The Disc:
1. Queen, “Bohemian Rhapsody” – Choosing one Queen song is like choosing your favorite cryptid: no matter what you end up choosing, it’s all completely unreal.
2. Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, “Who Loves You” – Picked it because it’s energetic and I dig FV’s falsetto. I’ll need to keep my blood pumping if I’m going to survive on a desert island.
3. Sam Cooke, “Twistin’ the Night Away” – My wife and I had three Sam Cooke songs at our wedding: “Having a Party,” “You Send Me,” and this one. This one is the most up-tempo of the three, so it’s here to keep my morale boosted.
4. Robbi Rob, “In Time” – As a kid, I loved “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” As an adult, I still love it. It’s the perfect blend of consumer commodity and rock utopianism.
5. Winger, “Battle Stations” – As with above. Will be handy if I have to fight an evil robot version of myself.
6. Stan Bush, “The Touch” – As with #5. If I need to use the Matrix of Leadership to defeat a monster planet, I’ll need this. This song will light our darkest hour. “One shall stand, one shall fall, motherfucker.”
7. Ozzy Osbourne, “You Can’t Kill Rock & Roll” – If I’m going to have to survive on a deserted island, I might as do it while listening to Randy Rhoads on guitar.
8. Great Big Sea, “England” – Stuck on the water? You’re gonna need sea shanty.
9. The Decemberists, “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” – More sea shanty. (But also, see below.)
10. Beach Boys, “Sloop John B.” – More aquatic folk. It operates as a happy counterbalance to GBS’s and Meloy’s narratives. I can’t help but smile when Brian Wilson says “This is the worst trip I’ve ever been on.”
11. Van Morrison, “Into the Mystic” – I’d take all of Moondance if I could.
12. Neil Finn, “Into the Sunset” – This track is just beautiful. I hope my island has a view.
The Meal:
Grilled Scallops with cilantro and a white wine beurre blanc. Also, a smoked turkey leg from the Michigan Renaissance Festival.
The Artist:
Mark Barry, the vocalist from the pop group BBMak.
During one of my summers when I was in undergrad, I worked at the Meijer’s Grocery in Waterford, MI to save tuition money for the coming year. I was a meat cutter/meat & seafood clerk, which is a pretty messy job. The pay was fair for the labor though; but the pay wasn’t nearly enough for the shit we had to deal with from the management. They often concocted these harebrained schemes – I’ll give you one example. The management there estimated, by watching entrance and exit loss prevention footage, that their customers spent no more than 70 minutes shopping in a single visit. Using this information, they decided that their commercial muzak only needed to be 70 minutes in total length; they could play it on a loop since customers wouldn’t be in the supermarket long enough to hear a track repeat.
I assume that they just didn’t take into account that their floor workers would be there for nine hours on a shift - counting our 30 minute unpaid lunch and two 15 min unpaid union-mandated breaks. Or, maybe they did. Perhaps in the evening, when the grey-vested management staff went off duty, they all traveled together to an undisclosed location and engaged in Elder God-themed Lovecraftian cosplay. Whether by accident, or to heighten the sexual pleasure of Chthonic face tentacles, the outcome was the very much the same: every full-time employee heard the finite songs on the playlist seven plus times a day, five days a week, for four months straight.
This might have been bearable if the songs were ones you selected yourself. In fact, then it wouldn’t be much different from the central conceit of this Desert Island Game. In the months that I worked there, no one took credit for the music piped in overhead. Scott Stapp asked me to take him higher. Britney Spears wondered how she was supposed to know if we had any more suet in the cooler in back. The Backstreet Boys didn’t care how I wrapped the round roast, as long as I loved them. Mark McGrath laid around and wondered why the Canadian bacon cost so much. Richard Marx, well, he never had much to say: “Right Here Waiting” was instrumental only.
Over the years, for the most part, I’ve managed to leave all of them behind. I made it through that job and plenty others far worse. But I still hear Mark Barry’s voice, occasionally in that twilight space between sleep and wakefulness. There’s still this feeling inside and I can’t let it go of it.
If we were marooned on a desert island, he and I, I’d enjoy my wonderfully lowbrow turkey leg. I’d welcome him to have the scallops with buttery flourish. Maybe he wouldn’t like cilantro; I understand that for some people it tastes like soap. Perhaps we’d both laugh about that and call it a “first-world problem.” In the evening, when the stars appear in the firmament, I’d put on my headphones. Then, I’d pick up my turkey leg bone, conveniently sharpened on the carapace of a horseshoe crab, and get myself in the mood by queuing up “The Mariner’s Revenge Song.”
There would be nothing in the world he could do.