Random Access

The guitar solo in The Stampeders' Sweet City Woman has to be the most seductive, infectious, just plain delicious thing ever blessed enough to come out of a tinny AM car radio on a sweltering summer day.
It is impossible, and I mean impossible, not to start swaying back and forth in your seat mimicking the notes of the solo and then breaking into full croak when the vocal chorus comes along.
It is the ultimate car radio song and I sometimes listen to the oldies stations just on the off chance I might hear it. They play it a lot, for obvious reasons.
So, it was no surprise to read this morning that the Stampeders' signature tune is one of 26 songs to be inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame at its gala next Feb. 5 at the Metro Convention Centre (see www.cansong.ca for details.)
But, as quickly as “Sweet, Sweet, Sweet, Sweet City Woman,” started reverberating through the prairies of my mind, came the shock of seeing a second of the nominees: another perennial playlist favourite of the oldies station, the contemptible song, Sugar Sugar.
Not only should this pedestrian, saccharine, inane song get nowhere near any hall of fame, we should officially change Andy Kim's place of birth to Montana to exact revenge for its publication.
Contrary to public belief, Banting and Best made their landmark discovery of insulin in anticipation of the spike in blood sugar levels that would be caused several decades later by Kim's ode to banality.
“You are my candy girl,” and “I find myself wanting,” to kill whoever wrote this....ah...trash.
How could this happen? How do you think Leonard Cohen, who is one of five new inductees being inducted, feels about having his intricately crafted songs Hallelujah, Suzanne, Bird On A Wire, Everybody Knows and Ain't No Cure for Love being honoured along with the drek of Sugar Sugar.
Now that Sugar Sugar has fouled the Hall of Fame waters, what's next?
I certainly hope we're not going to allow a single composition by Paul Anka, who should have been born in Las Vegas where he now lives, not Ottawa. If only his babysitter had been named Svetlana instead of Diana, maybe we would never have been subjected to Paul's ode to self-adoration, I Did It My Way.
If they try to put You're Having My Baby in the Hall of Fame we should send the Stampeders to trample the induction committee.