7.07.2008

Dessert Island Disco, Day Zero


You've heard of Desert Island Discs, right? Where you're crashed on a deserted island and somehow you had the foresight to bring along some music and something to play it on (or maybe you just brought the music and then constructed something from coconut shells, bamboo and assorted monkey parts to play it on after you'd tried to establish some semblance of civilization but before you all went crazy and killed and ate each other because the pig's head told you to?) and what would that music be?

This question, what music I'd listen to forever in an island prison/paradise, has always haunted me ever since the concept was introduced to me via that free magazine Tower Records used to put out, Pulse! (I don't think I was the target audience for that magazine, although I inhaled it every time I got my nerdy little paws on it. There was always a lot of Steely Dan - which I thought was a typo for Steely Dawn, which is a much more evocative band name, BTW - on those lists. Judging solely by that criteria, I suspect it was intended for middle-aged high school band teachers/music store employees. Or just any guy with ponytail and/or mustache.)

It's a heavy, personality-revealing question, what ten records you'd listen to until you died from dehydration/infection/getting smashed against a tree by a crazy smoke monster. You know, typical island danger. It requires some soul-searching, this D.I.D. thing. I mean, it's just those 10 albums! (I realize that Wiki says it's eight pieces on the BBC show, but they don't figure in inflation, plus that's probably in Metric and I'm not exactly sure how to convert that to English measurements, especially with the dollar performing so poorly in foreign markets so I'm just gonna go with 10 pieces. Roll with it.) That's it! They've got to be perfect! No filler here!

At 15 years old and with as many CDs in my library, I was still figuring out where the boundaries of my taste lie (let's put it this way: you probably couldn't have played lawn darts in those boundaries, let alone full-contact football) and was odiously ill-equipped to make these type of decisions.This is no game for children. This is serious business. Now I'm not saying my tastes are football-field-sized as of now, but I think I am maybe in a better position to make these hard decisions, knowing full well that any list I make is instantly outdated and subject to change given the day, week, or temperature. This idea was unfathomable to the teenaged me who feared that such a list, once set, was set infinitely. But I'm not so nuts now. Or at least a different kind of nuts.

For the next ten days, I will be posting one Desert Island Disc* here on the good ole' blog. Feel free to tell me I'm crazy in the comments section, start your own list on the Forum or, if you decide to do something similar on yr blog, lemme know and I'll link to it. Cool? The first installment will be crashing-landing later today. Watch out for debris.

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* This list is in no way definitive and may change due to any whim by its creator. This list is the intellectual property of Big Red Robot, Inc. a subsidiary of BloodCo, a Martian Overlord company. Martian Overlord: "Quietly enslaving the human race through covert means since we first laid eyes on your puny planet." ™ & © 2008.

5 comments:

Jason Quinones said...

with all the mix tapes you've been posting lately i've been thinking the same thing myself but i made it even more difficult...

just a mixtape(or mixcd rather) of only my 10 favorite songs!

i even thought about doing my own D.I.D for download. soon maybe.

in any case,so as not to leave you totally hanging, here are at least some of the bands i would have to include...

the clash
iggy and the stooges
ramones
run-dmc
eric b. and rakim
miles davis

rose said...

this is hard but i am up for a challenge...sortof.
i won't do it in 10 posts, just one list with no explanation because i'm lazy. :)

Dylan Todd said...

Jason, a mixtape of your "10 favorite songs"?! That would make me go cuckoo! I'm having enough of a trial getting through 10 albums I'd like to listen to forever. You're a stronger man than I.

Rose, looking forward to your list. If your mix is any indication, I'm sure we'll have some sort of overlap.

And yes, I spelled "Desert" incorrectly on purpose. I am imagining a chocolate cake island. Is that weird?

- said...

I know I'd need the following:

Limp Bizkit
Vanilla Ice
Britney (not early "schoolgirl" Britney (duh); more like "post 2 kids and post Kevin" Britney)
Coheed and Cambria
Winger*
And I'd need Adam Sandler's 8 Crazy Nights soundtrack for shizzle.

*and/or Scorpions and/or Nelson

Dylan Todd said...

Ben, are you serious?