15 Years Of Desert Island Discs

My 5 Desert Island Discs.

by me, age 12, 17, 22, 27

Discs by Matt, Age 12:
1) Stone Temple Pilots - "Core" : Because even though they were poseurs absolute, they wrote the kickass music that any 12 year old would love.
2) Guns N Roses - "Use Your Illusion II": Even though I was about 2 years late to the GnR fad, any angry 12 year old is going to love songs like "You Could Be Mine". I remember getting to 8th Grade so happy to have finally gotten into the music that everyone else loved...only to find every kid was a gangsta rapper.
3) Wu-Tang Clan - "Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)": To this day, I can recite almost every lyric of every track from this album. I saw them on "The Box" before they got big and immediately fell in love with ODB. Who could resist?
4) Porno For Pyros - "Porno For Pyros": This is actually the one album that I have not bothered listening to since I was 12. It was among the first tapes that I got, and there were some remarkable tracks; "Pets", "Cursed Female", and the like. I don't know why I never picked this up again, but I just haven't.
5) Spin Doctors - "Pocket Full of Kryptonite": A reasonably awesome album with some really amazing tracks. The blend of blues, Greatful Dead jamming and whistle-licisious melodies have made these songs stick with me longer than perhaps they should have.

After this, I really got into Mudhoney for about 2 years. I was obsessed! I got every single one of their albums, as well as about 10 bootlegs (who would have thought Mudhoney had bootlegs!).

Matt, age 17, lists his Desert Island Discs:

1) David Bowie - "Diamond Dogs": This and "Scary Monsters" were probably my favorite Bowie albums at the time. The "Candidate/Sweet Thing/Candidate (reprise)" suite is a-mind-blowin'!
2) Frank Zappa - "Apostrophe *": I dare anyone reading this (OK, that would just be me) to list a better commercial Zappa album. It's got great musicianship, catchy suites and funny lyrics. Plus all the Yellow Snow any 17 year old boy could want.
3) T. Rex - "The Slider": Simple, whistlable guitar lines with simple, whistlable vocal melodies really combine to make one...whistlable album. Even if I'm not in the T. Rex mood, I can always play a track or two from this "joint" and jam on my air guitar. Also love the space-age, vaguely gay lyrics, and the fact that Marc Bolan was Jewish. Oh, and he named his kid "Rolan": Rolan Bolan. Good times.
4) The Rolling Stones - "Some Girls": Probably the best latter-day Stones album (IE, the best album they've released since "Exile On Main Street"). Pretty diverse too. What other album at the time would have the country honk of "Far Away Eyes" placed next to the new wave of "Shattered" and the disco of "Miss You"? A precursor of today's "iPod-shuffle" albums from the Gorrilaz and N.E.R.D. Good stuff.
5) Syd Barrett - "Barrett": I think his first album's better now, but back then I couldn't resist "Gigolo Aunt" and the "Effervescing Elephant". Looking back, I think people are obsessed with him because what MIGHT have been, rather then what was. Both of his solo albums are really a hit or miss affair.

OK, then I went to college and people started downloading music and albums became worthless relics of an earlier age. Those who still listened to CDs were dragged out into the street, beaten with a Zune and cast into a river tied to a rock to see if they were witches.

I still managed to get an album or two here, but like it was for everyone else, it was about the song, rather then the delectable whole of a well-sequenced record.

Matt, age 22:

1) The Psychedelic Furs - "Forever Now": This is by far and away their best album. I should add an "IMHO", but screw Internet initialisms. Almost every track is bursting with energy; mostly because of the subtle synths and the blistering lead guitar work. Have you heard "President Gas"? Listen to that lead line: it makes me want to punch a transient.
2) The Teardrop Explodes - "Kilimanjaro": Wow, here's another eye opener. Disco bass, super-charged Philly soul brass, angular guitar lines and weird-ass lyrics truly make this sucker a golden remnant of a long-gone era. That was a shitty way to end a sentence, but there you go.
3) Julian Cope - "Interpreter": Again, this is not my favorite Cope Album (that award would probably go to "World Shut Your Mouth"; I just didn't get that one until I was 23), but there are three or four tracks on this album that would blow a deaf person's mind. "S.P.A.C.E.R.O.C.K. With Me" and "I Come From Another Planet, Baby" are slickly sweet camp amazingness and "Cheap New-Age Fix" has an instrumental coda which would melt the wax of any record player you dare put the album on.
4) The Smiths - "The Queen Is Dead": That's one fine album. I think it's probably their best, especially as Morrissey is at his morbid poetess peak and the chugging pop riffs are as catchy as humanly possible. The depressive 12 year old girl smoking cigarettes by the graveyard and cutting initials into her arm inside me totally has a favorite album.
5) Adult. - "Resuscitation": Hey, it's Dance Punk! Remember how Electro got big in the early-naughts? No? Well @$!% you, then! This is actually a pretty good album and I burnt a hole in the CD because I listened to it so much my senior year of college. No one else liked it for some reason! I would play it for almost everyone and I would generally get rolled eyes and one time, someone projectile vomited at me. I remember I thought I would impress a bunch of stoned filmies at my house party by playing this for them, and they walked out! Getting stoned film students out of your house is a pretty tough task, so I guess Adult. was good for something. I suppose people weren't ready for their Nintendo-y drum beats and dissonant female vocals. They were pretty shitty live though; just two people: a singer, bass player and a whole lotta sequenced drums.

OK, Matt, age 27, what do you think?

OK, third person narrator; my ALL TIME TOP FIVE DESERT ISLAND DISCS*

*subject to change on a daily basis.

1) The Beatles - "White Album" - I mean, come on. Sure, there are a few tracks here and there which aren't up to Beatles standard ("Wild Honey Pie" or "Good Night", for example), and it's not as good as "Revolver" or "Abbey Road", but it's got more Beatles songs then any other of their albums and includes 2 of my favorite George Harrison compositions ("While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Savoy Truffle").
2) David Bowie - "Ziggy Stardust" - This is a close one, because I would almost rather choose "Scary Monsters", but this album gets the nod because it is so perfectly arranged; I could listen to it a million times and find something new each time. Thanks, Mick Ronson.
3) Frank Zappa - "We're Only In It For The Money" - It's a close race between this one, "You Are What You Is", and "Apostrophe *", but this one wins because of the sheer volume of different music on it. I love the 30 second song-snippets, but I just wish Zappa had fleshed some of them out a little more and made them into legit songs. Zappa gets the last laugh because he writes way better pop music then the pop music he's lampooning.
4) The Teardrop Explodes - "Kilimanjaro"- Unlike all the other albums on this list, this has been my desert Island choice since I got it. I don't think it's been demoted or overtaken by another Teardrops disc in the past 8 years.
5) The Rolling Stones - "Exile On Main Street" - This is one album I don't come back to all that often (maybe once every 2 years or so), but I consistently acknowledge that it's an amazing collection of songs that the Stones never really equaled. I could imagine laying back in the hot sun, popping open a cocoanut, snuggling next to my favorite Monkey, and falling asleep while listening to its' melodic hard rock and bluesy interludes.

Good times on Desert Island.