Ter
and I baked cookies yesterday. Before we started, she declared, “Baking music!”
and popped a disc onto the kitchen stereo. Just as I asked what “baking music”
was, the first notes of A Charlie Brown
Christmas trickled from the speakers.
Well,
duh.
Vince
Guaraldi’s version of O Tannenbaum
never fails to lift my spirits. In fact, every time I hear a track—any track—on
the CBC album, I am transported to a tranquil
world of joy and beauty that no other album can invoke. Ter often plays it
while she’s cooking; I’ll hear it from my room and my whole being relaxes. We
even play it in the car, cruising on the mellow notes of a recording we have
both loved for-seeming-ever. I can’t explain why; it just is.
Which
means it holds the top spot in my trio of “desert island discs”. You know, the
perennial conversation-starter about what three albums you’d have if you were
stranded on a pile of sand in the south Pacific. Yes, Virginia, a Christmas
album is my top pick for indefinite isolation. I never get tired of it. My
favourite track is the instrumental of Christmastime
is Here, where the piano is played so casually, with such elegance, that
it’s easy to picture my beloved Julian at the keyboard (sorry, Vince). And Hark! the Herald Angels almost always
begins with Ter and I “loo loo loo-ing” along with the kids. As a twelve track
album, it’s crammed with so many pleasant memories and good feelings that
packing it past Tahiti is a no-brainer.
The
trouble comes with choosing the second and third of my top three discs. Okay,
Duran Duran for sure—but which album? Can I cheat and make my own lengthy “best
of” playlist? Do home-made discs count, and if so, does a double-disc count as
one or two? I might go with Notorious
for its jazz-influenced riffs, but I actually prefer 21st century DD
to their earlier work. Even then, I can’t pick a single album because Astronaut, All You Need is Now and Paper
Gods are all fabulous. (Red Carpet
Massacre is only okay, though as an experiment it was brave attempt by the
band to stay relevant.)
Assuming
I can settle on a DD album in the second spot, my third choice is probably
something by Ludovico Einaudi, whose instrumental work on piano ranges from
delicate to epic depending on the track and whether or not an orchestra is
involved. Every one of his albums inspires an award-winning story I have yet to
write, so again, how do I choose one over the others?
I know, I know. It’s not likely to become an issue. I seriously doubt the island I get stranded on will be wired for sound, but whether it be cookies in the kitchen or sunning on the beach, A Charlie Brown Christmas is definitely music to bake by!
