Sometimes it’s best to step out of the way and let the contributing artist take over. So, without further ado, a few words from singer/songwriter Chris Price.
Chris says: Below you’ll find my piece on Desert Island Discs. But first I wanted to give you a bit of info on myself and my album. I’ve completed an album called Homesick recently that was recorded entirely on an iPhone using nothing but the mic of the phone and a 4 Track app. I was inspired by great music from the 60’s that used limitations in creative ways and tended to favor full, unedited takes in order to capture the honesty of the moment. Because it was all done on the phone, I wasn’t limited to staying in the same studio to record everything. So I went all over Los Angeles, from The Greek Theater to Little Tokyo. We filmed everything also on the phone and made videos for each song. Many of my friends and family pitched in. It was an absolute blast to make. It will be released on May 22 exclusively on iTunes and on June 26 in all other digital outlets. Limited quantities of CDs and Vinyl are also forthcoming. Ok, enough plugging, off to the island we go!
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If you were stuck on a desert island, what five albums would you take with you?
There’s three ways I’d like to answer this question. The first way will be to just simply list my five favorite albums of all time. Easy. Here they are:
The Beatles, Abbey Road
Nick Drake, Pink Moon
The Beach Boys, Pet Sounds
Van Morrison,Astral Weeks
Joni Mitchell, Blue
Each of those albums has shaped who I am as a person and a musician. I decided to write my own songs and start a band the first time I heard Abbey Road. I decided to learn guitar after hearing Pink Moon (I was strictly a piano player before then). Pet Sounds and Astral Weeks taught me the virtues of meticulous attention to detail AND putting a bunch of random people in a room together and seeing what happens. And Blue taught me about honesty and opening yourself up. Without these albums and about 50 others, I wouldn’t be here now writing this piece and I probably wouldn’t be writing and singing songs. Well, maybe I would, but how are we to know? Multiverse, I’m sure.
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The second way I’d like to answer the question is to think what albums would serve as a proper soundtrack to solitary island life. To do this, I figure that you’d need music for all your different moods. This makes it hard to boil it down to 5 albums. But let’s say you’d need one album to convey the loneliness you feel at night, one album for those times where you’re in a lighter mood and perhaps even laughing at your own situation, one album for when you need to let out some aggression, one album that reminds you specifically of home, and one album that defines your new home and identity as an islander. Here’s what I came up with:
LONELINESS: Nick Drake, Pink Moon
This is the only holdover from my favorite albums list. It is perhaps THE album for working through loneliness and depression. Sitting by myself out in the middle of nowhere, I would find comfort in the fact that there’s someone who can empathize with my plight and maybe I wouldn’t feel so alone.
LAUGHTER AS COPING MECHANISM: The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society
Ray Davies and company would serve well as the soundtrack to those days when I’m able to shrug off the blues and try and enjoy my life on the island. This is some bittersweet stuff all about nostalgia and the absurdity of living in the past. It would allow me to laugh at all the chumps out there taking pictures of each other to prove they really existed, and be happy living in the now.
LETTING OUT AGGRESSION: James Brown, Star Time
The obvious choice for this would be a punk record, like Static Age by The Misfits. But I decided to go with the hardest working man in show business to get me dancing all over the place. Not only would this collection serve as a great outlet for my own aggression, but the sheer amount of material (71 tracks) means it would take a long time to get tired of it, and that is definitely something you’d want to consider if you were out on your own for all of eternity.
REMINDER OF HOME: Chris Price, Homesick
What better way to recall my previous life as a city dweller and non-island person than this? This may be cheating, but honestly it’s not like I’m saying its my favorite album or anything. I’m just saying it would be nice to hear this album and think of all the places we went to make it and all the friends and family who got involved in it. It would be my way of keeping those people and places fresh in my memory.
ISLAND IDENTITY SOUNDTRACK: The Congos, Heart Of The Congos
This one’s easy. There is nothing that says “cast away” to me like The Congos singing “Fisherman”. I’d sit there in the sand, drunk on coconuts, tossing a line into the sea to try and find dinner, soaking up the sun. This album and particularly that song would become a mantra of mine. Island life would be sweet.
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The third and final way to approach this is to realize that I probably won’t have any electricity on this island, so even if I had a boombox the batteries would eventually run out and I’d just be stuck with album covers. So which 5 album covers would I want to stare at forever? These are the 5 I thought of:
Nick Drake, Pink Moon (hat trick!)
The Beatles, Revolver
Antonio Carlos Jobim, Wave
Jane Brikin/Serge Gainsbourg
Miles Davis, Bitches Brew
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Cast Away is a good movie. The End.
Chris Price
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