Desert/Gonzo Island Discs

Like most people who've listened to BBC Radio 4's long-running Desert Island Discs (I suspect), I've found myself contemplating which records I would choose, were I on the programme.

Well, as an ultra-obscure author/blogger/musician, it's highly unlikely that this will ever happen. But I did get asked by Jon Downes, the noted cryptozoologist and person behind Gonzo Multimedia, to participate in the weekly online Gonzo magazine's "Desert Island Discs" feature (Gonzo Web-radio syndicate my Canterbury Sans Frontières podcast). Unlike on R4 where you only get to choose ten individual songs/pieces, Jon says "there are no rules". So as well as albums, I threw in some box sets. I mean, it's one thing to list some records to give an impression of what music you like, but another altogether to imagine being stuck somewhere with those records and no others, for the rest of your life. So I tried to imagine that situation and came up with my list, which you can see on pp.68-69 here.

Now I'm thinking "Wot, no Astral Weeks? No Spirit of Eden? No Byrd, Dowland, Orlando Gibbons, Goldberg Variations? No In A Silent Way? No King Tubby's Meets The Rockers Uptown? No Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics?" Still, I think I could find sonic contentment with the list I chose.