Stranded: Desert Island Playlist pt. 1

To start: The Suburbs, Arcade Fire

While in Cabo for my cousin’s wedding, my Dad handed me a book.  Stranded, it read.  A compilation of essays about rock’n’roll music.  What album you would take with you if ever you were stranded on a deserted island.  (Note: the term “desert island” has always bugged me – it’s a misnomer.  Most islands aren’t deserts, just deserted.  You’re just alone.)  Dad and I always talk about music; but for a brief period in high school, our tastes are largely the same.  I like to think that that’s why we’re so close, but who knows.

It got me thinking.  Granted, I’m not on a deserted island, just deserted on an island.  Peace Corps, in some respects, is like that.  What album would I take with me, and never be able to listen to something else, until I’m rescued.  Okay, I know, that’s mellow dramatic.  I do not want to be rescued from here.  I have the luxury of looking though my ipod to help me decide.  Would it be an album by one of my favorite artists?  (The Beatles, Arcade Fire, Eddie Vedder [Pearl Jam and solo]. The Black Keys, and Bob Dylan, in no particular order.)  Would it be something easy to listen to, with a wide range of sound, like Macklemore, Washed Out or Holy Ghost!?  Would it be something attached to an important memory, like Rubber Soul, the first album my Dad ever made me listen to in completion; The Suburbs, the soundtrack to my summer before leaving for the Peace Corps, when I saw them live twice; or R.E.M.;s Automatic for the People, the cassette Dad, my brother and I played to the literal death of the tape on drives up to Twain Harte as a child?  Would it be something pure and clean, like the Lumineers, or Mumford & Sons, or the Head and the Heart?  Who would I chose?

Why are we, as a people – it goes far past cultural identities – obsessed with music?  Whether it’s the tamborito circles of Panama; the simple, beautiful guitars of Spain or the drums of Africa, all cultural groups have their own musical identity.  The evolution of music was a natural progression since homo habilis started making tools.

(Track change: Blonde on Blonde, Bob Dylan)

How did people live without home stereos, phonographs, the like, I’ve often wondered.  What is it about music that simultaneously keeps us sane, brings us together and rips us apart?  Do you have songs you can’t listen to because they remind you of something painful?  For months after a break up, I couldn’t listen to “Wolf Like Me”, by TV on the Radio because the ex in question would play that first on my ipod or computer.  Some of my friends can’t listen to certain songs or artists because they remind them of a person or time long gone.  But the opposite holds, too.  A friend of mine listens to a certain band, because if only for those few minutes, it’s like her father is back.  Music tears us down and builds us back up.

Bob Dylan, for years, was ridiculed as an artist, though never as a songwriter, because he could not sing.  Give his songs to someone else, and more than half the feeling goes away.  He proved that music is what matters, not the voice.  Just the feeling behind the voice.  Take “Me and Bobbie McGee” (Track change: the Janis Joplin version).  Listen to the Janis Joplin version, then the original Kris Kristofferson.  The same song, same chords, different voices.  And the meaning completely changes.  The Joplin version seems more hopeful, a woman freed by heartbreak.  That era for woman was a time of discovery.  We were with men on the Road, we were on the Bus, in the rallies.  We were fighting for our rights, too.

(Track change: “Me and Bobbie McGee”, Kris Kristofferson)

But the Kristofferson version can make you cry.  Not only is it more country, more soulful, and slower, but it’s focused on the femme fatale.  The woman who can lead you on, then run away without a second thought.  Who, man or woman, hasn’t experienced that?  If you haven’t yet, you will.

It’s like John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane”.  The bittersweet idea of the end.  So why did the Janis version make it bigger?  Maybe not everyone likes the melancholy that goes with bittersweet music.  Maybe I’m the only one who likes it.

(Track change: Rubber Soul, the Beatles)

It’s like “In My Life”, the homage to loves lost and present.  It’s a song for funerals, for goodbyes, but Lennon-McCartney didn’t write it like that.  Listen to the lyrics again.  “In my life, I love you more.”  Maybe it’s just the melancholy of the tune.

Back in fourth grade or so, I had the word play pointed out.  Rubber Soul, like the bottom of your shoe, or the sole.  But rubber has the ability to expand, grow, stretch, so a rubber soul is one that can expand, grow and stretch your soul.  It’s beautiful, expansive love songs.  Most are bittersweet – two minutes of unrequited love.

But I don’t think I could survive an eternity without “Something”, or any other George Harrison at his best.  I probably need “While my Guitar Gently Weeps”, too.  Maybe my Beatles album should be Abbey Road or Let it Be.  Or all of them, from the cheesy “Please Please Me”, to the more intense “Revolution 1”.

Maybe my album should be something quintessentially American, like Old Crow Medicine Show.  The song I keep going back to is “Wagon Wheel”.  I remember sitting on bleacher seats in Missoula, Montana, with good friends, drinking good beer, and singing – no, belting – this song together.  Since that moment, one of those friends has died, and the rest of us have lost touch.  Time, distance and tragedy have pulled us apart, yet despite the two years that have passed I hear this song and I remember them all.

(Track Change: The Lumineers, the Lumineers)

But who can handle that kind of emotion every day.  Maybe it should be the Lumineers, with their simple melodies.  “I don’t know where I went wrong, I don’t know where I belong, but I can write a song.”  Songs that give you melancholy sadness and a smile at the same time.  Maybe that’s not a forever album either, all alone, listening to the waves hit the shore, and watching as high tide eats away at the shore?  Do I really want music that could make me cry?

Maybe it’s something classical.  Buddy Holly, perhaps.  Pure melody with xylophones?!  Who uses xylophones anymore?  But his songs, too, are all about love.  I don’t think I could handle that.

And now I circle back around.  I think, if I can only take one album with me, forever, it would have to be Brothers, by the Black Keys.  I guess I just have to feel lucky that this can only, ever, be a hypothetical question.