Actually only "The Good Old Boys" was Def Leppard (with their singer Joe Elliot being credited as pianist on the track). 'Stumpus Maximus' was the pseudonym for the person who sang lead on the track (who was one of the band's roadies, IIRC).
The single Fabulous Sequel by Pere Ubu had a strange bside. Unlike any other Ubu track - with no vocal from David Thomas but, instead - what appears to be a found tape of a language lesson being played over the rhythmic backing music. The Book Is On The Table
The Warners album features the real Mercy throughout, but has the re-recorded version of the single. The original label's album has the real single, but the rest of the album is the anonymous covers. I believe Mercy's frontman was drafted in between, so the real Mercy only did the one track before he returned and they signed to Warners.
The B-side of Hari's Dark Hoarse single. A perfect expression of where he was at that time. "OK here we go.. We got a b-side to make, ladies and gentlemen, We haven't got much time now so we better get right on with it..."
Their tour manager, apparently. Led to this rather amusing cover art for the 12" standalone single version. Gotta love the silhouetted hirsute members of Def Lep, and this very bald schlub in front.
Interesting...I didn't realize that Mercy recorded an LP on Sundi...I'd like to hear it. After checking it out on Discogs, looks like it's primarily covers (as is the Warner Bros. LP, with different songs). The WB album has a cover of fellow Floridians Proctor Amusement Company's "Heard You Went Away" that I really like.
How 'bout "Give Me Love" by Rosie & the Originals? The utterly shambolic flip side of "Angel Baby" (a top 5 hit in 1961) literally sounds like they made it up on the spot. John Lennon luvved both the A and the B sides!
My guess is they were thinking "We want to release as many singles (A-Sides) as possible from the Hysteria album, so we better come up with some additional tracks, so that we don't need to put any - potential A-Side album tracks on the B-Sides. In the end they released seven - though their unfinished single picture sleeve "puzzle/collage/whatever you call it" strongly implied they were actually looking to release nine singles from the album. As for the seven non-album B-Sides (to the 7" inch singles from the Hysteria album) they wrote/recorded three new songs, re-recorded a track from their self-released pre-fame EP (the other two songs on that EP had already been re-recorded for their debut album). Add to that, the 'Stumpus Maximus' joke track, and two live in concert songs. The 12" and CD singles had those along with additional live and remixed tracks.
"All Right Now" by Free was a classic hard soul-rocker...the B-side "Mouthful Of Grass" sounds like some blissed-out angels up in heaven:
That's NOT the B-Side of the single (at least not in the UK). In the UK it was released and promoted as a double-A-Side (though 'Girl's School' was all but ignored given the overwhelming popular response to 'Mull'). Mull was the B-Side in the US, though I'm not sure if that was the record company's doing, or if it was radio programmers who preferred 'Girl's School', but as a US A-Side 'Girl's School' flopped, peaking near the bottom of the Billboard Top 40 (while Mull missed charting in Billboard completely).
There were TWO songs on the 7" B--Side of that single (and the other song was about 5 and a half minutes long). Given that I see nothing to complain about. Here is that other song (which shared the B-Side of that single with 'Cartier'):
Oh yeah, that is the very first single I thought of for this thread. I love both sides of the single, but boy are they very different animals, Lol. Not only lyric wise, but they came from completely different recording sessions and they had two pretty distinct production styles, though both feature some brass in their arrangements.
I'm curious what you think is the farthest out from Ubu then? I would guess something from Art of Walking?
You are correct. During their tenure on the Mercury label in the late 60s, Manfred Mann actually rivaled The Turtles for weirdness on their B-sides. This was on the flipside of "The Mighty Quinn." Manfred Mann / By Request, Edwin Garvey
Jona Lewie - Denny Laine's Valet (The B side of The Baby, She's On the Street. It's actually not that off-brand for Jona Lewie at the time, his whole album On the Other Hand There's a Fist is similarly infused with a kooky old-timey vibe. I'm posting it anyway because of the title. I used to wonder whether he ever worked for Denny Laine - if not, what inspired him to write a song about Denny's valet, if indeed he had one? Don't expect the words to provide a clue , if you could even make them out. Catchy anyway.)
