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Ask a stupid question...
by Mike Burton
For as long as there have been records, there has been the question, “What ten records would you want to have with you on a desert isle?” It’s a stupid question. It’s not like anyone is ever going to end up on a desert isle with ten records and a way to play them. No one’s list is right or wrong. It’s just a personal question. It probably started as a way for record critics to generate words and meet deadlines, and evolved into a way to break the ice among record nerds. Stupid question or not, how you answer says a lot about you, and every record collector has his list. Here’s mine, not necessarily in order:
Miles Davis Kind Of Blue
The Clash London Calling
The Minutemen Double Nickels On The Dime The Who Live At Leeds Stan Getz Getz Au Go Go The Ornette Coleman Trio At the Golden Circle Stockholm Vol. 1 The Ramones Rocket to Russia Hank Mobley Workout Miles Davis Bitches Brew Benny Goodman The Carnegie Hall Concert 1938
Kinda pointless really. But it does let you know who you’re dealing with, doesn’t it?
Only once in history has such a list really mattered. That was in 1977. When the US government launched both Voyager I and II into space, they included a very interesting item - a golden record, containing music and imagery from around the world. We sent along a phono cartridge and careful non-linguistic instructions about how to play the disc. Some lucky record nerds were charged with the awesome task of deciding what handful of music would be shot off into space to represent all of humanity. There was a lot of debate about the music to be included, as well as some debate about the line drawings of naked people etched onto the disc. Yes children, that’s right, in 1977, we believed we could still actively debate things. Luckily, Voyager was launched in those simpler times. I’m sure that today our government would leave that decision in the hands of Sony and Time-Warner. And I’m sure the music they would choose would be utter crap, and they would expect to collect royalties if it ever got played.
Overall, I applaud the Voyager record nerds’ choices. If they’d asked, I would certainly have voted yes to the drawings of naked people. Also yes to Blind Willie Johnson, yes to Chuck Berry, and most certainly yes to Louis Armstrong. And a double yes to the decision to NOT include any Beatles’ songs. Not so much because I hate the Beatles, but because for once, those arrogant narcissistic me-first Baby Boomers did not get to foist their pop culture pablum upon all of time and space. Sure, the Beatles were an amazing cultural phenomenon. But so was Star Wars, so was Hitler, and so is American Idol. I am embarrassed for all humanity when I look at such things. They are the last thing I want an alien race to know about us 40,000 years from now. I guess I can’t blame the Beatles for what they’ve become any more than I can blame Jesus for the NeoCons. However, I can blame the Baby Boomers. I can blame the lemmings and sheep who cannot resist being told what they like. I can blame the record industry. I can blame free market capitalism and the unfulfillable false needs it generates. And I do. I blame them all for my hatred of pop music. But I digress.
I am grateful to the people who made that very difficult “top records to send off into space and time to represent all of humanity forever” list. It’s a good list. It would have been very tough for me to decide what should be included on the record. Wait. No it wouldn’t. Truthfully, I would have just sent Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue. But not my copy.
Still, some decisions were not perfect. Ten of the twenty-eight pieces are from either Germany or the US. A little lopsided, but I guess that’s how it goes. German and US scientists were the ones able to study and adapt the technology from an alien spacecraft that crash landed in the New Mexico Desert in 1947. Without the US and German scientists, we might never have launched anything out of our gravitational pull. So of course, lots of US and German music ended up on the disc. It wasn’t the perfect list. It couldn’t be. But it was a very conscientious one, and a very human one.
Only humans would even try to sum up their own existence with a collection of songs and images. Of course we’d send a record album - the record album is born of the Earth: we play a record album by gluing a diamond to a couple magnets and coils of wire, dragging the contraption along the grooves carved into the distilled remains of prehistoric plants and animals, and running the resulting voltage variations into a maze of other electrically charged earth elements. A sound that started in 1938 ends up in my living room in 2007. It’s all magic and alchemy. The record album is every bit as cosmic and wondrous as the pyramids, as Stonehenge, as the figures on Easter Island and compact enough to launch into space. A fitting example of what humans are capable of on a good day. Hopefully, someone out there will find Voyager, figure out how to play that record, and fall in love with the human race. May they understand that what they hold in their long fingers, or suction cups, or flippers, or levitate in their psychic bubble, is a perfect piece of humanity to show the universe - Mankind’s little mixed tape to the stars.
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