Here's a pressing question of our time: if you were shipwrecked on a desert island, which five CD's would you want to have with you? Here's mine.

Houses of the Holy - Led Zeppelin Almost 21 years after I bought my first Led Zeppelin CD, they still rank as my favorite band of all time, and I think this is still my favorite album of theirs. Choosing between Houses of the Holy and III was almost like picking a favorite child, but since my favorite song of all time, "The Rain Song," is on here, I have to go with this one. "No Quarter" is here, too, and that's a devastating combination.

Funnily enough I didn't like this when I first heard it, and thought it was Zeppelin's dud album. But I thought that of each Led Zeppelin album until I listened to them three or four times, and realized there was no such thing as a Zep dud, it was just that my teenage ears were too immature to grasp the greatness right away.

Smokin' - Humble Pie Zen's second singer was a fan of Humble Pie. I taped this one off of him and...wasn't into it at the time. Somehow I saw Humble Pie as the trailer park side of classic rock. Silly me, trailer parks are where the best rock happens! It took me 11 or 12 years but somehow I came back to this record and realized this is some of the best shit ever put on tape.

Waiting for Columbus - Little Feat Around the time Zen folded up we played the Chameleon Club, and on the PA they were playing some music that sounded like music I had dreamed of but had never actually heard. I asked the sound guy what it was, and he said, "Waiting for Columbus by Little Feat."

Actually I had heard The Radiators earlier that year, I think, and liked their sound and bought one of their CD's, but Little Feat was even more intensely into that groove I was loving. After Zen dissolved I got Columbus and decided when I formed my next band, it would sound like this. This also led to me buying a Boss PH-2 phaser pedal, and phase became my favorite guitar effect.

Live at Leeds Deluxe Edition - The Who I'm noticing that I came to some of my favorite records with low expectations. The same applies to The Who's Live at Leeds. Scott and I went to the mall as teens, and this was a six-song EP with a "Nice Price" sticker. I figured it would be lame, but an okay trinket for the day, so I bought it. We got back to Scott's and put it on, and we were shitting our pants when "Young Man's Blues" hit the speakers. The six-song track list deceitfully made the album look short because those songs were all about eight minutes long, and wow, this was Rockin' with a capital R!

Later Leeds evolved into a 14-song CD, then a two-disc Deluxe that Scott gave me for being in his wedding. I own all three versions and have no intention of selling any of them. Sonic gold. If you have this and the soundtrack to The Kids Are Alright you have the best of The Who; as a fairly hardcore fan I dare say you could skip the studio albums, except maybe Quadrophenia. The Who was made for the stage.

Rollercoaster - Red House Painters By my mid-30's I figured I was done finding new music that would excite me. Then came the Red House Painters. I remembered their name from a bag of CD's another DJ had at the college radio station way back when. The sound samples at Amazon rubbed me the right way, and in a blink I had four or five of their CD's. However, I love `em so much I'm only allowing myself to hear one a year, so I can hear them slowly, as they came out. Right now I'm on the one unofficially known as Rollercoaster, their first full-length.

This CD is radically different than the others on this list. Clean, jangly, echoing guitars and 75 bpm, the beginning of "slowcore," or "sadcore," as the kids call it. Check out these lyrics from one of my favorite songs ever, "Strawberry Hill":

He's not like the other boys around here
He sits in his room and says nothing
And he's afraid to drive a car
How sad he is

We know who you are
I read your palm while you were sleeping
and I read though your diary
and the secrets you've been keeping
we're already aware of

You have to hear those lyrics with the music to get their power and intensity, delivered over a very slow, deliberate beat. Very stirring stuff.

Hey, now that it's 2009, I can start a new Red House Painters CD! Woo-hoo!

Hope that was informative.