I mentioned the, "All the Jimi Hendrix Experience are dead" factoid to two colleagues at work yesterday. One was an early 30's male, the other an early 20's lady, they're both raving about current Killers and Gn'R records, both go to gigs / buy quite a lot of music and both are what you'd call keen music fans.

Imagine my surprise when Jackie confessed to ignorance of Jimi Hendrix. Full stop. She'd heard of him but couldn't name a single song and had none of his records.

Imagine my horror when Hans (OK, he's German but he's lived here for years and in addition to his native language he speaks excellent English and Japanese: he's a bright guy) asked me, "Hendrix was the guy in Thin Lizzy?" And hadn't heard of The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

After explaining the difference between Jimi and Phil, and doing the obligatory old fart's, "I can't believe you haven't heard of..." spiel I started to ruminate on it. If Jackie was born in the mid-80's then Hendrix was dead a decade and half before she was born and there'd be 30 years between his death and Jackie becoming an active rock fan. Why should she be interested in such old music by a bloke who'd be 60+ if he was still with us when she's got acts her own age to get into?

I suspect Jackie thinks I'm past it because I can only name one member of The Killers (who I quite like) and I don't like The Feeling for those mellow moments because Bread were a much better soft rock group and still put The Feeling in the shade. But all the same: should people be aware of the titans of rock or should we just accept that when we middle aged folks pass on, a whole shed load of music will probably fade away with us?

I heard part of Richard Allison's show on R2 today. He was stand-in drive-time DJ'ing and one of his themes was to invite listeners to nominate the song that best summed up the 1970's. This got me thinking about not just the 70's but the 60's - 90's. Here are mine but what are yours?

60's: "Hey Jude" by The Beatles. The band that re-wrote pop's rule book, soundtracked a younger generation and still united the generations (mostly). The song that is both pop and yet points forward to longer 'rock' songs. Band of the century (imho).

70's: "Hotel California" by The Eagles. Musically it's the archetypal West Coast sound but it's also lyrically astute and perceptive: decadence, ennui and all-too-knowing. It sums up everything the punks hated and for a time replaced. It even kept the Pistols off the top of the charts in Jubilee week - or did it? And then it had the last laugh by outliving the majority of them.

80's: "West End Girls" by the Pet Shop Boys. Disco, electronica, glam, fun, camp, serious and not a guitar in sight. Suddenly, the 80's were cool.

90:'s "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston. I've got to admit the 90's largely passed me by and this song sums up why. Show-off vocal pyrotechnics by a diva who seems to confuse technique with emotion, the time when the terms Rn'B and soul were so roundly abused and appallingly sanitized by MOR pap that rap was inevitable, a soundtrack / Various Artists album, a mediocre film. A lost decade!

I've always thought the dilemma with Desert Island Discs (or similar) is that if you're really honest about it you end up picking songs by acts you don't generally like, or are ashamed to admit liking! For example, I love "25 or 6 to 4" by Chicago but I can't think of any other song in their 30+ album career that I even remotely like. So do I bump a favourite song in favour of one by a favourite act I'd like to see represented? It is supposed to be favourite discs...

Similarly, with Desert Island Albums you could end up with a list of albums you love but which only feature a couple of your all time favourite acts. I'd pick Rod Stewart's "Never A Dull Moment" as a favourite album but I wouldn't pick him as a favourite act any more - I would have in 1987 but in 2007 there are far more Rod albums I don't own than I do.

So who are the 5 acts whose entire canon you'd take with you to the fabled Desert Island? Here, in no particular order, are the acts you'd hear on my Desert Island; what are yours?

Jackson Browne
R.E.M.
Bruce Springsteen
The Flaming Lips
John Martyn