Lockdown Desert Island Discs

Choosing, listening, sharing
Music is a remarkable art form. It can establish moods and evoke memories. It can soothe, enliven, delight, excite, seduce, motivate, frighten, impress, shock, arouse. Music can calm you, disturb you and bring you comfort. Music has been enjoyed since recorded history and has mysterious properties that tap into the brain’s wiring in surprising ways. Musicians in Japan, for example, process music with different brain impulses than musicians in the West. Although the brain’s right (creative) side shows more activity when playing or listening to music, the left (logical) side also shows significant activity. Brain imaging research suggests that few parts of the brain are unaffected by whatever it is that music does to humans. A recent Desert Island Discs broadcast challenged non-celebrities to send in their “lockdown tracks” and thousands responded resulting in a very moving edition of the programme. Friend Michael sent out the call on Facebook and Sally and I and Sally’s sister, Julie, and many of Michael’s friends had an enjoyable 8 lockdown days of choosing, listening to and sharing music.

Julie's spontaneous choices for lockdown, exuberantly unable to narrow down to Eight choices!

The Ones I Left Behind
Choosing only 8 tracks proved trickier than I thought. On the BBC Radio 4 programme, over the years, choices seem to come in three categories:

• Discs that connect emotionally to a specific memory
• Discs that the guest loves right now
• Discs to impress the listening public

Trying to reconcile the competing motivations of the first two bullet points meant that Lesley Gore’s It’s My Party (the first record I remember from the radio) and the O’Jay’s Love Train (the first record I purchased with my own money) were in prime position until I realised that eight discs is such a meagre choice. Which Elton John should I choose? Which Beatles track?  Would there be room for David Bowie, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Marc Bolan, Rod Stewart, Bay City Rollers, The Jam, Mud, The Three Degrees, Aretha Franklin, Carly Simon, Dionne Warwick, Ella Fitzgerald, Joan Armatrading, Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone, Tracey Chapman – artists who have provided the sound track of my formative years? Which film soundtrack? Which song from a musical? Which classical composer? Do I include Ray Charles’s Born To Lose or Jim Reeves’s Welcome to My World or I Love You Because as they were favourites of my Mum? Or my Dad’s favourite serenading song: I’ll take you home again, Kathleen ? Choices…. choices….

My Eight lockdown choices

Tony’s Lockdown Desert Island Discs

• The Drifters: Kissing in the Back Row of the Movies (school discos, coach journeys, defying parents, delayed gratification – you can’t have too much fun/till all your homework’s done)
• Kate Bush: Cloudbusting (could have been many of Kate Bush’s tracks but this one has Donald Sutherland in the official video and is about fathers and daughters)
• Johnny Flynn: Detectorists theme song (a poetic lyric, a gorgeous melody and arrangement and memories of a truly great BBC TV series)
• Grieg: Peer Gynt (my Uncle Bill introduced me to Grieg, I’ve loved visiting Norway, Ibsen is a hero for me, I used the music in productions of Ghosts at university and Peer Gynt in my teaching career)
• The Beatles (George Harrison’s): Here Comes The Sun (fell in love with the track when it was first released and have returned to it time and again in times of need; it also contains one of my meta-obsessions – if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?)
• Elton John; Empty Garden (another poetic lyric by the miraculous Bernie Taupin, the connection with John Lennon, the terrific melody, the symbolism – there were many other potential Elton John songs – The Greatest Discovery probably leading the pack – but I settled on this one)
• Annie Lennox and The Eurhythmics: Heaven must be missing an angel (personal memories of a time and place…. Leek, the year before and the year after getting married….)
• Dire Straits: Romeo and Juliet (a story song, a great band, Shakespeare, set in Northumbria)

Save from the waves: Heaven must be missing an angel
Book: TH White’s The Once and Future King (all five volumes)
Luxury: Reams of paper and a fountain pen (with unlimited ink)

Sally's Eight lockdown choices

Sally’s Lockdown Desert Island Discs

• Simon Dupree and the Big Sound: Kites (I will fly a yellow paper sun in your sky / when the wind is high / I will float a silver solid moon through your window / If your night is dark….)
• The Osmonds: Love Me For A Reason (Where other teenage girls went for David Cassidy in the 1970s, Sally had a Donny poster. They certainly rocked white suits and could synchronise their groovy dance moves.)
• The Carpenters: We’ve Only Just Begun chosen mainly to savour Karen’s rich, fragile, effortless, secure voice
• Grieg: Wedding Day at Troldhaugen – a memory of Sally’s mum’s piano playing
• Irving Berlin – Sisters (All kinds of weather / We stick together / The same in the sun or shine) and a part of the annual Christmas celebrations in the Allard-Johnson household
• Earth, Wind and Fire: Boogie Wonderland – evoking Sally’s teenage disco days and a scene-stealing routine in (a favourite) 2011 French film Intouchables where Omar Sy energises a birthday party
• Holst: Jupiter, the bringer of jollity from The Planets Suite including the beautiful melody of the hymn I vow to thee my country but, more pertinently, a favourite piece of classical music for Sally’s dad
• Stevie Wonder: For Once In My Life for the happiness it brings

