My Desert Island Discs

The rather excellent new Desert Island Discs website has a form where you can fill in your own eight discs... not entirely sure what they'll do with what they collect but who hasn't wanted to be on DID? I'll fill these in there but I need to explain my choices and as Kirsty's not going to ask me on the radio I guess I'll just have to do it myself here...

#1 - Snowstorm - Galaxie 500 - and this is the one I want left when the rest get washed away
Nothing makes me feel as comfortable as this - this is the song I will never get bored of. This video however makes me wince with pain listening to poor Dean's sore croak of a voice so best make sure that the one I have on the island is from On FIre.

#2 - Nellie the Elephant - Mandy Miller
I love this, reminds me of my granny... although not entirely sure why - certainly can never remember her singing it (or indeed singing anything) - I discovered only this week that it was produced by George Martin!

#3 - Leaving Here (live) - Motorhead
In 1979 Motorhead changed my life... in 980 they performed Leaving Here on Top of the Pops... for four years my life was filled with little else.

#4 - Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying - B&S
Explained fully in this blog post but in short it was the album that helped me through the exhausting early days of Adam's life

#5 - You Don't Want a Boyfriend - Brian (1991)
A visit to the Brian MySpace site and you'll find me listed in the members section as a "musician along the way" although my contribution to the band was really as a driver... and I drove an awful lot during the making of this record.

#6- Did You Ever - Nancy & Lee
Reminds me of my mum... in the early/mid 70s in amongst the many good times, my mum drinking a lot and some very loud arguments with my dad... and things getting thrown... Did You Ever makes me think of those bad times as well as the good ones... which is OK

#7 - The Intro and The Outro - Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band
Around the time that my dad came home with our first music centre he also came home with a copy of The History of The Bonzos - this was the opening track - all the musicians are listed on the song's Wikipedia page

#8 - Do You Want to Know a Secret - The Beatles
This is really for the whole of the Twist & Shout EP which I remember being played a lot - there's an old reel to reel tape, probably in dad's shed, of me and Anton in the early 70s arsing around and this track (and A Taste of Honey) are both played on it.

Luxury
The nice big modular synthesizer so I can satisfy both my techy and musical/noise-making urges perhaps something like an ARP2500 - that looks like it'll keep me quiet for a while...

Book
I'm not a good reader so it'll have to be fun and easy so I'll go for Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines... in the hope that I'll get a nice fat anthology of all four parts