I received a few DVDs this Christmas that look back on some classic rock recordings. These discs all contain healthy samplings of the songs from the individual albums, along with interviews of the artists, producers and big-name fans within the industry. Memory love fests with little insights and observations on shiny discs. Old times, good times!

As we embark on another year, and continue to watch the evolution of pop culture branded on cable television, cell phones and computer devices it will be interesting to see what happens to the music industry over the next several years.

At this juncture the album format is all but dead. The rock format died somewhere in the last decade, but the people who noticed were in an age demographic that had no impact on the advertising agencies. Advertising agencies are now the sole creators of popular culture today.

When rock ruled it was frowned upon to advertise in the mainstream. Rock stars became hip by word of mouth, inexpensive concerts and free form FM radio play. Rock flourished in an era of underground excess and decentralization that openly rebelled against corporate suits. Today is all about corporate suits.

Over the years a variety of reputable critics, radio hosts, music television and music magazines have done the obligatory top 100 lists, the countdown to the top of pop. Tastes change over the years, and a sampling of what people consider cool at the outset of one decade changes radically at the dawn of another ten year cycle. The point being, there really is no number one in pop music, but there are important statements of art within the genre that leave lasting imprints on the culture at large.

In my former life, a company I worked for published a great magazine, Pulse!, and offered readers a chance to choose any ten records that they could live with forever on a desert island. Desert Island Discs became a staple, and showcased an amazing breadth of knowledge by the readership of the magazine. In that spirit I offer this silly little exercise I thought would be fun. I couldn't pick just ten, so here is Part One of what I consider to be my 100 Desert Island Discs during rock's magnificent run of fifty plus years. No record is more important than any other. These all Carry The Weight equally.

Elvis Presley was crowned King, but it was Chuck Berry who really drove the the Big 88 down the highway. Chuck defined what a rock record was all about. His vocals and guitar coupled with Johnny Johnson's piano became the most copied sound for better than a decade. Elvis, The Beach Boys, Beatles and Rolling Stones all covered Chuck. Chuck Berry-The Great Twenty-Eight- makes the list with all the hits from Chess Records that Chuck produced from 1955 to 1965. It does not contain his last hit, My Ding-A-Ling, which is okay by me.

Elvis Presley started at Chess, just like Chuck. He was kidnapped by the nefarious "Colonel" Tom Parker, which was not his manager's real name, and brainwashed on some space ship before returning to earth with only his looks left intact. Apparently no one knows "Colonel" Tom's real name, just that he had Elvis working for two-hundred grand a year in Vegas to close out the King's last decade of life. Elvis did make some great records in the 1950s . He makes the cut because I love sci-fi and the box-set, Elvis The King of Rock 'N' Roll The Complete 50's Masters.

Another Chess Artist who comes to my island paradise is Roy Orbison. Roy's vocals have no peer, and his greatest songs still permeate that tragic sense of longing and loneliness that defy time. The All-Time Greatest Hits of Roy Orbison on Monument Records gets the island treatment.

Buddy Holly did not stay on the planet long enough. Too many great ones seldom do. He did make a lasting impression on the rock world. Buddy Holly -A Rock & Roll Collection- gets stuffed into the suitcase. Song stylists still cover his originals.

Ray Charles defies categorization. I call him the best musician-vocalist America ever produced. He did it all, and his legacy is the vast range of great material he sourced and brought to the world. People who say they don't like particular styles of music must never have heard Ray Charles. Ray thought all music had merit, but you had to be able to play it properly. He always did. Ray Charles Genius & Soul The 50th Anniversary Collection from Rhino comes along for the trip.

The Beatles The Collection and The Rolling Stones, both from Mobil Fidelity Labs are essentials for my palm tree house of tunes. These bands were the twin engines of the 1960s. They soared above the crowded field of imitators and innovators for the full decade. It is hard today to fathom the extent of their reach.

The Beatles dominated with movies, arena shows and non-stop tours of the world through 1966 and then created the signature studio albums they are best remembered for today from Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album to Abbey Road and Let It Be. This band covered Buddy Holly, The Shirelles, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Buck Owens and then penned the most original tunes rock had ever heard.

The Rolling Stones have always been the counter weight to the Beatles. The darker shade of blue that specialized at the outset with stunning recreations of America's forgotten blues masters like Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf. Jagger and Richards also wrote definitive rock ballads, anthems and quirky gems that still sound fresh today. They paid homage to their blues heroes by recording at Chess Studios many of the songs from Out Of Their Heads and Rolling Stones Now albums. The bass response for the time was the deepest and most vibrant of the period and still carries bite when played today.

