JP wrote about choosing his Desert Island Discs and said how hard it would be. I can save him the trouble - his eight tunes would be these:
JP’s Desert Island Discs
| 1 | Blind Faith – Can't Find My Way Home full track |
| 2 | America – Don't Cross The River full track |
| 3= | Cheb Mami – Desert Rose |
| 3= | Gordon Lightfoot – Did She Mention My Name |
| 3= | Crosby, Stills & Nash – Suite: Judy Blue Eyes |
| 6= | The Who – Behind Blue Eyes full track |
| 6= | Leonard Cohen – Famous Blue Raincoat full track |
| 8 | John Martyn – May You Never full track |
I copied this list from his last.fm profile. They are the tracks he has listened to most often. Ipso facto, they are the tunes he should take to his island exile.
JP’s approach was a bit more labour intensive. As a high-bandwidth consumer he has too many albums to choose from. He tried to narrow it down by various criteria, ending up by selecting arbitrarily from only material released in 1971. For him, this appears to be a sweet spot year.
I wondered where my own sweet spot was, so I looked at all the tunes I have in my Media Player library (sorry I don’t like iTunes, particularly not on a PC, and I don’t have an iPod because my phone plays tunes quite adequately thanks). Here is how they break down by year of release:
Some of my tunes are from compilations released a long time after the tracks were originally recorded, so this chart is skewed quite a lot towards recent years.
Still, it’s interesting (to me) what sort of picture it paints of my musical tastes. I would have guessed the 90s would be a sweet spot but it seems that a lot of my stuff is more recent than that. There wasn’t much tabla-based cheesy house music around in the 90s I suppose.
And if you’re interested in my Desert Island Discs, last.fm says they are these:
Dominic’s Desert Island Discs
| 1 | Paul Weller – Wild Wood full track |
| 2= | The Bangles – Walk Like an Egyptian full track |
| 2= | BT – Blue Skies [Deep Dish Blue Phunk Mix] |
| 3 | Opera IX – Bela Lugosi's Dead |
| 4= | The Modern Lovers – Egyptian Reggae |
| 4= | Tom Waits – Rain Dogs |
| 4= | Pink Floyd – Shine on You Crazy Diamond, Pts. 1-5 |
| 4= | Tom Waits – Whats He Building |
If I had compiled the list manually it would have been completely different, I think because I would have been asking what the tunes said about me instead of what I actually liked listening to. In other words, I would have been worried about how cool the tracks were not how much I secretly liked them.
What are your last.fm Desert Island Discs? And what is your sweet spot year?