02 December 2013

desert island 5

it's a parlor game, you know. the setup is: you're stranded on a desert island and can only have five albums. the game is: which would you take?

here are mine.

1. the stranger. billy joel.
of course i have to pick a billy joel album. he just means that much to me. i could literally choose five billy joel records, but in the spirit of the game, i will select just this one. it is a serious dead-heat toss up between this one and turnstiles. tomorrow or yesterday, i could easily pick turnstiles. today, it's the stranger. i won't drag you through all the tracks, but just to say a couple things about the b-side. first track - vienna. oh my god, the first time i heard that track i was like, damn, i want to be that girl, that girl moving too fast, that girl who is worth more than she knows. so, that was ideal #1. then a couple tracks later - always a woman. okay, double damn. there's ideal #2. now i know the girl i want to be and the woman i want to become, and it's all laid out for me in road of stellar sterling crystal clear beauty. did i get there? you be the judge.



2. peter and the wolf. sergei prokofiev.
five billy joel albums aside... i'm pretty sure if i were on an actual desert island (with, you know, a state of the art solar-powered stereo sound system) i'd want some variety. so, my second pick is an accessible classic symphony. i haven't heard it in years, but when we were small, we'd listen to it all the freaking time. i am confident this will be a welcome addition to my five album library.



3. bringing down the horse. wallflowers.
there are a mere few voices in the whole wide world that can completely settle me down, and jakob dylan has one of them. (darius rucker and brandi carlile can do the same, but as i don't own an album of either, can't very well take them onto the ol' desert isle.) one thing about being on a desert island is that it'll be stressful as hell, so i'll need a vocal tranquilizer.



4. crimson. alkaline trio.
on the flip side of the calming mr dylan, we have a set of songs here that inspire me to heights of grating anger, soul-corroding fear, and steaming self-loathing. you know, sometimes you just need a break from the lollipops and butterflies. i was considering the equally bleak-inspiring black parade by my chemical romance, but the songs on crimson are ones i know nearly by heart, so i am fully aware of their power over me. sometimes, you just want to surrender completely to hate. honk of you get me!



5. the big chill, soundtrack. various artists.
last but not least, we have a complete cop-out compilation. a deciding factor for this choice is that i love the song "can't always get what you want" but pretty much despise everything else that ever came out of the musical factory known as the rolling stones. clearly, i cannot select a rolling stones album. (i sort of think i might like rolling stones' brown sugar, but i also think i might be confusing it with def leppard's pour some sugar on me, which i definitely do like.) in this case, to get what i want (caveat: not always possible), i'd have to procure the extended super-deluxe magnum remake version of the compilation. not sure why this song wasn't included in the first place, except maybe that it's true -- you can't always get what you want. at any rate, all versions of this soundtrack album contain myriad wonderful sing-along motown classics and nothing says 'desert island fun' like singing along to the motown classics.



and? so? what about you?

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