desert island air guitar contest

I posited this question to some music friends of mine today.... our responses throughout the day have provided some amusing points and counterpoints..... read them below!

My original question: You are landing on a Pacific Island next week. You have room in your luggage for just ten CDs. You are bringing nine classics..... one Dylan, Revolver or Rubber Soul by the Beatles, a Stones CD, one by the Who, one by Van Morrison, etc. But you after you arrive, you are participating in an air guitar contest and at least ONE of the ten desert island discs you are bringing MUST be an album by a hair band act that was big between 1972 and 1987.

You will be lip-syncing the entire album and playing along on your air guitar. Which CD makes the trip?I posed this question to a friend last night at the Phillies game and we both thought it was a fun contest idea.

My initial response was "Tres Hombres" by ZZ top, but we both concluded that ZZ Top was too "raw" and bluesy to really jive with the context of the question. Here are some of the responses I received today from several of my Geekier music loving friends.

Bill H: "Highway to Hell, AC/DC."

Chuck: " Nice answer and hard to top. I prefer Back in Black myself if I am bringing Angus, but I could live with that one. Mine was Boston's first."

Bill H.: "Love Back in Black, but too monochromatic. Highway's actually a great pop album. Great tight production, almost every song has a great chorus and Bon a better singer. "

Bill H.: "My coworker Ruthie is breaking the 1985 rule and going with Metallica's 'Metallica'."

Dominic U.: "I'd like to side with Ruthie in regard to breaking the 1985 rule, if only to bend the statute by a hair -- I choose Metallica's 'Master of Puppets'. Haven't heard it in years, but I'm sure that's the one. That is, because I'm assuming you guys wouldn't allow the Suicidal Tendencies debut. Even though one of those dudes definitely had long metal hair at the time."

Chuck: " My own personal opinion is that Metallica is 'too political' to qualify as a hair band. I thought my band would be Boston. Boston's first really is an infectious piece of ear candy and a staple of the stadium rock crowd. But one of my other friends told me Boston didn't 'qualify' either because Boston wasn't really a band. He called it a 'non-band' and I have to admit it probably didn't play too many gigs."

Bill H.: "The first Boston album is still pretty great....a guy who used to work here would take the day off on those rare times when a Boston album would come out and spend the day driving around listening to it in his Camero."

Chuck: "Sounds like we found one of our air guitar contest judges on our fantasy island!!"

Bill H. "Yeah, he would have been a perfect extra in Dazed and Confused."

Dominic U. : "Between the two of you jokers, these remarks probably rank among the most satisfying I've read this week. I might share the goddamned Camaro email with a colleague, in fact. I love 'Dazed and Confused'. There's a party at the moon tower tonight."

Bill H: "this was the same dude who used to tell me he couldn't be at work until 1 pm because he was up late watching tv every night because it was part of his job ...and i saw him step out of a skanky strip joint in weehawken and run across the street in front of my bus."

Chuck: " Picked up a Bad Company 2-disc Anthology the other day guys. They may be too close to the classic rock genre to qualify as a hair band. I don't especially thrill to the 'bad boy' postering, but I am a sucker for the way Paul Rodgers sings. Are you fans?"

Bill H.: "I like a lot of their songs, but I would say they qualify as the musical center of all rock music. they distilled everything that came before and came up with perfectly average ROCK music. If you had to boil FM radio rock down into one band and rub off all the rough edges it would be Bad Company. The beer beer of music."

And they say no work gets done while employees are using the internet! Sheesh. What cynics!