Top Ten?

In the mid or late 70s, I used to listen to KCRW, Santa Monica College's public radio station (and I still hear KCRW's Internet streams). One program featured a weekly guest (usually a celebrity musician, actor, artist or the like) who would describe and play his/her selection of music that they would most want to take with them to live out their remaining time on a desert island. (Guess this assumed that electricity and some level of requisite equipment and other conveniences would also be available.) Can't recall if the exercise was limited to their top five or top ten or what, but I sometimes think about how I would form such a list. Everytime I try this, the list changes, but some pieces crop up consistently enough that I might add them to the list of stuff I might grab in the case of a house fire or impending flood. You might have fun playing this little game yourself. Today, just off the top of my head, here are some that come to mind for a Top Ten ...

To begin with, there are three immediate must-take-alongs from ye olde music collection:

1. Bob Dylan (but would it be Blood on the Tracks? Bringing It All Back Home? Greatest Hits vol 1/vol 2? Planet Waves? Blonde on Blonde?)
2. J.S. Bach (how to choose ... Goldberg Variations? Mass in B Minor? Well-Tempered Clavier?)
3. Tom Waits (again, would I choose Frank's Wild Years? Bone Machine? Rain Dogs?)

The next seven vary depending on my particular frame of mind at the time I think about these things ... so, in no particular order:

4. Max Richter - Blue Notebooks
5. Jalan Jalan - Bali
6. Jacqueline du Pre - Elgar E Minor Cello Concerto
7. Miles Davis - Sketches of Spain? Kind of Blue?
8. Dmitri Shostakovich - 24 Preludes & Fugues (Bach homage)
9. Talking Heads - Fear of Music (among others)
10. Radiohead - Kid A? Amnesiac?

And what about Arvo Part (Tabula Rasa, Spiegel im Spiegel, Frates, etc)? Gorecki Symphony #3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs); Rachmaninoff Vespers? Portishead (Dummy)? Schubert Impromptus? Or Movies Go To The Opera (really recommended to anyone who doesn't yet know that they like opera)? Something from Howlin' Wolf? Muddy Waters? Louis Armstrong? Ramayana Monkey Chant (Balinese)? Laurie Anderson (Big Science)? Lots of other Philip Glass I love, too. Oy vey, I forgot about all my NONESUCH South Indian albums, too.

Almost impossible ...

Thinking about what I would retrieve in the event of an emergency makes me realize that -- as a computer professional, for shame -- I really haven't adequately provided for a good off-site backup plan for my music (MP3's on the iPod Nano don't really count as most wouldn't sound like the originals, plus some of the vinyl versions have almost irreplaceable album art and liner notes). But as cheap as storage is (today I saw that we could get 500GB Seagate SATA drives from one of our suppliers for just over $60 each) I ought to be thinking about making lossless digital copies of some of my stuff.b