the headphones, it’s the players.

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  6. This is the podcast for which I have the most back episodes downloaded. It rarely disappoints. Given that he was mentioned on here recently, look up the one with Clive James. As they say, I’d listen to him read the telephone directory, but fortunately all his stories are much better than the telephone directory.

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  7. About 12 or 13 I discovered Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite and would get lost in a faraway land listening to it over and over. A few years later, sampling more or less randomly through the local library’s record collection, I discovered Bartok and imprinted heavily. I remember writing a paper on the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion that impressed a summer music teacher between 11th and 12th grades. I found a photo of him and hung it on my bedroom wall. Also the Rite of Spring, which I finagled the music appreciation teacher in HS to play to the class. Then off to college, where I was blown away by several recordings of stuff by Olivier Messiaen. (I had the chance to hear him play in person when I was 18, even walked by him a few feet away.) I especially remember this disc of the Quartet for the End of Time (incredible, extraordinary piece by the way) with a towering engraved figure sending out energy beams throughout the universe, or something. My first girlfriend had a record, “Blues in Trouble”, I think, that was a compilation of country blues, and also Hamza el Din, and my world expanded even more. Then it was Coltrane, especially Coltrane at Newport (that glorious, endless version of My Favorite Things). But at the same time, I was also plunging into the Holy Modal Rounders, Bob Marley and Brazilian pop and jazz. And Chicago blues. And Bach and Haydn. I’m so far over eight it’s not even close, and I’m only in my early 20s. I think this format doesn’t work for me, too much swooning over too many kinds of music.

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  8. Carpenters greatest hits
    5th dimension age of aquarius
    Jefferson airplane surrealistic pillow
    Steely dan. Aja
    Big brother holding company cheap thrills
    Sergio mendes and brazil 66. Forgot the title

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  10. on these kind of threads people thoroughly cover the beatles, kind of blue, and all the other iconic albums of the last hundred years. so here’s a few slightly less well-known ones that I really love:

    Campfire headphase
    Selected ambient works 85-92
    Vespertine
    Here in the pitch
    Airdrawndagger
    Geogaddi
    76:14

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  11. I’ll keep my list to eight.

    Keith Jarret – The Cologne Cncert: he played on a horribly tuned piano, adapted to it and made one of the seminal solo piano recordings of all time
    John Handy Live at Monterrey – I saw this one in person and it was remarkable; still listen to it several times a year
    Miles Davis – Sketches of Spain; with Gil Evans and I like it better than Kind of Blue
    Nathan Milstein – Bach Violin Sonatas and Partitas; best recording of these pieces and the chaconne in the 2nd partita is magisterial
    Beaux Arts Trio – Schubert Piano Trio in E Flat; Kubrick used this in Barry Lyndon but it was the wrong choice IMO as it was composed 100 years after the novel’s setting
    Kiri te Kanawa – Strauss Four Last Songs; saw her live with the Washington National Symphony under Abado; London Symphony under Andrew Davis is the best recording
    Frank Zappa – Hot Rats; really too many to choose from; I saw him live several times including the Zubin Mehta/LA Philharmonic mash up at Pauley Pavillion
    Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – Will the Circle be Unbroken; the original one is great with Roy Acuff, Maybelle Carter and others

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  12. Great list. The interesting part is the connection to memories and experience, especially the experience of hearing for the first time something very different than anything else. Usually it’s a solitary experience — I was blown away by the Velvet Underground, but in 1993 rather than 1967 thanks to my college roommate’s quite good CD collection — and sometimes communal — Nirvana’s “Nevermind” really was a phenomenon at my high school. I doubt the latter occurs much anymore.

    Automatic for the People is an album whose appeal mystifies me — I got the CD, probably at the same time as you, but I found it stupefyingly boring and I’m sure I haven’t taken it out of its case in the last 30 years…

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    • I didn’t get out much in high school, but I did catch the Velvet Underground playing their first album material. (I had always thought that I had been ridiculously lucky, but I recently learned that they did that show in Boston quite a few times.) It turns out their drummer wasn’t a trained drummer, but largely figured out her own thing herself, ans it it really worked. Much less use of snares and cymbals and the like and more bass and toms. Almost a Native American vibe. Like I said: it really worked.

