My desert island discs

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.