So farewell, George Martin, famed producer of The Vipers Skiffle Group!

But, of course, George Martin is probably better known for his work with...

Diminutive Welsh guitarist, singer and producer Dave Edmunds is a giant of British rock music - I salute him

Yes, I've heard all the criticisms - he's derivative, predictable, stuck in a time-warp, hasn't written any classic songs, and, au fond, he's a heads-down-no-nonsense-mindless twelve-bar pub-rocker whose terrible twin, lanky Nick Lowe, was the truly creative force in their erstwhile partnership. Some of that's partly true, I think - but if it is, it's because Edmunds has always been a hugely obsessive music fan, in awe of the wonderful noise produced by his heroes and determined to discover how they managed it - and to recreate it using any means at hand, including his own considerable talents as a guitar-picker and a vastly under-rated singer.

So farewell, James Last - and thanks for all those fabulously naff album covers

Severe water retention, presumably

Ennio Morricone, The Yardbirds and Brad Paisley - how Spaghetti Western Music conquered the world

In a way, it all started in 1961, with Italian composer Ennio Morricone's arrangement for this version of a Woody Guthrie song by American folk-singer Peter Tevis (which I heard for the first time this morning):

15 toe-tapping tunes to help banish the January blues

Oh God! The news has been full of stupid politicians saying stupid things and lying through their teeth, we've just taken down our lovely Christmas tree, some idiot bumhole has dumped a bunch of crud on top of the black bin-bags waiting for collection around the lamp-post nearest our front door, so the foxes will be on the rampage all night long and the bin-men will as usual do everything in their power to leave an even worse mess in their wake, and the sky is grey and boring, and... well it's early January and I"M NOT GRUNTLED! So I've whacked on the light box and gone hunting for some insanely cheerful songs to take the edge off my mood, and - just in case any of you are feeling low as well - I've decided to share them with you. I'll start with possibly the most cheerful song I know, from 1946:

I salute the mighty organ - the instrument that went from zero to hero in 1960s pop music

Organs became big in 1959 when they featured as lead instrument in three major pop hits – Dave “Baby” Cortez’s chart-topping “The Happy Organ” (not to mention "The Whistling Organ" - now there's a novelty!), “White Silver Sands” by the Bill Black Combo, and Johnny and the Hurricane’s “Red River Rock”. Within a few short years, organs had shaken off their cheerful, vaguely comic “novelty” tag and were all over the pop charts: by the mid-Sixties, they were dead hip.

I love early 1960s British pop instrumentals – the musical equivalent of beans on toast

I remember my wife once asking me “Do you really like this sort of music?” in a bemused, pitying sort of way after being subjected to half an hour of pre-Beatles guitar-based British instrumental pop on the car stereo. My first thought was: Girls, what do they know about pop music! But it did set me wondering what exactly I find so appealing about what – by any standards – isn’t exactly demanding fare (to anyone not brought up on it, I suspect it might sound faintly ridiculous).

The Fulminators don baggies and Huarache sandals and get funking with "Funky Surfer"

The Fulminators cover "Stampede" - the raucous 1959 instrumental that may very well have been the first surf music single

Rockin' up a storm with "Teddy Boys' Picnic" - The Fulminators triumphantly rework an early classic

The Fulminators revisit Mel Tormé's "Comin' Home Baby" - the coolest song on the planet

The Fulminators kick back with self-penned rock 'n' roll instrumental, "Twangtastic"

The Fulminators pay homage to the great Danny Gatton with "Rockabilly Rapscallion"

The agonising wait is finally over - The Fulminators are back with moody surf masterpiece "Repeat Prescription"

The Fender Telecaster is THE electric guitar – no ifs, ands or buts: here’s the proof...

Sixty-three years old, devoid of airs and graces, solid as a rock, plain as a pikestaff, sporting two picks-ups, two “pots” (volume and treble), a three-way selector switch – and nothing else (unless you’re Country picker and get one with a B-bender, so you can use your elbow to raise the B-string a tone to C-sharp, resulting in twangtastic mayhem). The Telecaster is the manly, no frills Ur-guitar. Obviously there are many other makes which do certain things better – crunchier, sweeter, fatter, janglier, jazzier etc – but the Tele’s versatility is without parallel: it features on everything from “Suzie Q” to Tubular Bells to the “Stairway to Heaven” solo.

"A little thyng pleaseth a foole" - and this dancing girl made me smile

A two-fingered salute to Merle Travis – the guitar-pickin’ giant who made one guitar sound like a band

Return of The Fulminators with "Jamabilly", "Big Ones in Texas", "Matchbox" and "Ziggy's Return"

The late great Jerry Reed" a tribute to the Alabama Wild Man

The story goes that when Elvis Presley was in Nashville in 1967 trying to record “Guitar Man”, his brilliant lead guitarist, James Burton, simply couldn’t nail the acoustic guitar part, so he suggested contacting the composer, Jerry Reed, who’d had a minor hit with the song the previous year, and asking him to come in and play the damn thing on the session. Which Reed duly did, resulting in one of Elvis’s best singles.

How digital magic turned The Fulminators into happy felines - "Thanks, Al" and "On the Prowl"

Despite working in new media (I’m not sure what it’s called nowadays – it’s getting a bit long in the tooth to be called “new” anything) for 13 years, there are still some digital applications that strike me as nothing short of magic. 

Okay, I’ve long since got over email and the web and mobile phones and digital video recorders – I enjoy them all enormously, and they’ve made a big and largely beneficial difference to my life – but they’re now too much part of the warp and weft of my existence to deliver the visceral thrill they once did. As for slightly more recent innovations – social networks and smart-phones and iPads - well, I’m just too old to care that much.