      I didn’t follow VU after that, though, and it’s all Arlo Guthrie’s fault. The first time a Boston folk/college radio station played Alice’s Resstaurant, I had a horrible foreboding that said radio world was going to be completely useless for the next month or two. It felt like six. For me, Alice’s Restaurant is a silly joke I’ve already heard. After the first hearing. Yet every station played it every hour on the hour (it seemed), and people kept requesting it. This went on for months, it seemed, so I really really really hate long songs with simple jokes. And the VU did a couple of those (e.g. The Gift). Sigh. It turns out there are some nice songs on their later albums, but they didn’t get played much back in the day. Sigh. (I suspect the disc jockeys loved long songs: made life much easier for them.)

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  13. In terms of REM, thank you for the reminder. So. Central Rain is quintessential REM and Michael Stipe. And Reckoning is the REM desert island disc to have. Anecdote about that Worcester concert (my first at a larger venue, at age 15): my friends and I got pretty good seats, though somewhat to the side, such that we could see side- and backstage goings-on. Throughout the show, Peter Buck seemed to be drinking heavily – what looked like red wine. He would sit down at a little table side-stage with his glass pretty frequently (I think he even sat out a couple of songs, with others filling-in on guitar). This of course made Stipe angry, and they had words more than once. I remember Mills kind of played the peacemaker. The stress of a long tour boiling over. 10000 Manics opened. Amazing night.

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  15. Good call, Matt. Another, but more esoteric, Island Records selection would be Ernest Ranglin’s Below the Baseline. It’s like Jazz, Ska, and Funk, all rolled into one.

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      • dsapsis –

        I doubt you’ll see this but in case you do, and for anyone else….just listened to this while doing some power tool free construction outside in the woods with an impending thunderstorm.

        Perfect! Great recomendation. Got much more work done than I would have otherwise – helped to focus the mind on the work.

        I’d never heard of him.

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  16. Great post and idea! Could be a new podcast right there!!

    It seems a fun way for listeners to both possibly get acquainted with new music, and hear some personal stories and thoughts which might be interesting in some way, shape, or form.

    I’ll share 8 songs, not albums if that’s alright.

    Islands in the stream – Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers: I bought a radio-cassette player with my pocket money when I was around 6 years old and I think this must have been one of the first songs that I heard on it that stuck with me. I still love that song.

    Bad – Michael Jackson: A little further in the 80’s. This was big back then. If I remember correctly, the video was announced and played on TV on some music show here and it was amazing! The dancing was amazing in the video. The backflip!

    Hotel Illness – The Black Crowes: I got a cassette tape with some rock music on it from my baseball coach or something like that and it had this song on it. Still love The Black Crowes, and they surprised me with some new songs recently which I think are great (e.g. Dirty Cold Sun)

    Whole lotta Rosie – AC/DC: I remember having this on my cassette tape on my walkman listening to it while cycling home from school. I was becoming clear that I did not like school very much, and I think I was mad while listening to the song or something like that. It may come as no surprise that I dropped out of high school at a later point in time.

    Columbia – Oasis: This was in the early 90’s if I am not mistaken. Bought a guitar, wanted to try and see if I could be a musician. I learned this song as well. I didn’t have the talent to play. I think my lyric writing has improved since then though. Still love lots of music from them, and even have special memories concerning their third album which I bought somewhere in Spain while on a bicycle tour there if I am not mistaken. I also went to the concert from that third album.

    Fields of Joy – Lenny Kravitz: I like lots of his music from the 90’s and early 2000’s. I included it here because I went to a few of his concerts in that time and those were great.

    Little Wolf’s invincible yellow medicine paint – Vincent Neil Emerson: Came across his music very recently via youtube. Love a few songs by him, and this one is amazing. Love the following line in the song: I have been down, but I ain’t out yet. I’ve been down a few times as well now, but I ain’t out yet. Sometimes I think that’s amazing as well. His version of Co’dine is great as well I think!

    Let’s go crazy – Prince: Been into Prince lately. Watched Purple Rain for the first time, and I’ve been listening to his music a lot lately. The intro on this is amazing. Full circle. Back to the 80’s. It seems I started to really appreciate music then around 6 years old or something like that.

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