My little contribution to this thread (part one, anyway. Part two is where I tell you you're all nuts. We can leave the latter for later.) Back in 1992, as part of a cover feature,
Pulse! magazine printed Peter Buck and Mike Mills' Desert Island Discs lists. You guys remember
Pulse!, dontcha? It was free, for starters! They gave it away at Tower Records, it had a lot of content (some of it pretty good) and excellent contributors like Ira Robbins and Jackson Griffith.
And the pictures were very cool, so you could use them to make artwork for your cassettes. That's how we rolled back then, motherfuckers!
I don't have the magazine anymore (idiot) but I memorized the lists and I'm pretty sure the albums were mentioned "in no particular order". The surprises, if any, are due to the absences: no Byrds, no Velvets, no Patti, no Television, no Soft Boys. (I imagine
Horses may be on Stipe's list after his favorite album,
Entertainment! but he wasn't talking back then.
) Also, none of the British "folk-rock" that made the band (Buck in particular) want to hook up with Joe Boyd for
Fables Of The Reconstruction: Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, Richard & Linda Thompson. But enough about what's not there, let's review what
is:
Pete Buck
Eli And The Thirteenth Confession Laura Nyro
Exile On Main St. The Rolling Stones
Third/Sister Lovers Big Star
London Calling The Clash
The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society The Kinks
There's A Riot Goin' On Sly & The Family Stone
The Sun Sessions CD Elvis Presley
Dirty Mind Prince
Pet Sounds The Beach Boys
Star Time James Brown
Blood On The Tracks Bob Dylan
Physical Graffiti Led Zeppelin
New York Dolls/Too Much Too Soon New York Dolls (*)
Sketches Of Spain Miles Davis
* In 1977, Mercury released the Dolls' two studio albums as one double LP, so I guess this doesn't qualify as "cheating".
Mike Mills
Dirty Mind Prince
Pet Sounds The Beach Boys
The Man In Black: 1954-1958 (Bear Family 5CD box) Johnny Cash
#1 Record/Radio City Big Star (**)
L.A.M.F. Revisited Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers (***)
Verdi:
Aida ("any recording")
Highway 61 Revisited Bob Dylan
Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin (****)
Star Time James Brown
** In 1978, Stax did the same with these two albums that Mercury did in 1977 with * ... but you knew that.
*** In 1992, this 1984 release would have been the only way to listen to
L.A.M.F. without the mastering fuckup that drowned the album in (the bad kind of) noise. But with the release, just two years later, of "the lost '77 mixes", I doubt Mike would stick with the "Revisited" version. Just sayin'.
**** Mills didn't specify whether he meant
I or
IV. I'm thinking he was going for a ZoSo thing, though...