Last night I spent a couple of hours in the kitchen with my friend Richard playing at Desert Island Discs, the popular BBC Radio 4 show currently hosted by Kirsty Young. I put together a list of eight tracks on an iTunes playlist, plugged an iPod into my lovely Bowers & Wilkins speakers and we set about playing the music and discussing life. In a few weeks we'll reconvene and it will be Richard's turn to choose the tracks, while I ask him searching questions.
Here's my track listing:
- Crowded House | Distant Sun
- Sugababes | Overload
- Ian Dury and The Blockheads | You'll See Glimpses
- The Cinematic Orchestra | The Awakening of a Woman (Burnout)
- Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds | More News from Nowhere
- Bonobo | Nothing Owed (live version)
- Gruff Rhys | Skylon!
- Keith Jarrett | Part II C (The Koln Concert)
I've put together a Spotify playlist of these tracks which you will hopefully be able to access at the end of this link. (Sadly I couldn't find the Keith Jarrett track, but how appropriate that someone should post the album cover to Flickr as the piece of music they would take with them.)
If I had to save just one of them, it would be the Gruff Rhys. On a desert island I might just have enough time to learn all the words to what is an epic tale of modern life.
My chosen book, alongside the King James Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare (that everyone gets) would be a great big book of architecture – full of pictures and analysis of the work contained therein. This sort of thing...
Then to the luxury, for which I selected a proper pair of running shoes. The island hopefully giving me the time and space to have a serious stab at getting fit, running along the beach at low tide and through the lush forests in splendid isolation.
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Image: 'The one to take with me to a deserted island.' / flickr.com/photos/rheauchyr/35411829/