DISCS  I  DESIRE

Post as a comment your list of the eight pieces of music you would save if you could save just those, to have with you for an extended period of isolation. It's not the ones you'd save for posterity, just those you'd really want to keep you company for a year or two.

We realise that in the age of having thousands of tunes on something as small as your fingernail, the concept might be hard to grasp for some of our younger viewers, but having just eight pieces is no more a fantasy than today's reality was for some of us a while back (when music was listened to on things called records, or discs; we call them vinyl now).

Ideally include the composer as well as the artist & if there is a particular version. Feel free to add any comments about why you have chosen it.

If you wish to include a link to a YouTube or other rendition of any, please do so by including in the comment beside the piece:
<a href="URL">LINK</a>   

Insert the URL of the link instead of URL, making sure both sets of " are present.

11 comments:

  1. OK here goes:

    1. Because They're Young - Duane Eddy. My first single - and the old bugger is still going strong!

    2. Love Minus Zero - Bob Dylan Album Bought on day 1 of a 2 week hitch-hiking tour of Wales. Wish the iPod had been invented.

    3. Aint to Proud to Beg - The Temptations. Luscious Soul Music.

    4. Respect - Otis Redding - The original and the best.

    5. Do you believe in Magic - Lovin Spoonful. Yes.

    6. Hounds of Love - Kate Bush (extended mix)

    7. Ironbound - Suzanne Vega From the perfect Solitude Standing album

    8. Under My Thumb - Rolling Stones

    9. Another Girl Another Planet - Blink 182 Brighter than the original and cheers anyone up.

    10. Human - The Killers

    This is tough isn't it? I've missed out Fleetwood Mac, John Martyn, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Chris Rea, Bruce Hornsby, Coldplay .....

    ReplyDelete
  2. Can I take Kirsty Young as my Luxury?

    ReplyDelete
  3. No, only the Allsop is available in the Luxury Kirsties department.
    Also Rog, it was meant to be 8 like in the proper DID, not 10, so even tougher than you thought.
    Very nice choice (on the whole). Thank you.
    Blink 182 is a new name to us. But we will of course be delving into their Enema of the State & Take off your Pants & Jacket.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Here are mine, copied from my original timbobig post:
    Small Hours, by John Martyn. Eight minutes and forty seconds of exquisite understated guitar and effect pedal work, guaranteed to send you into a delightful soporific haze.

    Trying To Get To You, by Elvis Presley. This hit me in the eyes, guts and hormones when I was fifteen. And the vocal break at the end of the middle eight is his best ever singing performance.

    A Song Of The Weather, by Flanders and Swann. Although I didn't get some of the more sophisticated jokes on 'At The Drop Of A Hat', the album (Parlophone PMC1033, accept no substitutes) woke me up to the idea of wittiness, at the same time that Tom Lehrer did. I could have chosen any track really.

    Concierto de Aranjuez, Rodrigo. I was tempted to submit Miles Davis's great reinterpretion on 'Sketches of Spain', but I needed some proper classical guitar. Any version will do, mine is by John Zaradin.

    I Want You, by Bob Dylan. Specifically the live version on the 'At Budokan' album from 1978, where he gives us a slow, heartfelt version of one of his loveliest love songs.

    I Saw Her Standing There, by The Beatles. Well, they moulded a great chunk of my youth, so they had to be on my island. And it's worth it just for Lennon's brilliantly knowing line "she was just seventeen, you know what I mean ..."

    A Love Supreme, by John Coltrane. Just out of thanks that it exists.

    Zing Went The Strings Of My Heart, by the Coasters. Want to go to bed feeling exuberant?

    ReplyDelete
  5. So here we are, in no particular order, but there will be many who feel they should also be present, to whom I offer my profound apologies, whoever you are.

