Bilimey "Desert Island Discs" was going to be the subject of a planned thread from me!!
For those who do not know that is also the title of the longest running BBC radio programme yes with two "m"'s
from the wiki at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Island_Discs
"Desert Island Discs is a long-running BBC Radio 4 programme first broadcast on 29 January 1942. It is the second longest-running radio programme (surpassed only by the Geand Ole Opry, 28 November 1925), and is the longest-running factual programme in the history of radio.Originally devised and presented by Roy Plumley, each week a guest ("castaway") is asked to choose eight pieces of music, a book and a luxury item for their imaginary stay on the island, while discussing their lives and the reasons for their choices. The programme's theme is
By the Sleepy Lagoon composed by Eric Coates in 1930. Since 2006 it has been presented by Kirsty Young"
Of course limiting ones choice to only eight pieces of music for Gordfans is a no no
It has to be assumed that the castaway has the luxury of originally a turntable but nowadays a CD player and obviously the luxury item would have to be a portable generator of some sort probably solar powered.
My plan instead of a bland 5 album limit would be to strictly enforce a single CD limit
with the contents being your favorite Gordsongs (at least those you simply could not live without in your enforced exile) which is about 23 or so tracks totalling 70 minutes absolute tops (or a few minutes more if your CD burner and software supports overburning) .
I quickly realised that everybody's choice changes from day to day and that even 23 tracks is a tad on the tight side and extremely difficult to devise. so I came ip with an idea to instill some discipline into the process, taking my cue from the fact that there are just 20 official "original' albums (including Sunday Concert but exluding the various "Hits" and Golden compilations).In addition there are a few unreleased gems that I for one would wish to take into account in particular the 1968 television version of "Face Of a Thousand People"
Other more patriotic fans might like Oh Canada orThe Star Spangled Banner or even the annual Auld Lang' Syne
My rules would therefore be to enforce a minumum of one track from every album and then depending on how many of the epics you select in those 20 (I would have to include Seven Island Suite but happily ignore TWOTEF and CRT) the total time may be made up with up to a maximum of two tracks from any one album plus say one other recording (such as the aforementioned FOATP)
To do this one can either hand write a list with track times and do the math
(cursing the Phoenicians I think it was who decided that there shou;ld be only 60 secomds in a minute not a convenienty decimal friendly 100 and 60 minutes in the hour not 100 and 24 hours in a day not 10!)
To make the track selection process easy what I need to do is to create an online spreadsheet containing a page for each album listing every track on it with its running time and a check box in front then all tracks checked can be listed on a summary page with the resultant CD's Total Running Time.one could then fine tune one's selction until you get close to the desired 70 minutes
I am not sur that I can achieve this using Microsoft Excel but intend doing so when I can find the time (I know exactly how to do this using an old DOS program called Surefire
http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/surefire/
but that would require everyone interested installing that program) if I can do it in Excel then it could be uploaded to Microsoft's own Online Office Excel or possible adapted to the equivalent Google Docs Spreadsheet format as a fine example of cloud computing.
If anybody who has the consumate skill in Excel wishes to try his hand and brain to do that please contact me for suggestions
As this is one of my pet projects I'll be back one way or another