The compilations by Mobil Fidelity are from the English release versions only. During the 1960s the American labels didn't think much of anything coming beyond the immediate US borders. They delayed releases of both bands, shuffled song titles and created whole new albums from songs they had short changed the US consumer. It was a real treat to finally own in the early 80s the original albums from both bands. It convinced me how deep the corruption and greed ran within most of big-biz America. It was never about art or the artist. It was always strictly about the money.

When I pack my bags the Motown Anniversary Collection with the 50 certified number 1 hits will be included. Marvin Gaye, Smoky Robinson & The Miracles, The Supremes, The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Commodores, Four Tops and the rest of this amazing stable of performers will always let me tap my foot and fondly sing along. You cannot stay in a bum mood when these songs burst into your ears.

Rounding out my ten compilations, and first installment (call it the last lay-away plan) for this Desert Island Disc retrospective are two San Francisco band collections, Jefferson Airplane Loves You and Grateful Dead So Many Roads (1965-1995). These bands represented all that psychedelic, anti-establishment and anti-glamour surrealism of the late 1960s. The Dead never changed their philosophy, and blazed on for thirty years doing it strictly their way. You could pick out a bunch of singular albums they released over the years as picks to take along but the overall journey is well represented in this five disc set that covers them from the start and winds up at the end. The Airplane was a noble concept of really talented individuals that died much like the hippie dream in a wash of money, bad drugs and egos. The sound that the Jefferson Airplane made during their six year run was very special, and created a unique mixing of east and west balanced against political protest with balls.

Feel free to comment about your own peculiar versions of rock truth at a desert island address near you.

"Give Peace A Chance."

People celebrate anniversaries of past events in different ways. A lot of people were remembering Pearl Harbor yesterday on its sixty-fifth anniversary. Maybe you put on the Ben Affleck movie from a couple of years ago, or possibly the classic From Here To Eternity, which starred Burt Lancaster, and defined the word kiss for a generation. Maybe you groused that the word infamy has been lost through time.

How time flies, and today is another sad anniversary to commemorate. It really has been twenty-six years to the day that I watched the television reports come first from Monday Night Football's Howard Cosell that John Lennon was dead. I was watching some lame game having some beers discussing Christmas plans with my ex when Howard made the announcement.

In my two-bedroom-apartment Palo Alto-world there was no twenty-four hour news network to view. CNN had only been recently launched that summer(June 1, 1980) and our little provider of cable was fighting with the city of Palo Alto over how cable was going to delivered to the upscale inhabitants of the town. Fortunately with the Iranian hostage crisis Nightline had come into being a little earlier that year (March 24, 1980). Nightline was only twenty minutes in length at the time. It would take another month before Ted got a full 30 minute program but he did a nice job on the fly that evening.

I remember everyone in the small apartment complex coming out into the driveway center and chatting for a good portion of the evening with one another about the tragedy, and, of course, everyone's history with the Beatles. Most of us were in our late twenties or early thirties and equated it with the other assassination traumas from our youth, the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King. These three great men were slain having been entrenchments within the political world. The leading pop music icon of the day assassinated seemed even more unbelievable. But at the end of our various discussions we realized what a political force John Lennon had been.

People under thirty years of age today have no conception of how large a figure John Lennon was. There are, of course, all those songs and retro footage of the Fab Four mobbed at every turn. There is quaint movie footage from the silver screen with A Hard Days Night, Help, The Magical Mystery Tour and Let It Be to look at and wonder what all the commotion was about. Fans and the curious also have Beatle documentaries on DVD or in print to peruse as well.

But with most views at the past there is the growing chasm of disconnect. The loss of was spreading apart from the reality of is. There is a Lennon/Beatle song, In My Life, that encompasses this truth so completely that on this day I will play it several times. It is from the Rubber Soul album. I might play that a bunch of times today, as well. I will watch the documentary Imagine and cry at the end when Yoko Ono sums it all up, "He was my lover, my friend, my husband, my partner. He was my old soldier who fought with me."

I have tremendous respect for Yoko Ono, and thank her for preserving the legacy of John Lennon. I thank the fates that the torch Lennon carried has not faded, but has been transformed, and that a troubadour from Ireland carries his passion today.

"Give Peace A Chance."