Are you ready to rock?

I’ve not slept much these last 48 hours, what with one thing and another. I’m just back from Northern Ireland, and I have so much to write about, and so little useful brain activity, that it’s best I just put up a few Sunday night favourites and then slide into the blissful arms of Hypnos until the Antique Roadshow comes on, at which point I’ll go and nod off again in front of the telly.

Driving up Northern Ireland’s wonderful A2 last Thursday, this new single from Glen Campbell was all over Radio Ulster. The organ solo in the middle actually IS rock and roll music. You could play a Martian this organ solo, and SHe would understand at once why rock and roll music has been humanity’s greatest achievment.

It’s a Jackson Browne song, first covered by Nico on the Chelsea Girls album. But have you heard this, Nico singing a Gordon Lightfoot song, before she went to New York.

When Perry and I were doing The Longest Crawl, Agnetha Falskog’s new single was all over the radio, (new in 2004, you understand). I thought of this not just because of how a particular song might become associated with a particular trip, such as Glen on the A2; but also of how Nico always reminds me of Agnetha. Nico is like Agnetha gone bad.

‘If I Thought You’d Ever Change Your Mind’ was a hit for Cilla in ’69; so here is Cilla doing ‘You’re My World’ and looking ten trillion Zimbabwean Dollars. And wait? Isn’t that a baritone guitar solo at the end, I  hear you cry? Doesn’t that take us back into Glenland?

Via Dennis Browne it does , though Dennis opts for a cheesy synth solo in place of Glen’s magisterial baritone guitar. In The Longest Crawl, I say that ‘Wichita Lineman’ is the the only good bass solo in the long glittering career of popular music. My good friend David Rothon, peddle steel player extra-ordinaire, and a great baritone player, too, told me that it wasn’t a bass solo on ‘WL’, but a bari. So there are no good bass solos.