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Kitchen Table Kibitzing: 12/17/22: Don't forget your B-sides [1]

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Date: 2022-12-17

In late 1972 or early 1973, I bought my first 45 RPM records, colloquially known as “singles.” My parents had a very old-style radio that sat on top of the refrigerator, so to listen to any song closely I would stand on a chair and rest my arms on top, facing the radio speaker. It was in this somewhat uncomfortable position that I would listen to “American Top 40” as Casey Kasem counted down the most-played tunes in the nation, always concluding with the inspirational quote, “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.”

At that time the highlight of my life was a trip to the K-mart, which is where I went to spend my first few dollars (probably Christmas money) on five 45 rpm singles: “Peaceful Easy Feeling” by the Eagles, “Hummingbird” by Seals and Crofts, “Don’t Cross the River” by America, “Do it Again” by Steely Dan and “Don’t Expect Me To Be Your Friend” by a guy named “Lobo.” Until that time, I really had no knowledge of what a “single” even looked like; my folks had a few albums, but they were mostly Broadway shows that I wasn’t particularly interested in. These singles at the time cost 64 cents each, a pretty good bargain.

So when I took them home and played them I was naturally intrigued by the fact that you actually got two songs for the price of one: the “hit” that you knew from the radio and another song on the reverse side of the disc, commonly referred to as the “B-side.”

The B-side of these 45’s was usually seen as a lesser effort as compared to the “hit” song which prompted you to buy the single in the first place. It was a track that appeared on the album, usually deep into the second side, and thus had the reputation of a “throwaway” track. Often, folks would never bother even playing the B-side, so enamored they were of the lead song. However, when you’re a pre-pubescent kid with very little cash to spare, you tend to make the most out of whatever it is you actually buy, so I would listen to the B-sides almost as much as the “A-sides.” Because there was no way I’d be able to afford the whole album, anyway.

But it turned out that some of the B-sides to the Top 40 “hit” songs turned out to be as good or better than the lead track (A good example is the Beatles’ “If I Fell” which was the B-side to “And I Love Her,” or “I Am The Walrus” which was the B-side to “Hello Goodbye”). Other times the tracks were almost indistinguishable in quality (To continue the Beatles examples: “Old Brown Shoe,” which was the B-side to “The Ballad of John and Yoko”).

This was the B-side to America’s “Don’t Cross the River,” a song called “To Each His Own.” As a kid I probably played this one at least as much as the lead track.

This was the B-side to “Don’t Expect Me to Be Your Friend,” Titled, “A Big Red Kite,” I personally think it’s as good as the A-side.

The B-side of “Peaceful Easy Feeling” was “Tryin’, the last track on the Eagles’ first album and the most rocking one, foreshadowing other, more famous songs they’d eventually come up with, like “Already Gone” and “Life in the Fast Lane.”



Anyway, you get the idea.

I’ve been on this site for nearly seventeen years, posting somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 Diaries. When you’ve been around for so long you start to accumulate drafts of things that for whatever reason, you choose against posting. Sometimes it’s because someone else has covered the exact same subject by the time you’ve finished; sometimes you get distracted with something else and don’t finish it; and sometimes the quality just doesn’t measure up and you abandon it. I kind of look at these hundreds of truncated, discarded drafts as my “B-sides,” and perhaps one day I’ll go back and finish some of them up, but for now they sit, mostly forgotten in my draft queue, piling up and collecting dust (Yes, technically, they’re more akin to “demos” than B-sides, but never come between me and my metaphors, dammit). I imagine that’s true for just about anyone who writes regularly on this site.

This is an example from a B-side from a few months ago that went unfinished:

For Republicans of a certain age, life must get confusing at times. Because for some of them, deep within the dark cerebral crevasses that house their vestigial consciousness, a dim genetic memory stubbornly remains, trapped beneath layers of gelatinous plaque, like a muscle memory, a forgotten reflex, now barely discernable. Sometimes this ghostly apparition of memory comes to them in dreams, softly whispering that yes, once, long long ago, theirs was the party of "national security." And those were indeed heady times ... times when Democrats would quake in fear at the very thought of being smeared as "soft on defense," or worse, even being tacitly in league with the nation's mortal enemies. They were times when the media worked hand in hand with Republican administrations to instill the myth of Republican supremacy in all matters properly allotted to the provenance of the so-called "daddy" party. They were times when people like former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, gleefully surfing the serendipity of the horrific 9/11 attacks, could darkly warn liberals and others that they ought to "watch what they say"" lest they run afoul of Republicans' innate, heartfelt patriotism. Alas, those days are no more.

Now this is actually an “OK” B-side, although after leaving it sit for a few months I now see the prose as rather overwrought. But it has enough potential that it might actually figure in some form in some future piece of writing (which is why it’s nice to have these B-sides handy).

I guess what I’m trying to say is that B-sides are important and necessary. Everyone who tries to do something creative has them; they come with the territory. They may not match up to the best thing you’re capable of, but that’s exactly why they are there in the first place. Without them, A-sides could not exist — or at least you couldn’t recognize them -- since the B-side serves as the most reliable measurement of their quality.

And with that, it’s time to decorate the tree.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/12/17/2139619/-Kitchen-Table-Kibitzing-12-17-22-Don-t-forget-your-B-sides

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