During the pandemic I was living in Bangkok with curfews and booze bans. It was a weird time as I'm sure you remember. Social interaction generally took place via the laptop as we tried to stay sane. At some point, between online quizzes and poker tournaments with mates, I started thinking about my Desert Island Discs. I've always thought this would be an impossible task and it certainly took some time to cut down my initial list of 30+ songs. I'm sure if you asked me today, the final list would look different (in fact, I know it would).

Myself and two friends from school, who were also up for the challenge, spent a cracking evening discussing our choices and the reasons behind them as well as having a beer or two (there's always a way despite the bans!). Now, we've known each other for well over thirty years so you would have thought there would be few surprises in our choices but this wasn't the case- who saw A-Ha making any of our lists? Not me certainly.

The stories behind each track were varied and some held deeper reasons for inclusion than others. There were some major omissions for me- nothing from The Specials, The Smiths or The Wedding Present- but I was happy with my final choices.

I won't bore you with every detail behind each choice but I have listed my top eight tracks below in no particular order. 

1. Teenage Kicks- The Undertones

2. Town Called Malice- The Jam

3. Seven Days Too Long- Dexys Midnight Runners

4. Express Yourself- NWA

5. In 'n' Out of Grace- Mudhoney

6. Freak Scene- Dinosaur Jr

7. New England- Billy Bragg

8. Sure Shot- Beastie Boys

What would your Desert Island Discs be? Let me know and I may post some of the responses in a future blog post.

Thanks for reading

Ali