The death of b-sides

Collecting singles and getting choice cuts as b-sides was a lot of fun. It's part of what I miss about the old ways of buying music.

Some bands do it digitally. Hiss Golden Messenger has had DL-only tracks and a DL-only EP, Glad. Robyn Hitchcock had his Phantom 45's series, later collected on the vinyl-only, Limited Edition There Goes The Ice double 12" EP. I'm sure many artists do similar things. Music still gets issued under the radar for diehard fans.

 

I can’t check right now, but i’d be surprised if Suede’s didn’t have about a dozen. Their b-sides have become classics.

 

The Smiths were a great singles band.

It was a well-loved format in the Punk and post-Punk years. The Jam had terrific non-LP singles and B-Sides; So Sad About Us (WHO cover), Butterfly Collector, Smithers-Jones, Dreams of Children, Liza Radley, Disguises (another WHO cover), Tales From the Riverbank. The Clash had a lot of great ones too, as did The Cure, Siouxie & The Banshees... In later years, Beck had loads of singles with choice non-LP cuts. I have a lot of them on CD.

 

They had an entire triple LP of them that was better than at least one of their actual albums!

 

'b' sides were kind of what marked you out as a proper fan rather than a casual buyer I reckon, and all the best bnads knew this and played up to it.

Whatever anyone thinks of Oasis, their approach to singles at the height of their powers was to issue tracks as 'b' sides that could easily have been singles in their own right. The last band to really do it in my world was Beady Eye, the rump Oasis after Noel left. They put some great b's out, "World Outside my Room", "Sons of the Stage", "The World's Not Set in Stone"...

I guess now the format seems to be releasing four tracks before an album in order to stimulate pre-order sales, almost as a 'get this free now and wait for album release date for the rest' way. Then what would have been 'b'b sides get put on the 'deluxe' versions of the albums, and still the odd one or two get added to a japanese edition (something I still don't really understand).

All in all, it's a shame i think.

 

Teenage Fanclub is another group that had a lot of great non-LP B's. From Grand Prix, they released three singles in pairs with different B-sides. It was a pile of material.

01. Burned
02. For You
03. Headstand
04. Sparky's Dream (Alternate Version)
05. Try And Stop Me
06. That's All I Need To Know
07. Who Loves The Sun
08. Have You Ever Seen The Rain?
09. Between Us
10. Mellow Doubt (Alternate Version)
11. You're My Kind
12. Getting Real
13. Some People Try To **** With You
14. My Life
15. Every Step Is A Way Through
16. About You (Acoustic Version)
17. The Shadows
18. Traffic Jam
19. Hi Fi
20. I Heard You Looking
21. Neil Jung (Alternate Version)

I assembled CD artwork using one of the single's photos and came up with a title [using the artful lettering on the album and singles]:


I still have fun customizing music, but there was more opportunity in the past, especially with prolific artists.

 

Nowadays, I just lop off the extra tracks from any deluxe edition and compile them into a separate album.

Am up to six volumes of Tori Amos non-album stuff, most of which from the last few albums comes from the deluxe bonus tracks.

 

B-sides usually just end up on the album now. The average album length used to be 40-45min. Now it's 55-60+min.

I can think of a TON of albums in the last 20 years that would have been better as a lean 45min 10-12 track album instead of a 60min 14-16 song album.

In some cases the artist will just tack on bonus tracks to the end of an album on a CD. OR, they put them on a second disc to separate them from
the album, which is great! If it wasn't so easy to scratch a disc, I would have loved to see double sided CD's (yes they exist) and bring the B-sides back!

 

I'm happy they still exist in 2017
OMD-Skin