Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum PW members desert island discs.

PPP for some reason you get given the complete works of shakespeare, and a bible or other religeous book that suits your faith.

You get to choose one book of your own, AND a luxery item.. in the past some folks have chosen a piano and then asked the presenter if they can have sheet music to go with it, the answer has been yes.

The luxery item can not be one that lets you escape, so no yachts, life rafts or dinghys!!! or private jets etc.

Ahhh, I see. Though I can't imagine what anyone would do with a Bible. Use it for kindling I suppose. Or maybe just read it for a good laugh before you pass out and die of dehydration.

PPP, its just the rules that the BBC made up! there is nothing at all that says the desert island wouldnt have fresh water on it or food that you could forage or hunt!
Its presumed you could survive indefinately. ( well only untill your numbers up anyway that is) lol.

That is why I included those conditions in my first post. Any other scenario (such as being able to forage for food and find fresh water) makes the choice of which 8 pieces of music to select simply a mute one for me. I thought initially that it would make the choice too difficult, but now that I think about it more I realize that it would actually make my choice mute. So tell you what Rossy, if you want, you can in your questioning present me with both scenarios (i.e. my "imminent death" scenario and the BBC's "living on a island until the end of my days" scenario) and I will answer them both.

OK, I feel confident that I can tailor my questions to suit.
I will go the extra mile, but also will impose a condition.
My condition is I never ever, ever, not even once, want to hear that "Hungarian rock" played on what amounts to a "Blackpool ballroom wurlitzter organ" ever again.

It made my ears bleed, it made Mrs R deny me matrimonial pleasures, and my dog had spontaneous ruptured heamerrhoids, and that was all with the volume on only 23 percent.

It was the singular most horrid noise that has ever eminated from my almost new laptop, and has voided the garauntee.

Interesting, but I don't understand the limits. What does an "all time top eight" reveal other than a favorites list? In real life the best loved aren't necessarily the most useful or desired under adverse circumstances.

You are presuming adverse conditions.
To some folk the City is an adverse condition.
To others a desert island would be paradise.
This is all part of finding out about the castaway.

The choice of eight pieces of music therfore would be dependant on the individuals realisation that there is no chance of rescue, and their own particular feelings about being on a desert island.

If you are not familiar with the BBC4 long running program, you could do a quick search on youtube for "desert island discs"

There are quite a few folk featured to choose from..

Then there is a choice of book, and a choice of luxery item, again this illuminates a little of the character of the person concerned.

Then the hard part, "the one" In a catastrophic emergency, which leaves you only able to save one piece of music out of the eight, which will you save?

Its for fun and entertainment, and Griffin has agreed to go first , not tommorrow, but next sunday.

Griffin, has a large, diverse and multi-cultured love of music in general,It spans a multitude of genres, I know he will agonise over his choices, and it will be very interesting choices he makes to be sure.

Well, I don't think being limited to eight pieces of music would ever be a considered a paradise to anyone here. If any do find it so, why not imagine them a complete heaven by eliminating all music?

I'm just saying that "which eight would you take" would probably uncover more interesting tidbits about the castaway than "your top eight" might. I know my lists for answering these two questions would be completely different from one another. Heck, now that I think about it my "only one" wouldn't even be on the original list of eight, so I'd be left picking one at random during the final emergency.

But if these are the parameters of the show then I guess you're stuck.

ARRgh! Lol It is the "which eight would you take" !! for most folk this will probably be their top eight.. but thats semantics. But i may be proved wrong, someone may pick their worst eight.( ?)


I didnt invent the show or the premise, It has been running without a break since 1942 on BBC radio4.

It is considered a privalage in the UK for anyone to be invited on to be the weeks castaway, the "castaways" do not start quibbling over the format!

One interesting factoid, if you want to check with wiki, is that the most chosen "luxery" has allways been a PIANO, you are allowed sheet music as part of this choice of luxery.

Please if you have any more issues with the "rules", may i respectfully ask you to aquire a Ouija board and contact Roy Plomley ,the shows original devisor.

