low-to-middling fidelity

I'm sufficiently bored this afternoon that I feel like doing some weblog listmaking. I was recently in a group of people playing the game "What 5 albums would you pick to have with you if you were going to be stranded for a year with a great stereo system (and electricity) on an otherwise deserted island?"

Below are my choices, in alphabetical order. No pretensions to these being "best" in any sense, but they are what I felt at least in the moment like I would like to have with me. Indeed, the cruel and unusual Amanda This, Amanda That, a woman I dated a few years ago who had impeccably hip taste in music, would probably be made apoplectic by the simple tastes revealed by the list.

Oh, and I actually ended up sneaking two extra albums onto the island, along with an extra track from a different album by the same artist (all hail CD burning technology). Feel free to send me your own list if you read this and are likewise bored and in an enumerative mood.

Ben Folds Five, The Complete Sessions at West 54th (adding "Not the Same" from Rockin' the Suburbs)

Beth Orton, Central Reservation (adding "She Cries Your Name" from Trailer Park)

Cyndi Lauper [yes, Cyndi Lauper! take that, A.T.A.T.!], Twelve Deadly Cyns (adding "Hey Ya! (with Andre 3000)" from She's So Unusual)

Dar Williams, Out There Live* (adding "Party Generation" from End of the Summer)

Freaktoastt J, All The Way to Waukesha (adding "The Ballad of Reviewer C" from Drunk and Untenured)

R.E.M., Automatic for the People (adding "So Fast, So Numb" from New Adventures in Hi-Fi. Alternatively, I might bring Lifes Rich Pageant [note: no apostrophe], and add "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight" from A4TP.)

The Replacements, Tim (adding "I Will Dare" from Let It Be)

* Aside: Poor Dar Williams. Her live album is so much better than the studio albums whose tracks are reprised on the live album that you wonder if she wouldn't be wildly famous if she had had a different producer. For the most dramatic example of this, compare "As Cool As I Am" on Out There Live to the horns-scarred rendition on Mortal City.