A while a go there was a "what are you listening to?" thread. Thought it might be fun to start a game of Desert Island Discs while I'm waiting for glibc to compile .

For those non-Brits who don't know, DID is a long-running national radio programme where a well-known person is invited to imagine they are going to be cast away on a desert island. You are allowed to take eight records (and invited to say something about what they mean to you), one book¹ and a luxury item². The theme tune of the programme is By the Sleepy Lagoon by Eric Coates. It is, of course, the dream of every Brit over a certain age to be a cast-away .

I'll go first:

• Concierto de Aranjuez ("Orange juice to you!") by Joaquín Rodrigo. Brings to mind standing on the alcazaba at the Alhambra in Granada, looking out across the city on a beautiful day.
• Purple by Shuggie Otis, an artist I had never heard until a few months ago - wonderful blues/jazz/funk guitarist.
• Maggot Brain by Funkadelic. Just blew me away the first time I heard it. Eddie Hazel should be spoken of in the same breath as Tony Iommi, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix...
• Abiezer Coppe by Leon Rosselson. First heard this performed live by Roy Bailey at the Warwick Folk Festival many years ago. A wonderful song about a wonderful figure from history.
• Ya Weledi by Natacha Atlas. I discovered her album Halim completely by accident (it was on a "listening post" in a record store). Pulsing rhythms, seeming to mix the North African and South American.
• The Glorious Om Riff by Steve Hillage. Another high-energy track to get me bouncing around.
• Redemption Song by Bob Marley. Wonderful vocals, great lyrics ("Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, / None but ourselves can free our minds")
• The Lakes of Ponchartrain by Christy Moore, a beautiful love song by perhaps my favourite artist (seen him twice, will be seeing him again at the end of May if I'm not cast away on a desert island).

For my book, I would want to take my favourite novel - Catch 22. The ending makes me smile. For a luxury, I think I would like an astronomical telescope - having lived in cities for so long, it's always a shock to get out somewhere where the sky is dark at night.


¹ apart from the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible (or another sacred/philosophical work of your choice) which are provided for free.
² which must be of no practical use whatsoever in helping you to escape or summon help.

Interesting post, but due to the fact that technology has moved passed CDs now, I would rather just have a laptop along with my new shiney 1TB HD, with all my music collection. Plus a few movies here and there. I kinda have a wide variety of musical tastes, ranging from classical, to all types of rock, so there would be too many to list anyhow.


Also, if a notebook/external HD wouldn't be available, I would make sure to at least buy a portable media player that supports both flac and mp3 (since I still have quite a bit of mp3s that I can't find anymore, so I can't replace them), with a very decent amount of storage... Lets say around 300GB or so.

Aah... but the point, then, is that you wouldn't have to think what pieces of music really meant something to you. You could simply take Union and 90215 alongside Tales from Topagraphic Oceans and Relayer, and wouldn't have to agonise over whether Wham and New Kids on the Block were really retro classics or just naff.

Imagine your plane crashed on the desert island. Your laptop mostly came through OK, but your HD was damaged and is about to fail. You only have limited space left on your bootable USB drive - which tracks do you rescue?

And how many times will you be able to boot your laptop/record player on a deserted island, i.e. without electricity? Unless you select as your one luxury a fully-fledged power plant.

Alright here's my list, these are my favorite albums, by records you mean albums, right, cuz if it's songs, it would be too few:

(In no particular order)

# Album - Artist
1) Nirvana - Nirvana
2) Nevermind - Nirvana
3) Marcy Playground - Marcy Playground
4) Shapeshifter - Marcy Playground
5) Third Eye Blind - Third Eye Blind
6) Blue - Third Eye Blind
7) Rubberneck - Toadies
8) Bob Marley Gold - Bob Marley (a compilation of his best songs, truly awesome) The one seen here: http://www.amazon.com/Gold-Bob-Marle...1108416&sr=8-1

Book:

Hard to say, because if I have my luxury item it won't matter much. Still, I'd probably like a Linux reference book, might come in handy, one that is comprehensive.

Luxury item:

Laptop with indestructible, waterproof, dustproof, shockproof, diamond plated outer case, internal nuclear reactor power supply that will last until well after I die, large widescreen panel, slackware pre-installed, liquid nitrogen cooled, with the highest performance components money can buy, built-in satellite internet receiver that never looses signal (with free lifetime subscription), two HDDs of largest size available, best nvidia graphics card, most RAM possible. Laptop has been pretested to be free of firmware bugs, hardware issues, etc.