While I’m not exactly Chef Jee-Mee, I do enjoy the eating part, too.

“Green Onions” reminded me of other instrumentals that were popular when I was growing up. Oh, damn. Now I’m in trouble.

The Surfaris (I think we favored the Ventures’ version): “Wipeout,” (1963). Look! These guys can play electric guitars without having them plugged in!

Speaking of The Ventures, I am fond of The Surfajettes, a cover band. They got it goin’ on: Big hair, short skirts, go-go boots. The drummer is a hoot–full of pep!

This is always my low-water mark for rock and/or roll music: “Telstar,” by the Tornados (1962). This song celebrated as satellite that allowed you to make long-distance phone calls to France or Moldova, for example.

Three years later, things got jazzier. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, “A Taste of Honey.”

This was the album cover, which we had in our very own personal home on Huasna Road. I was thirteen. I played that album often. Okay, I might have stared at it a lot, too. Album cover experts (where can you find a job like that?) now consider this a classic. If they say so, it must be true.

1968 saw two big instrumental hits. Mason Williams’s “Classical Gas” is still on my MP3 playlist.

[Insert Pepe Lew Pew accent here.] This song is not on my playlist, but “Love is Blue” was very …oh, how do you Americans say…? Romantique, no?

“Nadia’s Theme” (I looked it up!) started out as a theme for the soap The Young and the Restless, but in 1976, Romanian gymnast Nadia Comenici so enthralled Americans watching the Olympics—she was the first gymnast in Olympic history to score a perfect “10”— that a single version with her name in the title became a hit. Watch her stick the landing on the parallel bars. Coemnici, by the way, supplanted Soviet sensation Olga Korbut, the darling of the 1972 Olympics. And Nadia would be replaced in American’s minds by Mary Lou Retton. (And Simone Biles replaced everybody. Justifiably so.)

All glory is fleeting.

And finally, in 1977, Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good” was a big instrumental hit. My attitude was “Meh.” But when Mangione became a recurring character in the series King of the Hill—he was living in a big-box store in Arlen, Texas, hiding inside a fort made of toilet paper—I became a fan.

Here, exterminator Dale Gribble discovers Mangione in his fort (sadly, Dale’s voice, Johnny Hardwick, passed away this year.)

And—sorry, Olga Korbut—but my favorite Soviet at the 1976 Olympics was weightlifting Gold Medalist Vasily Alekseyev, who set eighty world records in the heavyweight class. Once you recover from the initial horror of seeing Alekseyev, you’ve got to admit he is one strong dude, both physically and mentally. We need an instrumental song for Vasily, too, darn it.