Brook Lapping – Killer Bs

BBC Radio 4, Tuesday 12 August at 1.30 pm

As music fans choose to download singles, the very concept of the B-side is now virtually extinct. But this programme ignores the inevitable. This is a celebration of the flipside in all its glory and hideous mediocrity – from the Beach Boys and Beatles to Bacharach, Bernard Cribbins and beyond…

From the early 1960s onwards the B-side was always a key part of the aficionado's record buying experience. Not always throwaway fillers or fodder for anoraks, many acts and producers viewed the creation of the flipside track as an art form in itself, with radio DJs occasionally vetoing the band's own choice and giving them airplay in preference to the A-side. This music feature tells the rags to not-quite riches story of the B-side and, with some great music along the way, ponder its rather peculiar place in recording and radio history too.

And how poorly it was treated! For years the B-side was a music industry dumping ground for material so poor it didn't even make the filler album cuts. Or for half-baked instrumental versions of the a-side, by far the cheapest option - simply engineer out the vocal line (sometimes an improvement), a tradition that became a feature of the b-side in the '80s. Sometimes the flip side was treated openly as a joke - audio of the band mucking around in the studio, chatting or inferior, messed up 'alternative takes'.

But there's another, more dignified, story of the Bs that’s the flipside to the above! Some acts created B-sides which are so essential that entire albums and archives have been built around their compilation - the Beatles, the Stones, Bowie and Dylan among them. The B-side's minor status was the perfect vehicle for these kinds of artist to experiment, and even if results were inevitably mixed there's real gold too: beloved of fans are flip-tracks like the Beatles 'Rain' and the Dylan classic 'Father and Son'. Meanwhile a good number of extremely well know songs began life as B-sides and owed their fame entirely to radio DJs who, ignoring industry diktat, pioneered them at the expense of the 'official' a-side release: The Stone's 'You Can't Always Get What You Want', Gloria Gaynor's 'I Will Survive', ABBA's 'Thank You for the Music', 'We Will Rock You' by Queen, 'How Soon is Now?' by the Smiths...even Elvis' 'Hound Dog' .

Presenter: Music writer Anthony Barnes

Producer: Simon Hollis

Brook Lapping Production