He currently resides "on the other side of the veil"

Lovely. A piano, sheet music, but no TUNER? Hah! Talk about h311 on earth!

If that is really an issue, then may be your book would be "teach yourself tuning" OR "the encyclopedia of tuning stringed instruments of the percussive variety made simple and explained in excessive detail"



Or "learning to live with discordance"

Its for fun dude.

It has just been on the news here in the UK that desert island discs has now been running for 70yrs, this year is the anniversery.

Today SIr David Attenborough is on.

The show is podcast for those with ,...pods I suppose.

Rossy, how "well in advance" will you contact us?
Even thinking about this makes me never want to go on a plane across an ocean again! Or a boat...
I rather enjoying living in my house- it's such a convenient place to keep all my THINGS.

About a week or two Piano joy, depending on how busy I am with other things. But enough time so there is no panic!!

Hey Rossy - Really nice idea, but I'm a little confused - the word disc is in the title of the thread (and in the title of the old NPR program) and you later state that it is assumed that there is something to play the aforementioned records/discs on, but then you say that you don't get any CDs - I was under the impression that CDs were, in fact, discs (and I guess one could say that old fashioned records are discs of a sort too) - can you elaborate on or differentiate or explain this in a tad more detail? And exactly what do you mean by "pieces of music"? Sheet music?

I used to listen to this program years ago and if I remember correctly the guests always talked about their favorite records and/or CDs - but that was quite a while back and memories of these details dim with time...




According to some authorities there are no known works of the actor known as William Shakespeare - he was virtually illiterate - the claim is that the works historically attributed to him were actually written by a contemporary of his, Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford - if true, then the Works of Shakespeare would be an empty volume and of absolutely no use on a desert island (unless one wished to use it as a diary... )

Trap

I am going to take a stab at explaining this inconsistency.

"Disc," refers to the old-timy use of vinyl records.
Back in the old days of radio "singles" (i.e. a small vinyl record with one song on each side) would be given to radio stations.
Each side of a "single" contained a 'single' which the band or solo artist wanted to release to the radio stations (often payola was involved - and still is to this day) to entice people to buy either the full record or perhaps just the single.

Okay, now here is where I make a few assumptions:

Perhaps way back when the program started, it was just implicitly understood that a "piece of music" referred to the band or artist's 'single.'
Now if you consider the fact that these "singles" where on a vinyl disc, then title "desert island disc" makes perfect sense. (Your welcome BBC)

As for the sheet music thing, I have no idea. The BBC clearly did not think this thing through.

I think we're getting all caught up in semantics...

Rossy explained earlier, (copy and paste):

try and have a think about this in the meantime: should the unthinkable happen and you can only save one record out of the eight, you have to name that.


Sheet music/song/piece, I think the INTENT is if you had time to choose ONE song, which would it be? I don't think he meant piano sheet music literally...

LOL deserted island? I think your priorities would be waaaay different then thinking about luxury items like music, shakespeare and the bible. Well maybe the latter to make a fire to heat yourself but I think these should be MUCH higher on the list: knife, waterproof matches, water tank and purification tablets, mosquito net?

What about the B-sides ? That makes 16 tracks. I don't think Roy Plomley thought this thing through.

Anyway, I prefer 'Private Passions' over on Radio 3. You don't get all these politicians pretending to like the ghastly trendy music the spin doctors picked out for them, and that they were briefed on in the back of the Jag on the way to Broadcasting House.

No, those items are addressed on the "Camping World" website.
This is piano world...where music comes before food and water. But not chocolate.

Hollywood films unfortunately are not historical facts, no matter how much money they spend on them, you need to distinguish between this fantasy and the reality.

There are allways crackpot theories, and the film "annonymous" is certainly no exception.

If you watch the film "Titanic" you will see Captain Smith shout "hard to starboard" But in the film the Titanic goes hard to port, leaving the gash down her starboard side...
You also see the folk that do get off, getting off her starboard side. This is because it is make believe.

In the film annonymous, not only does the earl write the plays, but queen Elizabeth The 1st is apparently his mother, and then she has an incestrous relationship with him.

Unsubstantiated, unlikely, and pure hollywood.