B Tracks

Do you remember when music used to come in the form of a big, black plastic (vinyl, technically) disc, that had tracks on both sides, and you could select the track you wanted by placing manually the needle on the track you counted as the right one..., and then you could also buy a smaller (but still huge for you Nokia generation) disc in that fragile plasticky thing, with their tacky cardboard covers our cats love wrecking?

Those days, if you liked a song but didn't have enough cash for the L.P. (the enormous version, with less songs than in a cd), then you could buy the single -which, confusingly enough, didn't have One Single Song, but usually two, or sometimes more. Because those days there where no MP3s, no Ipods... hell, there hardly were any computers around!!!

Not going into Maxis, E.P.s, etc. Enough history lesson.

But remember the concept. They were caled Singles, but actually had 2 songs. One on each side!!! And hence the B-track idea. People used to buy singles because of The Song. The A track. But you had some space on the other side, and had to use it.

Sometimes the B-track was the songs that didn't make the album -the L.P. Sometimes they were real crap. Or remixes of the original song -quite favoured inthe 80s. Yet some other times the B-tracks where the less comercial, more adventurous songs. Some have proved to be, as years passed by, much better songs than the popular hit of the moment, the A track. So out came compilations of B-tracks. The real stuff, less controled.

Anyway. All this is just to say, from now on this blog has aB Track . Don't know how it's gonna work. But it shall keep this A-track saner. I think.

;)