New Post Series - Deserted Island 500!

There's an old question that gets tossed around a lot, regarding the 'one thing' you would take to a deserted island with you if you were banished to such a place.  Now, given that this is a fantasy scenario, folks generally choose either some kind of 'creature comfort' (despite the general lack of electricity on deserted islands), or as is the case with my post, the question arises about which CD or album you would take with you to a deserted island if it was the last one you'd ever be able to listen to.  Given the size of my CD, cassette, digital, and vinyl collection as of this writing (somewhere in the 3000+ items range), there's NO WAY ON EARTH I could possibly narrow it down to one, especially given the diversity of my tastes.  Thus, I have decided that if I had a stereo setup or at the very least a digital music player with proper capacity and unlimited battery life (this IS a fantasy scenario after all, right?), I couldn't narrow the field any smaller than around 500 albums I would consider "essential" to my own existence on said island paradise.

This island comes with satellite TV and free WiFi, right?

As such, I will be penning a series of posts about around 500 albums in my collection I would consider "essential", releases that I wouldn't sell or trade off unless I was in dire straights.  Each of these posts won't be a proper "album review", but more a short treatise on each album and why I consider it part of the list.  This will differ from my "Album of the Moment" series as well, in that each of these releases has had some kind of emotional impact on me, apart from just enjoying them as pieces of art.  Through this process, I hope to better understand my own connection to my music collection, but also to impart some of that knowledge to others to help them see my perspective on some underrated gems and proven classics.  I would love to see a few unknown albums get a bit more exposure through this process for sure.

Back when my CD collection was a mere 600, I sold off about a third of what I had to pay a bill I was desperately behind on in order to save myself the embarrassment of having to fix the problem later with the company I owed money to.  Now that my collection has grown so large, I could afford to be a bit more judicious with what I have, though I generally don't let go of something once I have it.  That's the burden of the collector, really: you buy stuff that sits on a shelf and doesn't see much daylight, but you wouldn't have it any other way.  I do, however, listen to my music collection as much as time allows, and there are a large number of albums I wouldn't want to part with unless I was facing total destitution, especially since some of them are a bit more rare and would cost considerably more than I originally paid to re-acquire them.  In any event, I hope everyone will enjoy this new series and be inspired to consider their own music collections and what they have to offer.