Desert Island Discs

I've been a fan of Desert Island Discs for years - not that I listen to it religiously but when I do I almost always find it interesting. For those unfamiliar with the show it is a Radio 4 (formally Home Service) chat show which has run since 1942. The idea behind the programme is that the week's guest is asked to imagine that they are stranded on a desert island with a gramophone player and eight discs of their choice. This allows for a rather insightful chat about the guest's life and why the recordings are special to them. They don't have to be songs and, in the past, things such as birdsong or even industrial sounds have been chosen. At the end the guest has to pick a book and a luxury item to take to the island.

For me, the programme has a great advantage over other chat show formats because the guest is invited when the producers feel they are of interest in themselves and not because they have some product to promote. Also I feel the choice of guest is interesting. They are often not well known media celebrities but people who have had interesting lives or excelled in an academic field. It also appears to have become a right of passage to aspiring politicians but I always feel that those interviews are rather strained and the choice of music is meant to appeal to the masses - hence we get a Coldplay song rather than the recording of the Nuremberg rally which they would far rather be left alone with.

The producers of the show recently ran a survey of listeners to see what the most popular choices would be. It's interesting enough and I'd go along with a couple of the selections but I think it misses the point of the show. It isn't even necessarily the individuals favourite songs that are picked but tracks that are of particular significance to them. It's something I've wondered about and I think it would be easy enough to merely pick the eight top tracks on an MP3 player - but I think that misses the point. What eight recordings would I take along to my island? Well, here's what I've come up with.

It's worth starting from the beginning. There was always music in my house when I was growing up whether this was on the radio, the (not very reliable) record player or even people playing it themselves. The first music that most people hear and become familiar with is from their parents' and their music collection. My father liked folk, classical and Rock and Roll. In particular he was friendly with a bunch of local musicians whom he first met in a Liverpool club whilst on leave. Of course, this story of a serviceman wandering into a Liverpool club in the 1950s will normally involve The Beatles but, in my father's case, it was a local folk group known as The Spinners. They were actually very successful in their time and had their own local TV show. Mick Groves was later to serve as a local councillor and Tony Davis's sister was even my English teacher at one time. I think of the songs they recorded it was the more humorous tunes that appealed to me. The one I was going to pick was Mrs Hooligan's Christmas Cake although I couldn't find a link to that. I did find one link for The Spinners for another song I can remember being sung at a Christmas Party.


When I started digging further into my father's collection I found my way into the classical section. I really took to this more than the popular music - maybe that is a little odd but it was just a case of what I could hook in to. One of my favourites was Holst's Planets. There were a couple of recordings of this. One old 78rpm disc with Mars played over its two sides and a more modern LP recording by Leopold Stokowski. This link is a later performance by Sir George Solti which sounds a bit better (without the crackles and scratches):


Saturday nights were always a big family time. In the late afternoon, someone would be heading back from a football match and the evening TV would kick off with Doctor Who. I absolutely adored this programme - I still do. It had to have one of the most distinctive and haunting themes in TV history and the original electronic mix by Delia Derbyshire still gives me goose pimples.


I don't think I could get by without something by The Beatles. I think Penny Lane brings back many childhood memories. It's a real nostalgic throwback by Paul McCartney and really bore no resemblance to the Penny Lane that I remember - it was usually raining, the buildings were still stained black with soot and most people knew it as the place where the buses terminated. I also knew it as the place where my uncle worked in the bank - he appears to get a mention in the song...


I've long been fascinated by electronic music. It can sound awful (and often does) but when it is done well there is something magical and other-worldly about it and yet it can still sound warm and inviting. One of my favourite electronic tracks is Kraftwerk's Autobahn. I first heard this, like may other people in the UK, on a Thursday night on BBC1. However, this was not on Top Of The Pops but on the programme that preceded it, Tomorrow's World. This featured new technologies which we were promised would change the world in which we live in. Occasionally they did. Kraftwerk were featured, not for their innovative music, but for their innovative (and largely homemade) instruments.


I seem to have had a love-hate relationship with football over the years. I love the game and I love the atmosphere at a match when it's at its best. I've also seen and heard many things at games that I'd rather disassociate myself from. So the next choice is Gerry and the Pacemakers' You'll Never Walk Alone. I could have gone for other football songs but there is nothing malicious or manipulative about YNWA - it's just fanatical support at its most heartfelt. I thought this clip of Gerry Marsden singing at a Celtic vs Liverpool match sums it up for me:


I've often said I have very catholic tastes in music but I do have preferences and I can get completely wrapped up in a genre. Heading into my teenage years the one genre that I found a strange attraction to was heavy rock. I can sympathise with anyone who doesn't like the music - it doesn't go out of its way to find friends but there is something about it appeals to me at a very fundamental level. It's a difficult choice to tie it down to one track but I think Rammstein's Seemann touches most bases for me: melodic yet powerful, loud yet lyrically interesting, basing itself on the classical story of Hades and Persephone. At least, that's what I think it is meant to be - I have no idea what they were trying to achieve in the video!


I've been getting into Jazz in a big way over the last year or so. It's difficult to pin down exactly what I do and don't like - I've been quite disappointed with some recordings but others have been quite a revelation. Probably the best case of that is Charles Mingus: Pithecanthropus Erectus is a great example of what I love about the genre:


I think for the book I'd take the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Is that cheating? It would certainly be getting my money's worth. I can spend hours browsing through something like Wikipedia - largely aimlessly and flicking through at a whim. So what else could I take other than the godfather of all reference books? I think for the luxury item I'd have to do something to placate my longing for creature comforts: hot running water, central heating and a shower in the morning. I suppose I have quite simple tastes when I come down to it. The one thing I would need to do the whole Robinson Crusoe act would be: a shaving kit.

So that's me all set for the desert island. I assume they are going to provide some sort of power for this gramophone?