Inspired by Andy Lewis doing the same thing <here>, I have put together my Desert Island Discs. This is actually the 2nd time I have done one, as I was a guest on a radio show when I was at UEA, on their radio station Livewire, and had to pick 5 songs. But that was a while back, and I get 8 choices…so here we go!
1: Vera/Bring the Boys Back Home/Comfortably Numb – Roger Waters
A bit to unpick here! Firstly, I am obviously aware that The Wall is a) by Pink Floyd and b) the best album of all time. And that this is 3 songs, not 1. If I were forced to pick one, it would be Comfortably Numb, but I have put this run of 3 songs in as when I saw Roger Waters perform The Wall at the o2 and again at Wembley, this 10 minute stretch was truly mind-blowing. There is a little taster <here>
2: Common People – Pulp
My formative years in music were the early-mid 90s, so there had to be some BritPop in on the list. Most of my friends were Oasis or Blur, but I always had Pulp ahead of them. Different Class is a fantastic piece of work, and Common People is my pick of the tracks from it.
3: Remember Me – British Sea Power
I first stumbled upon BSP watching some festival highlights on TV late one evening. They showed 2 songs, this being one, and I was hooked. I’ve followed them ever since, and have seen them live on a few occasions – something I would highly recommend that you do. They almost certainly haven’t had the mainstream success they deserve, but then that’s not always a bad thing…if you’ve never heard the song, <click>
4: A Certain Romance – Arctic Monkeys
Driving to a cricket fixture at Mistley (or some other glamourous location in the Suffolk/Essex borders) in 2005, my friend put a CD on which he’d sourced somewhere online. It was a demo CD from the Arctic Monkeys, and lived up to the hype he had been giving it, from that, to seeing them at numerous venues holding 700 up to 70000, I’ve always had this track ahead of anything else they have done.
5: The Globalist – Muse
My favourite ‘current’ band (if that is a category? If not, it is now), and it is very hard to pick one of their tracks. Time is Running Out is the one that introduced me to Muse, Hysteria was a go-to track when I used to do some DJing. But Drones is their best album, and I adore this song – it probably has a bit of everything that makes them so good.
6: Intervention – Arcade Fire
Arcade Fire probably push Muse in the previous category. A truly stunning band with a great body of work behind them already. This, from their album Neon Bible is my pick of the bunch.
7: Baba O’Riley – The Who
There had to be something in here to represent how important listening to bands like The Who has been to me. With parents who were in their early 20s in the late 60s, I was introduced to a lot of great music growing up, and this song is probably the one that I have gone back to time and again of those bands that they introduced me to.
8 – All These Things That I’ve Done – The Killers
At UEA, in 2005, watching The Killers was one of the best gigs I have been to. A band and song to sum up my time at UEA would certainly be this.
As well as the music, I get a book and an item. The book would be The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas, and I would take my piano and try to learn the bit from the end of the Globalist…
So. What’s on your list?
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