DESERT ISLAND LISTENING TOP 40:

If I had to compile a list of my favourite songs, it’d go something like this.

I tried to limit it to just ten, I really did. But I couldn’t do it.

THE TOP TEN (now in as good an order as I can muster):

1. Taillights Fade – Buffalo Tom
2. Oh Yeah – Roxy Music
3. The Killing Moon – Echo And The Bunnymen
4. Berlin Chair – You Am I
5. Atlantic City - Bruce Springsteen
6. I Remember You – Skid Row
7. Love Untold - Paul Westerberg
8. First Glimmer - Paul Westerberg
9. Coma – Guns N’ Roses
10. Homeboy – Adorable

But what about The Next Ten?

MUSIC FOR MY WORLD

I'm no Lester Bangs. To tell you the truth, I've never read him. I have no musical ability - by that I mean, I play no instrument. But I possess a serious love of music. I just can't imagine life without it.

Much as I love drums and guitars, it don't mean a thing if I don't dig the lyrics. (Funnily enough, for a writer). And the idea of expressing to you what I love about certain pieces of popular music is both a challenge, and a powerful motivator for me.

I'm also a list maker from way back (only child and all that), and there's an obsessive fascination with reducing life's excess to the essentials: could I compile one CD to cover all necessary moods and occasions, one CD that would be the one and only one I'd ever need to listen to.

Of course, it's a futile exercise, in practice. Even though most of my musical interests are historical (not much newer than about 1995), I could never get by with just one CD of music.

But it's fun imagining.

ON SELECTION CRITERIA

I was thinking about whether I could define any of the selection criteria for my favourite songs, and I realised one thing they all have in common, is their perceived appropriateness to be played at my funeral.

Or, to put it another way, to be played as the last song I'll hear.

This reveals a couple of aspects to my personality even I wasn't really aware of until I put it down in words.