Friday, April 8, 2011

Music for a Deserted Island

I had a scintillating conversation with an attractive man last night about music.  More specifically, about our favourite bands and albums, what records we had listened to during our formative teen years, concerts we have attended. 

As I may have mentioned before, the first album I ever owned was The Partridge Family Album, their first record.  If memory serves, I think maybe the Easter Bunny brought it in my basket that year, which would have been 1970.  Oh sure, I was old enough by then to know that EB had some help filling those baskets but that was the beauty of having younger siblings, you got to cash in on the rewards a lot longer than you might have otherwise, in order to keep up appearances for their sake. :)

I bought myself two more Partridge Family albums after that but by the mid-70's, I had discovered my parents' collection of Beatles albums and started wearing out the grooves on those disks instead.

The conversation last night eventually got around to serious business - if you were going to be trapped on a desert island for an unknown length of time, what 5 albums would you take with you?  Okay, maybe it's a bit far fetched to presume that said island would just happen to have electricity and a record player but then again, maybe you'd have some sort of coconut contraption like the ones the Professor was always cooking up on Gilligan's Island.

Anyway, the only rule for our choices was that you couldn't take a Greatest Hits album.  4 out of 5 of my picks last night date back to my teenage years:

1.  Elton John - Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Piano Player (1973)

2.  Wings - Band on the Run (a favourite since summer camp in 1973 when one of my cabin mates brought this album and Elton's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and we listened to them over and over and over for the entire month)

3.  Beatles - Abbey Road (with the Medley being my favourite track on this album)(1969)

(not surprising that I enjoyed Sir Paul's concert so very much last year, is it?)

4.  Queen - A Night at the Opera (1975)

and one more recent release,
5.  The Dixie Chicks - Taking the Long Way (2006)

I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't remember all of the gentleman's picks.  I know he picked Boston, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin 4 and the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper album (an excellent choice for the cover art alone, one would have lots of time on said deserted island to explore all those faces in great detail) but sadly, I don't remember what his fifth choice was.  Clearly, I somehow killed the brain cells that housed that information over the course of the evening.  Oh well, hopefully I can remember to ask him about number 5 next time I see him, if the topic should come up again. 

Anybody else care to share what their five choices might be?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In no particular order:

1) Wings - Band on the Run
2) Beatles - Abbey Road
3) Bachman–Turner Overdrive - Not Fragile
4) Chubby Checker - Twist With Chubby Checker
5) Susan Boyle - I Dreamed A Dream