Music, Music, Music

T of Joyful Mayhem tagged me, awhile back, to list five indispensible albums or pieces of music.

Funny thing -- back when I was younger, this would have been a no-brainer. I used to fall in love with albums and play them pretty much until the vinyl wore out (which also tells you how old I am -- yes, kiddos, once upon a time they pressed music onto flat vinyl things called records; you know, what rap DJ's scritch-scratch on their turntables).

But now I've turned into a statistic -- one of the growing number of middle-aged folks who just don't buy albums anymore. It's not that I don't like music anymore, or don't like new music; far from it. (For the past week I've even been enjoying Fresh Air's hip-hop retrospective...found myself bouncing around in the Intr pid, grooving to Queen Latifah the other day.) But it seems that, except for sacred music, I have less and less of an attention span for albums by one artist or group. I like compilation albums -- the ones put out by Putomayo and Green Linnet, for example. My idea of the perfect radio station would be KBEAR, the radio station on Northern Exposure (my absolute favorite television series ever), where Chris the disk jockey might mix it up with a little reggae and zydeco and pretentious album rock and moody folk music here, a little Sinatra and Leonard Cohen and k.d. lang there, with a generous splash of Inuit chanting and Motown and arias and scratchy 1920's Tin Pan Alley and bagpipes and Patsy Cline and Beethoven and the Strawberry Alarm Clock thrown in. And those Tibetan monks who sing in chords. Some sad Swedish fiddlework, and real country music, and doo-wop. Maybe some cabaret music of pre-war Berlin; some rap; some piano jazz; Gregorian chant; a polka or two, if I were in an exuberant mood; Cuban dance tunes; other stuff I'll remember later. Yeah; that'd be my fantasy radio station. (Actually, that pretty much describes an iPod, doesn't it? Except that, with dial-up Internet, it takes the better part of a day to download one song.)

So it's really hard for me to pick five pieces of music or albums that I can't live without. The list would change from day to day, at least. And I'd want to have subcategories of music, like "Music To Drive By," "Music to Pray By," "Music I Listen To When I'm Pissed Off," and so on. So I'm not even going to try to follow the rules, nor am I going to tag anyone else for this exercise. But if I had to live in solitary confinement, with only my music for comfort/entertainment, I'd like to have access to the following:

1. Some wonderful High-Churchy choral liturgy -- not too fussy about who's doing the singing.

2. Orthodox liturgy -- again, not too picky about the choir. The Easter liturgy is particularly stirring.

3. Bach Orgelspiel.

4. Some African-American Gospel music -- something by the Barrett Sisters or the Blind Boys of Alabama.

5.. "Take Five." This is my local public radio station's Saturday jazz/blues/swing program, hosted by the mondo cool Ray Ford. On any given morning you may hear some pop standards styled by Sinatra and Clooney...some Afro-Cuban dance music...B.B. King...Miles Davis. It's all good.

6.. "The Thistle and Shamrock" on public radio. Well, actually, I'd be happy just listening to host Fiona Ritchie talk for an hour -- but the music is also great.

7. "World Cafe" with Dave Dye. I enjoy listening to this, just to hear what the kids are paying attention to these days.

8.. "Divas of Swing." This is a cheapie compilation album I bought in a gift shop. It features songs by the greats -- Billie Holliday, Sarah Vaughan, Rosemary Clooney, Anita O'Day and others. This is my "feeling mellow" album; also my "There's nothing good on TV" album; also my "My God, I'm going to die alone in a cardboard box in an alley," feeling-sorry-for-myself album.

9. A couple of Putomayo worldbeat albums with a wide range of world music represented on each one.

10. A few representative albums from different eras of my life -- the Beatlemania period; the Who period; the I Am Now An Educated Person With Catholic Tastes in Music period; the U2/REM/Indigo Girls period; the Sudden Dawn of Radical Self-Understanding Period; the Witchy Woman period; the Blue period; and whatever it is that I'm in now.

11. Vince Guaraldi's "A Charlie Brown Christmas."