Gillian Grassie

Top 10 Desert Island Songs… from Paris

// August 24th, 2009 // Cool Stuff, Music

Well! I’ve been traveling around quite a bit during the past few weeks in Brittany and Normandy without much internet access, which doesn’t entirely excuse me from not posting updates sooner. And, I’m afraid, you may have to wait just a day more for a proper blog update. BUT, I promise that I have plenty of new stories and pictures and potentially even songs for you.

Before we get into all of my adventures in France, however, I’d like to post the Top Ten list I’ve put together for the XPN 885 Desert Island Songs countdown. You can vote for your own top ten list on the XPN website until September 11th and then tune in from September 29th – October 9th to hear the station listeners’ top 885 songs, in sequence, without commercials.

I know that the numbered ordering actually does matter for these things, but I can’t say that you should put much weight on my order.

Gillian’s Top Ten Desert Island Songs

1. Urge for Going – Joni Mitchell
My father used to sing this song to me as a lullaby, which probably contributed to my initial assumption as a child that Joni Mitchell was a man. The record was set straight a few years later when I wandered up into the attic and found my parents’ Court and Spark vinyl – a pretty earth-shaking discovery that firmly solidified my love affair with songwriting. Joni is hands-down the single most important artist in my collection and it takes some concentrated restraint not to fill this entire list with songs like Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire, Court and Spark, Cactus Tree, Trouble Child, People’s Parties, Blue, and A Case of You.

2. The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us! – Sufjan Stevens
I was really torn between this song and John Wayne Gacy, Jr. – which I also consider a sort of tour de force of songwriting – but ultimately sided with the one that doesn’t involve serial killers.

3. Everything is Free – Gillian Welch
I’ve been listening to this song a lot recently; it hangs around. “I could get a straight job / I’ve done it before / never minded working hard / it’s who I’m working for / everything is free now / that’s what they say / everything I ever done / gotta give it away / someone hit the big score / but I figured it out / and I’m gonna do it anyway / even if it doesn’t pay”

4. What a Little Moonlight Can Do – Billie Holiday
Ah, Billie… When I was younger Jazz seemed something akin to wine, in the sense that I was absolutely sure it was this fantastic thing that was probably going to take a little time to understand and appreciate. I kept listening and grew into Jazz about the same time I started actually liking the vintages my uncle pulled up from the cellar at Christmas. Billie Holiday was one of the first artists who really opened up the genre for me. Nobody does deep-set grief like Billie, but her rendition of this happier song always makes me dance, and there had to be at least one song on my desert island good for dancing.

5. Meadowlake Street – Ryan Adams
My friend Stu gave me Gold sometime last winter and I quickly ran to the record store to pick up Cold Roses and Heartbreaker. I’m in love with many of his songs, but this verse is the cincher for me: “I feel like a dream that’s not worth having / like a nervous joke, ain’t nobody laughing / like somebody with nothing ‘cause they don’t know what they want / and tiny like the sand in the cracks of the driftwood / washed up on the shore of an ocean of you / boats out on the horizon / made out of the maple tree where we used to lie down on Meadowlake street / counting the stars, you and I.” I mean, really.

6. Première Arabesque – Claude Debussy
There was a time in my life when I thought I was going to go to conservatory and become either an opera singer or an orchestral harpist or both. Things didn’t quite work out that way, but there’s still a corner of my heart that only classical type of music can reach. I haven’t played pedal harp in a long time, but Marcel Grandjany’s arrangement of this piece was my favorite.

7. Shebeg & Shemore – Turlough O’Carolan
Sometimes I feel a bit of a traitor for taking the Celtic harp so far away from our beginnings, but the truth is I really do love Celtic music. Turlough O’Carolan was this incredibly prolific Irish harpist of the 17th Century, who picked up the instrument after being blinded by smallpox at the age of 18. He’s credited with over 300 gorgeous melodies. For years, my dad brought a recorder with him wherever we went, and this melody became the backdrop of many mornings on the rocky Maine coastline and evenings around campfires. I pretty confident I spelled it wrong here.

8. No One’s Crying – Patty Griffin
I love Patty Griffin for many reasons, not the least which is that this song of hers almost single-handedly got me through both my parents’ divorce and my own first major break-up.

9. O Canada Girls – Dar Williams
The ideas and imagery in this song are just so lush and abundant. I especially like the bit about secrets written on hornet-nest paper blowing across the border. Bryn Mawr, you’ll have to forgive me for not putting “As Cool As I Am,” much though I cherish the memories of dancing around the May Hole covered in flower petals and rain. “If I did not dream, who would you be? / and if you did not dream, who would I be?”

10. Take it From Me – The Weepies
Writing happy love songs is absurdly hard, and The Weepies do it absurdly well. This is one of my favorites.

So close to being on this list that they may as well have been: Kathleen Edwards, Damien Rice, James Taylor, Indigo Girls, Handel’s Ombra Mai Fu, Joshua Marcus, Portishead, James Taylor, Fleetwood Mac, Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s.

Pictures and stories and proper updates coming soon!!!