Who Needs Desert Island Albums?

All of this working with brain-injured folks has got me thinking about my own lifestyle habits. Am I safe driver? Am I conscientious? Do I treat people the way I want to be treated?

And, of course, it has me thinking about all the “what if’s.” What if I got into a horrible accident and lost some motor functions? Or even injured my brain and had to re-learn simple, everyday activities? What if I woke up a completely different person and suddenly found Two And A Half Men funny?

So, while most people think about how they want to be buried, or how it is that they ultimately want to go, I’m thinking about the albums I want people to bring me in the event that I get horribly injured and have to recover in an assisted living community.

Music’s pretty much the most important personal hobby I have, so a life without music is simply no life at all. If I were ever stranded on a desert island, I’d be more freaked out by the lack of music than anything else. I can take the solitude and the bug bites and the lack of food, but I need my iPod, dammit!

But in the event that they don’t allow me to have my iPod, I shall require the following five albums:

1. David Bowie’s Lodger. Besides being my favorite album of all time, it’s an album split between songs about domestic maladies and songs about world travel. If anything, it’d make me want to get better and out into the world again. And I can pretty much listen to it nonstop everyday if needed.

2. Pulp’s This Is Hardcore. I have no idea why this would be important, besides the fact that it’s my favorite Pulp album. I get all my dating advice from Jarvis Cocker, which is probably at least 60% of what’s wrong with me.

3. Trainspotting Soundtrack. If I’m only limited to five albums in recovery, I figure I’d better pick something with some variety to it. The soundtrack to Trainspotting has a wide swath of bands I love, so it’d be like having my cake and eating it, too. New Order? Pulp? Iggy Pop? Blur? Lou Reed’s best song ever, “Perfect Day?” Hell yeah!

4. The Cure’s Disintegration. Um, yeah. Only The Cure’s best album ever! Who knows, maybe it’ll give me some hope.

5. David Bowie’s Best Of Bowie. Yeah, I love Bowie that much. I need two Bowie records in recovery, so I might as well pick a singles collection for one of them. You never know when you’ll need to hear “Modern Love” at 2 in the morning.

If I happen to be allowed ten albums, throw in some Blur, early-‘90s U2, anything by Depeche Mode, Chris Connelly‘s The Ultimate Seaside Companion, and some Can. But I’m not holding out hope for that many albums. They might not trust me with CD’s. Could cut myself, you know.