…Or playlists about life

*Desert Island

Discs

*

*This assembly came about for three very

important reasons…to me anyway…

*I lost my old but loved 60 gb ipod with 11934 tracks on…! And wondered what I would put

back on my new one…hmmm…

*I love it…reason enough on a Thursday

*It is a good way to think about the person we

are at any point in time…

*

Imagine being ship wrecked on a desert island

And washed ashore are 8 records to be your

Sole companion whilst you wait to be rescued…

* And yes you cleverly get a mechanical machine to play them on…

In 1941 Roy Plumley was in his pyjamas and this

wonderful idea for a radio programme – guests

would chose 8 records and he would gently ask

them the reasons why they had selected them

and the memories associated with their choice.

The Radio channel was called the Home Service

now it is Radio 4.

And your parents probably have it on right now!

What was fantastically clever about Roy

Plomley’s idea was that the guests reaction to

their music often revealed sides of them not

previous known especially in the days before

twitter, the web and b list celebrities…

sorry MIC fans.

Mr Thould’s selection 1. Bert Jansch Avocet

2. Kate Rusby Underneath the Stars

3. Penguin Café Orchestra Perpetuum Mobile

*

As you might know by now us Arty types are rather emotional and I often find myself crying as over the years I have listened to castaways telling the stories behind their selection.

Its not because I’m unstable but there are often universal truths about the world wrapped up in the stories.

“I love the relationship that anyone has with music ... because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. ... It's the best part of us probably ...” Nick Hornby

4. The Wailin’ Jennys The Parting Glass

5. Dick Gaughan Workers’ Song

6. Loudon Wainright III Grey in LA

7. Keith Jarrett The Koln Concert

8. Prisme Annbjorg Lien

Mr Thould’s playlist cont.

*

*The radio is still a wonderful instrument and it

is that connection between voices that one

relates to –as if you were in the studio opposite

the microphone. I sense that element of the

show is as poignant now as it was in the dark

days of World War 2 when it was first

broadcast.

*

Choosing just 8 tracks to be washed up on your

desert islands is really, really difficult…

And it gets harder the older you get because

hopefully you will keep on hearing more music

you like and maybe in different genres which

makes it even harder…

Mr Courtney’s Desert Island Discs

1.Adam Ant Goody Two Shoes

2.The Smashing Pumpkins Bullet with Butterfly Wings

3.The Damned New Rose

4.XTC Making Plans for Nigel

5.Bombay Bicycle Club Flaws

6.Duke Special No Cover Up

7.Kenny Wayne Shepherd Never Looking Back

8.Soko I’ll Kill Her

Book

Josef Freiherr von Eichendorff – Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts

Luxury

My 1960s Yamaha FG 180 acoustic guitar

*

As an added spin the programme requires you to

chose just one of those 8 if you could actually

only save 1… this is where the castaway usually

picks the disc that represents something really

special – it could be a reminder of family or of

friends…it could be music their parents

played…or of a place…

It is often a classical piece.

Miss Smith’s Choices

I’ve got a feeling Black Eyed Peas

Shiny Happy People REM

Burning Ring of Fire Jonny Cash

Book Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Luxury A pillow

*

*The last request is perhaps more of a reminder

of the time the programme was created…the

castaways are given The Bible and the

Complete works of Shakespeare.

*They can chose one book and one luxury…

1.Eleanor Rigby – Beatles –but image of her picking up the rice after the

wedding is enough to move a big soft Welshman to tears.

2.Helplessness Blues – Fleet Foxes

3.Daughter – Landfill

Book – possibly Lord of the Flies, but only after I’d checked the rest of my

desert island…

Luxury – an iPad. Next question – is this a desert Island with WiFi ????

Mr Jones’s wistful choices

I always find this really hard…what one book

could you keep re-reading ?

What Luxury – guitar, piano, sketchbooks, books

to write the novel we all have in us?

Or the bar of the Ritz Hotel like last weeks guest

actor Dustin Hoffman…hmmm

* The luxuries chosen by castaways have been as

as they have been Bizarre

*— from curling tongs (Dame Vera Lynn) to a pot of stew and two dumplings (Norman Wisdom),

*a lifetime’s supply of Frosties (Ian Hislop) and sunblock (Nicole Kidman, Annie Lennox, Joan Collins and Sue MacGregor).

*John Peel wanted a football and a wall to kick it against;

*Kristin Scott Thomas, a pair of Christian Louboutin mules;

* and Cilla Black, a manicure set.

*Simon Cowell and Graham Norton each requested a mirror.

John Cleese asked for Michael Palin, stuffed.

J K ROWLING

1.The Beatles - Come Together

2. The Smiths - Bigmouth Strikes Again

3. Ludwig van Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57

‘Appassionata’

4. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Violin Concerto in D major - 1st movement

5. R.E.M. - Everybody Hurts

6. Marianne Faithfull - Guilty

7. Jimi Hendrix - All Along The Watchtower

8. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Requiem in D minor

Book - SAS Survival Guide

Luxury item - Pen and unlimited paper

Colin Firth

1.Curtis Mayfield - We People Who are Darker Than Blue

2.Fela Kuti - Odoo

3. Tom Waits - Heart Attack and Vine

4. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Mass No. 18 in C minor

5. Beck - Lost Cause

6. Free - The Stealer

7. Little Feat - Willin’

8. Gustav Mahler - Symphony No. 3 in D minor - 4th

movement

Book - Stories by Woody Allen

Luxury item - His guitar

George Clooney

1. Hank Williams - I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry

2. Pink Floyd - Another Brick in the Wall

3. Dinah Washington - Destination Moon

4. Frank Sinatra - Nice and Easy

5. Bobby Darin - Artificial Flowers

6. Bill Withers - Who Is He (And What Is He To You?)

7. Van Morrison - Moondance

8. William Shatner - Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds*

Book - War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Luxury item - An anchored yacht

Top 8 non-classical selections (chosen by

castaways)

1. Edith Piaf - Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien

2. Frank Sinatra - My Way

3. Noel Coward - Mad Dogs and Englishmen

4. Edith Piaf - La Vie en Rose

5. Flanagan and Allen - Underneath the

Arches

6. Judy Garland - Over the Rainbow

7. Louis Armstrong - What a Wonderful World

8. John Lennon - Imagine

Top 8 all-music selections (chosen by listeners)

1. Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending

2. Elgar - Enigma Variations

3. Beethoven Symphony No.9 (Choral)

4. Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody

5. Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb

6. Elgar Cello Concerto in E Minor

7. Handel - Messiah

8. Holst - The Planets

*

*Four people have presented Desert Island Discs

since 1942

*Roy Plomley

*Michael Parkinson

*Sue Lawley

*And now Kirsty Young

The iconic title and end music is titled

By the sleepy lagoon…

And was written by composer Eric Coates who

also famous for the theme to the WW2 film

The Dambusters

WHAT WILL YOUR 8 TRACKS BE ?

And maybe onenday I will be

listening to

Your choices…I hope so…