The Desert Island Mix Tape

The Desert Island Mix Tape was a game I came up with as a means of forcing myself to consider and/or reconsider music that I heard when I was young, to see which my opinions actually stood the test of time and examine the work outside of the influences they arrived with (namely the radio station that played it, and what friends, girls, and Rolling Stone wanted me to think). Before long it had become a way to immerse myself in the stuff I absolutely despised as a kid and consider what if anything could redeem it.

The concept of course was a riff on those lists they used to include in the back of Pulse magazine: List the 10 albums you'd take with you to a desert island. Now, well it's all well and good to come up with such a list, it's really just a means of expressing your good taste and ego and doesn't really say all that much about anything else. Ultimately it's a gigantic bore.

Besides, if you're going to be stranded on a desert island, you're going to suffer a little. So the Desert Island Mix Tape asks you to consider the repertoire of every artist and from it choose one song that must accomapany you for your eternity of solitude. It makes for some hold-your-nose-and-select choices but that's the point. Nobody said being stranded on a desert island was going to be fun.

So that's what that's about.

This blog at one time was supposed to be a home for that -- I can't believe the first post was almost 2 years ago -- but I'm not certain the world is ready still. (is there a poll feature on blogger? I will check). What this should be is a place for me to write everyday, a habit I've too long neglected while working a real job, dealing with a wife and kid, trying to be runner, watching every Mets game and goofing off every minute on the internet, including an awful lot of reading what other people are writing. Here I think I'm going to write a little about music, a little about my family, a little bit about baseball, movies and TV, and food, and maybe not.

Here's a song on my tape. I absolutely hated this band and everything they stood for, but at 1:30 tell me he doesn't do an incredible Sam Cooke.