    I find your love – Beth Nielsen Chapman – (written by Beth Nielsen Chapman, Patrick Doyle) – from Look - there are so many of Beth’s songs I could have chosen LINK

    Hearts of Olden Glory – Runrig – (Calum Macdonald, Rory Macdonald) - the live version from Once in a Lifetime - I might never have discovered this excellent Scottish band if they hadn’t been support at a concert I went to in Bournemouth in 1988 LINK this is the studio version but some nice video of Loch Morar

    Heartbreak Hotel – Elvis Presley – (Tommy Durden, Mae Boren Axton) - could never tire of hearing this LINK

    Smooching – Mark Knopfler etc. – (Mark Knopfler) – from Local Hero soundtrack - probably my most favourite of the several versions of the riff in this exquisite film soundtrack LINK Also a nice tribute to the tenor sax player the late Michael Brecker

    Adagio for Strings - (Samuel Barber) – from 2nd movement String Quartet, Op.11 - to give me hope of rescue or release LINK a nice slideshow here also

    All along the Watchtower – The Jimi Hendrix Experience - (Bob Dylan) – from Electric Ladyland - there must be some kinda way outa here LINK

    The Logical Song – Supertramp – (Richard Davies, Roger Hodgson) – Breakfast in America - to remind me that maybe it’s not so bad being absent, for a while, from a world which is so dependable, clinical, intellectual, cynical LINK

    The Lonely Goatherd – The Von Trapp Bratpack - (Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II) NO, ONLY JOKING! (though it might fit). Whatever, you just have to see this: LINK The influence on their distant cousin John is clear for all to see.

    Shine on you crazy diamond – Pink Floyd – (Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Rick Wright) – Wish You Were Here – sail on the steel breeze LINK

    ReplyDelete
  6. Tim, thank you for your list. Very eclectic we think is the word.
    By sophisticated "At the Drop of a Hat" jokes, do you mean like about the sensation of walking on little metal bottletops nailed upside down to the floor? Without re-acquaintance, we don't recall the album in sufficiently great depth and sadly we have only a poor substitute version, so may not reach the levels of sophistication that can be acheved through the original wonderful rendition.
    Zing indeed!!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thank you, Virt. I was thinking of Flanders' take on Greensleeves, with lines such as "We are Henery the Eighth, We are", which went straight over my head at age fourteen.
    Rog - Because They're Young, yes! I have the vocal single by James Darren, which I fell in love to several times back in 1959. Who says nostalgia ain't what it used to be>

    ReplyDelete
  8. Someone To Watch Over Me by Ella Fitzgerald, to remind me how lucky I was to have parents with half-decent taste in music.

    You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet Baby by The Smiths. A wise man once told me that the music you encounter when you're 15 is the stuff that will stay with you forever.

    Don't Play That Song by Aretha Franklin. The greatest singer in the history of recorded sound.

    The Adoration of The Earth from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Will help me to commune with nature.

    Busby Berkeley Dreams by the Magnetic Fields. Because Stephin Merritt is one of the best songwriters of the past couple of decades.

    Enjoy Yourself by Prince Buster. A sort of apocalyptic party song, which would be appropriate, I feel.

    Paloma Negra by Chavela Vargas. Because I couldn't survive without at least one Costa Rican lesbian alcoholic torch song.

    Water Walk by John Cage. For the hell of it.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Many thanks, Tim F, especially for the links which we will follow up enthusiastically, as will, we are sure, many of our viewers. This is precisely why we are here.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Rog is right, this is tough. But I'll give it a shot. Of course, tomorrow it might be an entirely different list!

    1. Helter Skelter - The Beatles

    2. The Go In the Go For it - Grandaddy

    3. I Get Along - The Libertines

    4. Ball and a Biscuit - White Stripes

    5. Love in Vain - Rolling Stones

    6. Oh England, My Lionheart - Kate Bush

    7. Chickens - Hayes Carll

    8. Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd

    Now I look at it and think, that's pathetic, but off the cuff, well...

    ReplyDelete
  11. #Well, time for a preliminary list of lists:
    Rog:
    #3, the Temps
    #7, S Vega. Any track except Luca would do.
    Soaring:
    #5, Barber Adagio, ta for reminding me of that.
    Tim F:
    #6, Prince Buster, irresistable
    #7, Paloma Negra ditto ditto.
    Martin H:
    # 4. White Stripes, very sexy record.
    Is that eight? No, two more needed, so:
    From an unpublished list, Sh'Boom by the Chords
    and from outer space, Song X (title track) by Ornette Coleman and Pat Metheny.

    ReplyDelete