5 Feet of Fury

John Derbyshire on ‘Desert Island Disks’

Derb on a British radio institution:

One: I am not musical. Although not as deeply un-musical as Ulysses S. Grant (“I only know two tunes. One is “Yankee Doodle” and the other one isn’t”), my tastes are lower-middlebrow. Supposing there is a musicality quotient analogous to IQ, with mean 100 and standard deviation 15, I’m no better than a 95.

Two: I’m a words guy. “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing”? For me, if it doesn’t have voices, it’s not in my choices.

Three: I’m a geezer. I stopped paying much attention to new things 20 or 30 years ago. It’s what happens. If you haven’t found out yet, you will.

OK, my eight musical choices; one from each category of music I like…