Friday Musings: B-sides and Rarities
I recently spent a day in Burlington City that climbed all the way to the top of the perfect scale: the company of my favorite person, lattes from Evermore Coffee Roasters, a late lunch at the Union House, and a marathon browse session at the Burlington Antiques Emporium. As you can imagine, I am always on the hunt for really cool glassware, dishes, or other accompaniments for my cocktail photos. As I meandered past a booth packed with old vinyl, there was a stack of 45s, or singles, depending on which terminology you prefer, that stopped me in my tracks. I was immediately taken over by my 11-year-old self and transported back to the record department of Woolworths in 1972, trying to decide which recent radio hit deserved my hard earned three dollars. Unfortunately, and much to my chagrin, it was probably the decidedly awful Alone Again (Naturally) by Gilbert O’Sullivan that ended up being the winner. But this was how we purchased 45s back then. We were focused only on the hit songs and rarely paid attention to what we’d hear if we flipped the record over. It didn’t matter. For the most part, we fell right in line with the record companies’ intentions. We were pulled in by the A-side, or the one that received the most airtime on the radio and thus generated the most sales, and we never gave much thought to anything else. The B-side was usually a song that was not expected to ever be a hit for a multitude of reasons, most having nothing to do with quality, and there are many examples of those that became exceptions. One of the most notable is God Only Knows by the Beach Boys, which just happens to be the B-side that surpassed Wouldn’t It Be Nice? in popularity. As time went on, vinyl fell out of fashion and was replaced by CDs, which had no B-sides, of course, and eventually the term became more about the rarity of particular songs rather than where they were placed on a record. In fact, many artists began releasing entire albums that were filled with new or unusual material. In this way, B-sides allowed us to discover fresh music from our favorite bands, even the ones that weren’t playing together anymore, and they attained a new level of music geek coolness.
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