I know that the simple mention of this name will hurt some people's sensibilities (therefore, I'm apologizing in advance: sorry), but Paul McCartney released a bunch of singles in the 1970 that fits this thread's subject perfectly. For example: "Another Day" b/w "Oh Woman, Oh Why" The A-side is a country/soft rock song and the B-side is a raucous, electric rocker with a raspy vocal performance. Maybe listening to these songs will give you a better idea. "Hi Hi Hi" b/w "C Moon" A side: a dirty blues rocker about sex and drugs. B side: a cute raggae song featuring his children on backing vocals. "My Love" b/w "The Mess" A side: a piano driven love song with strings. B side: hard rock full of tempo changes. "Junior's Farm" b/w "Sally G." A side: hard rock. B side: country music complete with pedal steel and fiddle. There are many more but these are enough. I'm convinced that Paul used to choose his b-sides very meticulously during the Wings period. And for those who think I'm shoehorning The Beatles on an unrelated thread: get a life! That will do.
and Songs of the Bailing Man. "The Vulgar Boatman Bird," "Horns are a Dillema" and "My Hat" strike me as far out as a rock group can get while still making something that could be considered pop music. Those weren't b-sides, though.
Chris Montez's first two hits - Let's Dance and Some Kinda Fun. Great, beaty numbers. Flips - You're the One and Tell Me (It's Not Over) - dirges! Anyone buying Lonnie Donegan's My Old Man's a Dustman would probably have been surprised by the murder ballad The Golden Vanity. And there could hardly be a greater contrast than David Kernan and Judy Carne's Late Last Evening and Betty Marsden, Pip Hinton and Carne's A Plea for the Throne - the former a really poignant song of lost love, the latter bemoaning the lack of a ladies' lavatory!
Phil Spector would always do that to make sure the A-side would be played on the radio and not the B-side. That's actually quite enjoyable. But in a total 'un-Be My Baby' way!!!!
Yep...speaking of which, I'm going to check and see what was on the b-side of "River Deep, Mountain High" by Ike and Tina...look's like it's "I'll Keep You Happy" (written by Phil himself). It does have Tina on it and it's quite good, kind of garagey-sounding.
In his early-mid 1960s heyday Spector was a svengali who headed his own record label for much of that time (they were HIS records, while the artist names on the labels of Spector singles were nearly irrelevant, as they were basically "session singers" with little to no say, just doing what Spector told them to do). Does THAT sound like the Beatles? Spector had ZERO say in picking the singles (A or B Sides) when recording with the ex-Beatles. Remember unlike Spector, the Beatles were most definitely NOT an act that made a habit of consciously putting garbage on their B-Sides. Not to mention 'Isn't It A Pity' was NOT a B-Side. It was promoted as a double A-Side (uncut Apple label on both sides). Of course the concept of a double A-Sided single is nonsensical in the US where radio airplay was a major factor in determining chart position. Who actually believes that both sides always got played on the radio the exact same number of times per week nationwide as the other side of the single? My guess as to why they made the unprecedented move of promoting it specifically as a double A-Side in the US was to hedge their bets with TWO risky choices for a single, figuring radio would at least play one side (whichever side radio found the less offensive - a religious song, or an over seven minute long song). Billboard was in the midst of a short-lived combining of charting single sides into a single combined listing (giving CCR a long string of consecutive combined #2 singles in Billboard, while neither side of those singles on its own reached that high in Cashbox). So while My Sweet Lord/Isn't It A Pity were combined as a (essentially fraudulent - remember airplay factored into US chart listings, and unless both songs were always played the same number of times on radio nationwide per week, they by definition could NOT have legitimately both EARNED the #1 spot simultaneously) double-A-Side, in Cashbox who did not make the same weird nonsensical change that Billboard did, and continued to chart each side of a single separately (based on how much each song was played on radio) 'My Sweet Lord' hit #1 and 'Isn't It A Pity' peaked far outside the Top 40 (#70-something IIRC).
