Please Don't Stop the Music.

This has been my hardest category to date. By far the hardest category. So I'm going to talk about my difficulties a little bit before I make any choices.

First of all, I can't really wrap my head around only hearing 3 things for the rest of my life. For some reason picking the only 3 spices I'm going to eat for the rest of my life, or the only 5 kinds of beer, or anything else we've decided on here were approachable problems. I could think about them, and then come to a conclusion. And usually feel really good about my decisions. Not with this music deal. I can't even think of a reasonable place to start. My only consolation is that Rihanna will be there to take requests.

Secondly, it seems obvious that your best bet is to be choosing albums here. You want to be getting as many songs as possible right? Well, I don't really know my albums. I somehow managed to skip the entire CD age growing up continueing to use a walkman throughout high school. My collection of tapes was made up mainly of classical music copied from my parents record and CD collection, the muppets, and a random assortment of things taped off the radio. So by senior year when most of my friends had amassed huge CD collections that they schlepped around with them wherever they went, I had a pile of bootleg tapes that I keep in the Blue Minivan. Then I went to college in the fall of 1999 just as Napster broke onto the scene. Later, when Napster started falling apart, Rochester had the cif server. It was run by the Computer Interest Floor and was only accessible from an IP address of the subset of upstate NY/New England Universities that had been connected to each other via fiber optic cables. These were the glory days of file sharing, and I built my musical collection accordingly. Song by song.

Lastly, there just seems to be so much more riding on this than our other categories. I can say confidently that I will never tire of eating pepper on my island, or drinking Spotted Cow. But as much as I love it right now, I just don't feel comfortable claiming that 5 years down the road I'll still want to listen to 'Shut Up and Let Me Go' by The Ting Tings on a regular basis.

OK, I feel better now. The Music:
1. Canciones de Mi Padre - Linda Ronstadt
That's right, Linda Ronstadt. Linda Ronstadt doing mariachi. This was the go-to album for parties at The Barnebey House between roughly 1987 and 2006. I grew up associating it with good times; it needs to be on my island. I will enjoy this over Negra Modelo's with Rihanna. In the later years of our life we will compose a set of songs inspired by this album.


2. Trouble in Mind - Hayes Carll
I may be running into the same trap as Joanna with her Bon Iver pick here. It's new, but I really feel like it's going to stand the test of time. It's country-ish with a good amount of twang and some rock influences thrown in for good measure. I can't wait to listen to this while lying on the beach drinking Coors Lights. I assume that Gabrielle Reese will be into Hayes Carll although I'm not sure exactly why I feel that way.


3. ABBA - Gold: Greatest Hits - ABBA
I debated my 3rd album for a long time. Finally accepting that on a desert island there would be no need to be hip and trendy with my music choices, I decided I needed something outright fun. And something that Heidi would get really excited about. Hello ABBA. And you can't deny that this album is just fun.