It's Always Rubbish On The B-Side

 

The B-sides topic has been pretty successful so far, plenty or readers’ responses and suggestions. One of these was taking an opposite approach and instead of focussing on cool non-album tracks why not select some that were just filler (no killer!), thank you Richard and Jonder!

As one musician eloquently expressed himself: "Our Buddah releases were known for their ridiculous B-sides, like A-side played backwards in order for the business dudes to copyright something with themselves as writers, even though they couldn't write songs."

 
Jonder suggested "B-Side Pisstakes” and thinking of Napoleon XIV’s “They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” B-side (VIX noɘloqɒИ - !ɒɒɒH-ɒH ,γɒwA ɘM ɘʞɒT oT ϱnimoƆ ɘɿ'γɘ⑁T), a novelty record from 1966, yes, taking the piss indeed!

But I decided to give it another twist by having artists taking their B-sides literally…
Tracey Ullman’s “The B-Side” definitely takes it to the extreme, but don’t underestimate Morris Minor and The Majors, their “Another Boring B side” also makes it very clear how they feel about it…
On the other hand Khruangbin & Leon Bridges’ “B-Side” is a pretty cool song!

First price though must probably go to Wall Of Voodoo, they released a special 12” in 1982 named: Two Songs By Wall Of Voodoo.

Side One was their hit “Mexican Radio” and the other side just showed “There's Nothing On This Side”!

Anyway, here comes “It's Always Rubbish On The B-Side”, a highly dubious collection (from nonsense to blues to rap to rock and beyond + 2 tracks from the first compilation) which probably won’t be played often but might make you smirk a bit!

 

Question: What's your favourite novelty record?

B-Side Madness Vol. 2 (more from Koen)

 

 

Great to see all that feedback on the first Vol., so here's no. 2! 

 

This second B-side collection ran into problems as I realized afterwards that I had no idea about any tracks after 1987 since by that time I had moved to Thailand and only purchased cassettes…

Therefore I discarded the original concept of 1980 - 1999 and focused instead on whatever I remembered from those heady days.

Unusual tracks on the flip sides became almost the norm rather than an exception.  

Great for collectors, but financially a lot less so, although I usually waited a bit until the 45 in question was no longer that popular and had ended up in the bargain section.

 

In those days collecting was serious business, no internet, YouTube, eBay, etc., you really had to put in effort, a lot of effort at times!

Radio programs only played B-sides sometimes, so you had to go to your local record store, check if they had anything interesting and take it to a ‘listening station’!

Artists and groups like Elvis Costello and The Police seemed to have only non-album tracks as B-sides… 

 

Other formats popped up too: picture discs, 12 inches, double 7 inches, and even 10 inches!

And of course, most of the time with non-album tracks, but also radio edits, extended versions, disco mixes, remixes, etc…

So once again a (2 CD!) collection that goes all over the place!

In order to get the link we have prepared the following question for you: Did you ever have any 'special' kind of vinyl? If so, please let us know!

B-Side Madness Vol. 1 (A new series from Koen!)

A-side: the potential hit song, aimed at full on radio play…

B-side: at first just a ‘filler’ song, but later used for showcasing a different side of an artist or group…

Occasionally DJs ignored the A side and played the B side instead which sometimes resulted in an unexpected hit, e.g. Rod Stewart’s Maggie May from 1971!

For my 9th birthday I got my first record player but the number of 45s I had were extremely limited, in fact the first single I got was rather pathetic: Sunsilk Shampoo – Sunny Girl (7″ flexi-disc NL 1967), a freebie commercial one…

Luckily soon afterwards I got a bunch of 45s from my Rock ’n’ Roll uncle which included Little Richard’s frantic “Tutti Frutti” and Elvis’ “Jailhouse Rock”...

As a result both sides of each record were enjoyed a lot, but only much later I started to notice that some of those B-sides were intriguing and at times not even available on the artist’s or group’s albums. By the time I got really into record collecting, hunting B-sides became an almost full-time sport!

The focus here though is on B-sides in general, whether exclusive or not, and irrespective of much later appearances on Deluxe Editions / Box Sets!

Both collections here are just a grab bag of B-sides from all kinds of artists, on purpose no attempt was made to follow any kind of musical coherence or logic...