Songs From The Other Side – The World of The B-Side

Back in the old days of vinyl, music came on shiny black (mostly) discs either 12 inches across or 7 inches across. That’s 30cm and 15cm in new money, folks.

The pattern for most artists was that before an album came out, a 7 inch single (or more) was released which was usually the most radio friendly and “likely to be a hit” song from the album. Once the single dropped out of the charts the single would shortly afterwards be deleted and you would then need to buy the album to get the single(s).

Some bands (notably The Beatles and The Smiths come immediately to mind) would release singles that did not appear on albums so avid collectors would have to ensure they bought the singles and the albums as well.

The single had an A side and B side. The A side would normally be the radio friendly song. But what of the B side?

If the artist is temporarily bereft of ideas, then the B side would be one of the less radio friendly album tracks. Sometimes it might be an instrumental version of the A-side, like Simple Minds’ single ‘Alive and Kicking’. The majority of the rest seem to throw together a hastily written tune with very little effort made to refine the melody or even arrange and produce it properly. Here I’m thinking  of early Beatles singles and Rolling Stones singles.

Other examples of lame B-sides include artists like The Boomtown Rats (the B-side of the great ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ is the super lame ‘It’s All The Rage’), Robert Palmer (the B-side of the rocking ‘Addicted To Love’ is a hopelessly weak ‘Let’s Fall In Love Tonight’). B-sides also vary from country to country in some cases, making it a collectors’ nightmare.

But some bands put some effort into their B-sides. They may not always be radio friendly but they are on par with the quality of the A-sides. Given the examples above I never used to even bother with listening to B-sides until one day I flipped over Duran Duran’s ‘Planet Earth’. On the other side of this is the fabulous non-album track ‘Late Bar’. This could have easily been on the album and is a favourite among fans. Fast forward a bit to 1983’s ‘Union Of The Snake’ and you get the almost subversive sounding ‘Secret Oktober’. It’s like they got together in the studio and created a song while the record company wasn’t looking and sneakily put it on the B-side.

The Cure are another example of excellent B-sides, again mostly non album tracks. The Cure was always on the alternative side, especially in the early days, but the B-sides were delightfully more so. Go listen to ‘The Exploding Boy’, ‘Another Journey By Train’ and ‘Descent’ and see if you don’t come away impressed.

One of my favourite B-sides isn’t even really a proper song. On the other side of the 1986 Frankie Goes To Hollywood single ‘Rage Hard’ is the absurd ‘Don’t Lose What’s Left (Of Your Little Mind)’. It’s six and a half minutes of Holly Johnson doing his best impression of the Count from Sesame Street accompanied by sampled burps and other noises, singing about what he would like to have for lunch and wearing stockings on his head. I absolutely love the nonsense of this song. I play this on my show from time to time.

In this age of downloads, the art of the B-side has pretty much disappeared. Even with CDs, the bonus tracks tend to be just a collections of remixes. If you’re a vinyl fan, or maybe you’re interested in a voyage of discovery, I heartily recommend you go to a record shop, find some singles (7 or 12 inch, it doesn’t matter), buy them, take them home and play the B-sides first. You may be pleasantly surprised at what you find.