Tag Archives: b-side

772. at the sound of speed

Posted on by
Reply

The Boo Radleys didn’t get much notice at the time (certainly not over here in the Americas, and what notice they did get tended to be for the wrong stuff), but if you were in the right place in 1991-92-93, tuned to the right frequencies, you were lucky enough to know a godlike, noisy and powerful pop that could cause actual changes in the weather. Maybe if they’d bothered to put something as gobsmackingly ascendant as At The Sound of Speed on an actual album as opposed to burying it on the b-side of an EP, things might have played out a little differently.

BooRadleys-live

855. we can be more than we are

Posted on by
Reply

Nifty jam from April Wine, one of those Canadian rock outfits that didn’t get heard much around the world, but got piles of national radio airplay through the 1970s, only some of it bureaucratically mandated. But they never played We Can Be More Than We Are. You had to actually had to own the Canadian pressing of the album for that one (or find a copy of the Gimmie Love 7-inch and flip it to the b-side). Cool groove, hot licks and then a phone call, some stoner on the line, looking for an easy break into the record biz, but all he gets is some free advice. “You can be more than you are.”

aprilwine-wecanbe

 

896. groovy times

Posted on by
Reply

The Clash telling it like it was in 1979 (and now for that matter). Got a problem with the weight of the world? You’re just not thinking, grooving, acting fast enough. In fact, they were so prolific (and good) at the time that they dropped Groovy Times as a b-side. First band since the Beatles to be that hot. And probably the last.

clash-1979

914. hey gyp (dig the slowness)

Posted on by
Reply

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BiuwZ67Sq0

Donovan b-side from before he started up with smoking banana peels, going all sunshine superman. The image is of a young back country Scottish guy doing a pretty solid early-Dylan-beat-vagabond thing, then stumbling into London just in time to catch things at the brink of starting to swing, trying to make sense of it, digging the slowness.

donovan-1965

919. R.A.F.

Posted on by
Reply

Brian Eno and friends deliver a nifty bit of funked up coolness (with samples*) from 1977. The friends being Snatch, the best two woman punk band you’ve probably never heard of, Brian Eno being, as always, way ahead of his time (sampling wouldn’t really be a thing for better part of a decade). RAF first showed up as a b-side to Eno’s King’s Lead Hat single, and later on First Edition, a nifty little 10-inch album that was packed full of precisely the kind of modern music that caused arguments. (*Yes, some of those samples come from a Baader Meinhof ransom message that was delivered via public telephone call. Those were the days.)

brianenosnatch

 

957. smokeless zone

Posted on by
Reply

XTC was never a band that was afraid to pursue a little open experimentation in the name of pop. Smokeless Zone was a b-side that came our way via 1982’s Beeswax, which was all b-sides, all worth troubling your ears with.

xtc-1982