Readers recommend: songs about musical instruments

As a former bassist, albeit one with no discernible musical talent, I was delighted this week to discover Mr Bass Man, Johnny Cymbal's 1963 tribute to "the hidden king of rock'n'roll". True, the wacky vocals suggest a lack of due respect, but you take what you can get when you're the band member traditionally described as "dependable".

It could have been worse. Less rock-friendly musicians have to seek out Serge Gainsbourg's Black Trombone or the Birthday Party's Mr Clarinet, while the poor kazoo player must forage around in verse two of Creedence Clearwater Revival's Down on the Corner. Meanwhile, the guitar is lavished with love. The Cowboy Junkies' was blue, David Sylvian's was red, George Harrison's cried like a baby and Steve Earle's had a whole damn town named after it. No wonder guitarists tend to develop ego problems.

I miss the tradition of band leaders introducing all the instruments one by one. In his musical kitchen, King Curtis gathers his ingredients: half a teacup of bass, a pound of fatback drums, a little pinch of organ. Arcade Fire should adopt this tactic: lighten the mood a bit.

Country singer Jerry Reed scored his first hit (swiftly covered by Elvis) with a spirited anthem for all America's guitar-slinging hopefuls, while the Lemon Pipers' nugget of psychedelic bubblegum spoke up for struggling street musicians. Unkind listeners might suggest the busker's fortunes would be improved if he learned a proper instrument.

Mike Nesmith's Different Drum was a product of its time (see also Free Bird and Love the One You're With): an earnestly high-flown excuse for the inability to resist shagging anything in range. The Lemonheads lend it just the right amount of roguish charm. Ill-starred former Byrd Gene Clark earned Bob Dylan's respect with his gorgeous, cryptic meditation on the Spanish guitar.

Brandished by Jimmy Page in The Song Remains the Same, the hurdy gurdy became a symbol of intolerable hippie pretension, as indeed did most of Donovan's lyrics, but the song still has an acid-dazed brilliance. In Nick Cave's savagely funny retelling of Orpheus inventing the lyre, the instrument becomes a stringed killing machine. Understandably annoyed at being slain, Eurydice welcomes her husband to the underworld with the words, "If you play that fucking thing down here I'll stick it up your orifice!"

Hip-hop turned a mechanism for playing music into a tool for making it, a seismic innovation celebrated by Beck in Where It's At's joyous chorus: "Two turntables and a microphone." Instrumentals such as Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells or the Hollywood Persuaders' Drums-A-Go-Go can be good advertisements for certain devices, though Aphex Twin's thrilling Didgeridoo emulates the instrument's drone by entirely electronic means. Penguin Café Orchestra's Simon Jeffes came across a discarded harmonium in a Tokyo street and was inspired to create his best-loved tune. He's lucky he didn't find a kazoo.

This week's playlist

1 Memphis Soul Stew - King Curtis & the Kingpins
2 Guitar Man - Jerry Reed
3 Green Tambourine - The Lemon Pipers
4 Different Drum - The Lemonheads
5 For a Spanish Guitar - Gene Clark
6 Hurdy Gurdy - Man Donovan
7 The Lyre of Orpheus - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
8 Where It's At Beck
9 Didgeridoo Aphex Twin
10 Music for a Found Harmonium - Penguin Café Orchestra

Next week: Songs about night and darkness

· The following clarification was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Saturday November 10 2007. The above article suggested that Johnny Cymbal's 1963 song Mr Bass Man is about the double bass. In fact it is about the bass singer, in this instance Ronnie Bright, in doo-wop-style groups.

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