(Pictured: Is this a good time for a picture of Linda Ronstadt? Hell yes it is always a good time for a picture of Linda Ronstadt.)

This past week, man . . . you don’t want to know. To provide fresh content so you don’t give up on this Internet feature, here’s a quick rundown of some interesting stuff that’s passed through my Twitter feed recently. It’s the best post I can do under the circumstances.

The best thing I’ve read lately is this excerpt from a forthcoming book on rock music and race relations discussing how the Rolling Stones, despite being considered an R&B band (late edit: at least at the start), despite their well-publicized love for the blues, were the engine that drove the racial segregation of rock. Telling statistic about that segregation: when New York classic-rock station Q104.3 (which I listened to a lot during a recent trip to the area) picked its top 1043 songs of all time, only 22 of them were by black artists, and 16 of them were by Jimi Hendrix.

Those of us who live in the North often dismiss the South as a redneck redoubt that’s stuck in the Jim Crow Era, where people strut like their side won the Civil War. (Or maybe that’s just me, the three-greats grandson of a Union veteran wounded on Missionary Ridge who lives in a state governed by a gaggle of neo-Confederate politicians who are working to turn my state into Mississippi without the accent.) But the New York Times published a useful corrective about the political progressive-ism of a number of Southern musicians, including Drive-By Truckers and Shovels and Rope. Perhaps a younger generation will save us from the sins of our fathers after all.

It’s important to differentiate between “rock ‘n’ roll,” the genre that was born in the middle of the 1950s from the marriage of R&B and country, and straight up “rock,” which was born in the 1960s out of youth culture’s new seriousness. An NPR piece about the new Jon Savage and David Hepworth books about 1966 and 1971, respectively, discusses the transition from one to the other.

Someday somebody will make a movie about the soap opera that was Fleetwood Mac. The epic dysfunction of the Rumours era is well-known, but when the group reconvened in 1981 to make Mirage, things were no less dramatic.

If you have ever seen the video for Hall and Oates’ 1976 hit “She’s Gone,” you’ll probably remember it, even though it was never broadcast anywhere until the Internet era. Daryl Hall (who turned 70 earlier this week) says, “They thought we were completely insane.”

Although it never made it onto your typical good times/great oldies radio station, Petula Clark’s “Downtown” is one of the landmark hits of the 60s. Clark and writer/producer Tony Hatch recently told the story of its creation.

Tom Cox is the author of several hilarious and charming books about his cats and his life in rural England, most recently Close Encounters of the Furred Kind. He also hosts an online radio show that focuses on 60s and 70s folk rock, and he wrote an insightful appreciation of the early Linda Ronstadt that is also a lot of fun to read.

Monty Python’s “Argument Clinic” is widely considered to be one of the greatest comedy sketches ever put on record. And it’s funny even when performed by two voice synthesizers, one of whom sounds like Stephen Hawking.

That’s all I’ve got today. Please visit again sometime, when I may have more.