Save from the waves: Jupiter, the bringer of jollity
Book: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre
Luxury: A comfy bed with magically changing linen

Michael's Eight lockdown choices

Michael’s Lockdown Desert Island Discs

• Joni Mitchell: For Free (specifically the version from the 1970 Ladies of the Canyon album)
• Paul Simon: Rene and Georgette Magritte with their dog after the war (one of Michael's favourite artists, this song is based on a photograph Paul Simon saw in Joan Baez's house imagining artists in exile in America)
• Van Morrison: Days like this (a life-affirming song from a grumpy old git with a mean solo saxophone)
• Bruce Springsteen: Thunder Road (a poetic lyric, the live acoustic version from the Roxy Theatre)
• Bryan Ferry: Let’s stick together (excellent for bopping around the kitchen)
• Joan Armatrading : Baby I (Michael almost picked Willow or Love and Affection or Merchant of Love and I empathise because Joan Armatrading was close to making my final 8 choices)
• Tim Minchin: White wine in the sun (in tribute to the Australian branch of the Thompson-Snailham clan and in honour of a witty songwriter)
• Tom Waits: Picture in a frame (an acquired taste but a bona fide genius)
• In his FB posts, Michael explained: “The Rolling Stones Hand of Fate just missed the cut today…  no Elvis Costello, no Steely Dan, no Pretenders, all of whom could have staked a claim. Kate Bush could have been in there....”

Save from the waves: Thunder Road
Book: Nick Butterworth: The Complete Percy the Park Keeper
Luxury: Jura coffee machine with big sack of good, strong beans

BBC Radio Desert Island Discs: Roy Plomley, Sue Lawley, MIchael Parkinson, Kirsty Young, Lauren Laverne and a guest or two....

Not necessarily in the right order

Andrew Preview with Eric and Ernie

The late great Eric Morecambe
In the celebrated sketch with Andrew Preview (André Previn), Morecambe and Wise trick the great composer and conductor into raising his baton to steer Eric Morecambe through a performance of Grieg’s Piano Concerto. Of course Ernie is insanely wound up trying to make things go smoothly and Eric is full of advice for the orchestra (“not too heavy on the banjos”!) But the line that is quoted most often (by me anyway) is when Mr Preview (as he is still addressed by taxi drivers apparently) roars at Eric that he is playing “all the wrong notes” and Eric grabs André Previn (the epitome of a good sport) by the frock coat lapels and exasperatedly growls at him “I am playing all the right notes – but not necessarily in the right order!”

Stephen King
In his superb On Writing Stephen King recounts the story of a friend of James Joyce who visited to find the genius Irish author sprawled in agony over his desk at the end of his writing day. The conversation went something like this:

Friend: James, what’s wrong? Is it the work?
James Joyce: (nods in despair)
Friend: How many words did you get today?
James Joyce: Seven.
Friend: But James…. that’s good, at least for you.
James Joyce: Yes, I suppose it is…. but I don’t know what order they go in!

60 to 36
I’m not equating myself with either Eric Morecambe or James Joyce, but I know how they feel…. sometimes I think I’ve got the right words in my writing but they’re not in the right order, and sometimes I think what's drafted and redrafted could be better. Oh, the agonies of composition. What I have realised (something I taught to teenagers but now I know it’s true in reality because of my experience as a retirement-hobby writer) is another insight from Stephen King:
To write is human, to edit is divine
One decision I’ve made (since I’ve now embarked on writing Book 2 (and editing Book 1) of my Rhenium Tales trilogy) is that to stand any chance of finishing my magnum opus, the frequency of my blog posts needs to reduce. So from next year, instead of 5 posts a month, I’m going to aim for 3 posts a month (36 a year instead of 60 a year.) I started my blog in August 2014 as way of disciplining myself to “publish” something regularly whether I wanted to or not and I’ve mostly managed that but I have to acknowledge that Raydan’s story is tugging at my mind more insistently than ever and I have to manage time more efficiently.

Omit needless words
In his second forward to On Writing Stephen King quotes from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style (published in 1918.) King absolutely believes in the Rule 17 in the chapter entitled Principles of Composition. Rule 17 reads: “Omit needless words.” Therefore….