Category: Music

Album reviews, con­cert reviews, and per­son­al music activ­i­ties.

I’m typ­i­cal­ly not very excit­ed when I am giv­en a hypo­thet­i­cal ques­tion along the lines of ‘If you were on a desert island what five things would you want with you?’ My answer is always some­thing along the lines of ‘A Coast Guard ‘copter, fuel for it, a book on how to fly a ‘copter, enough food and water for two months, and Elsa Ben­itez.’

So the hypo­thet­i­cal you are about to read about, one that I assigned myself, is a bit unnat­ur­al. It does come as the result of some very deep pon­der­ing that I have been engaged in late­ly in regard to a list I am mak­ing of my all-time favorite songs.

Here is how it goes. You have been con­vict­ed by a police state for a crime that does­n’t mat­ter since you did­nt com­mit it. Before they strand you on a desert island with­out a Coast Guard heli­copter, a strange quirk in the legal sys­tem forces you into the fol­low­ing sit­u­a­tion: You have at your dis­pos­al a dig­i­tal library of all music and the means to burn it onto a CD. You only have one CD. You must fill it with your favorite songs, in a for­mat that can be played on the orig­i­nal Sony Dis­c­man that is in a bag next to your lone CD‑R. [That means you can’t stuff the CD with mp3s, bozo]. You can­not have more than one song by an artist, or else you will be flayed by super­in­tel­li­gent mar­mosets and then dipped in salt. What songs do you put on the CD?

Here is what I would put on.

Plush [Acoustic] — Stone Tem­ple Pilots — 3:54
Down to the Water­line — Dire Straits — 3:56
Tin Pan Alley [AKA The Rough­est Place in Town] — Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an — 9:08
Dan­ger­ous Mood — Joe Cock­er and B.B. King — 4:54
Fool in the Rain — Led Zep­pelin — 6:12
Zig­gy Star­dust — David Bowie — 3:13
Noth­ing Else Mat­ters [Acoustic] — Metal­li­ca — 6:23
For Martha — Smash­ing Pump­kins — 8:17
I Burn — Toad­ies — 3:31
The Soft Col­li­sion — Machines of Lov­ing Grace — 4:50
Spe­cial­ist — Inter­pol — 6:34
Have You Ever Seen the Rain? — Cree­dence Clear­wa­ter Revival — 2:39
Bohemi­an Rhap­sody — Queen — 5:59

Total Run Time — 69:20