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Andy Cowan, "B-Side: A Flipsided History of Pop" (Headpress, 2023)
00:49:10
An interview with Andy Cowan
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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B
This is Rebecca Buchanan, host of New Books Network, New Books in Popular Culture, and I'm here with Andy Cohen, who is the author of B side A Flip Sided History of Pop. Andy, thanks for being here with me today.
- [01:19]
C
It's my pleasure.
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B
Could you tell us a little bit about why you put this book together, why you wanted to write about B sides?
- [01:26]
C
Yeah, it came about, I mean, it was almost by accident when I first had the idea. It was. I was looking back, it was July20, and I was basically, we were in lockdown over here and I was doing something a bit more prosaic and boring. I decided to catalog all my vinyl and I was going through discogs and sort of pricing stuff, but also at the same time, I started listening back to especially singles I bought when I first started buying records, which is in the late 70s, early 80s. And one of the things I kept on finding repeatedly was that the B sides were singing. A lot of the B sides were singing to me more than the A sides. And I think there was one record in particular I was just thinking about Idling, which was an old goth band which probably not many people remember, called Gene Loves Jezebel. And it had a song called Stephen. And this B side is almost. It feels like an improvised song. It's sort of made up on the spot as B sides often were, just to fill in the gaps sometimes, however, I loved it and it's got a sort of slightly sort of homoerotic charge to it. Of course, it's when Stephen smiles my heart just seems to glow if only I could let that poor boy know so it's almost suppressed sexuality in there. But anyway, it's just a lovely song. I was thinking, oh, you know, I wonder if there's a book about B sides that I can read and find out a bit more about how B sides came about. What's the history? What are the greatest B sides of all time? And I knew, but there was certain B sides had changed the game. I knew, for example, I Feel Loved by Donna Summer was released as a B side. I knew at Gloria Gaynor I Will Survive Again, two amazing disco classics which you perish to think how they could not have been A sides but they were the releases B sides came about. So I knew that there was this game changing aspect to a B side. But I didn't, you know, I didn't know necessarily much more. And at first I didn't think, well, I didn't initially think, well, I'm the guy to write a book about B sides. I just thought, I do write for music magazines, I have done all my life. But I just thought, well, I'll just have a have a little look into it. And that kind of look sort of snowballed gradually following that. Once I decided I was going to go in a little bit deeper, I decided I needed some sort of spine, I needed some sort of structure to write a book from. So basically I spent I think the best part of four or five months basically trying to work out what are the greatest peace sides, what are the most impactful, for whatever reasons, whatever genre. And at the start of that I wanted it to be populous, I wanted it to have a strong spine, an accessible spine. So I did. It was quite a crude maneuver, but I looked at the hundred best selling artists of all time and basically drove into each one of those find out the greatest B sides. And that gave me a spreadsheet which was massive because some bands would have 20 or 30 put in B sides. So if you go back to 60s and bands like Beatles and the who and everything else, the Kinks, they all had amazing B sides and songs which weren't on albums. So therefore I had to bring in a little bit of limiting criteria. So I limited it down to one per artist. And so that gave me say, a basic sort of Starting block of about not 100 piece size because not everyone released unique peace size, but you know, 90 or so. And that was a starting block for the book.
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B
And then so you see you pick these and you say in the book too that some. If it's there in a band, the artist can also. And the artist has a single or the artist has a B side that that sort of counts as two different ones. Right. So the Beatles are in the Beatles, but the Beatles are also in there as individual performers. Right, so you said there's a little leeway there. Yeah. So can you. But you know, one of the things that you mentioned in the intro and that I think is really interesting too and important to this is can you give us a little history of how B sides came to be? Because B sides were not always a thing.
- [05:53]
C
No, no, no, that's absolutely true. So you know, actually the singles as we know them now in streaming terms, the one song single is basically how singles started sort of back in the late 1890s. The first singles were one sided. That changed, I think it was 1901. Victor Company launched something called the Red Seal Line, which was a 10 inch 78s. And then in 1910 they became double sided records. At the time, basically two songs were pressed on a single and they weren't really specified A's or B's. They were called A and B or side one side two. But it was basically the two songs that were recorded at the time weren't really given any preference. It kind of changed when the charts came into effect. So in America, Billboard charts, I think it was the late 30s somewhere like. Yeah, 36. I think Billboard charts happened and in the British charts it was quite a bit later, 1952. But he's then gave record companies an onus on putting a hit song on one side and differentiating with the B side. So it'd be. In many cases record companies didn't want radio to play the B side so as to confuse what they wanted to be the hit. So they often put something inferior, which is when the notion of a lesser song being on the B side sort of took root. But I guess the B side really comes into its own really sort of in the 50s of rock and roll and the launch of that. And the format changes again. The format changes in 1948 when the 7 inch single, which I called in the book a Kittenish Little Chancer comes along. But it's much more affordable. It's three minutes on each side. And it becomes. It's something that people can get with. Whereas vinyl up until that point was a preserve of money people a little bit more. Along with the 7 inch single becoming established in the early 50s, you also have the LP as a format that's not just a collection of singles, but as an artistic format. And the album that does that is Duke ellington. It's released a 951 album called Masterpieces, which is jazz, but extended versions of jazz songs where previously they'd all been curtailed to fit on vinyl. So 50s is really where the single kicks off. And with the big charts in the UK charts in America, it's where the notion of the B side becoming different to the A side really takes root.
- [08:38]
B
Right. And so before we get into some of the B side, some of the singles you have in here. Can you also talk a little bit? Because one of the things I thought was interesting and as I would look. This is a great book where you could look through. You can read it or you can kind of look through through it for those artists and for the bands that you're really interested in, right. And read about. So it's this great reference kind of. You can pull it off the shelf if you want and look through. But you talk about some bands really caring about the B side, right. And really thinking about. And I. I will just put out there that I saw the Cure this summer and it was fabulous and wonderful and amazing and as they always are. But you talk like they're one of the bands that you talk about like that has these really great B sides. So can you talk about that too? Is like some of the ban. Caring about what they put on that B side in ways that others didn't.
- [09:32]
C
Yeah, I mean, I certainly think it goes back to the 60s, the sort of British Invasion bands in a way, sort of sort of the Beatles, the Yardbirds, the Hoover Kinks, as I mentioned before, they all really embraced the B side as something they could rock out or do something different. Beatles B sides were great, whether they were covers or whether they were experimenting playing things backwards as they did on Rain, which is a really important record. It's also, you know, it really went on into the 80s. Lots of great 80s bands really embraced the B side and the added Freedom having the 12 inch format sort of gave. So you could do longer tracks or you could do extra tracks. So you mentioned the Cure, who I think always had amazing peace sides pretty much throughout their career. In the book, I think I touched on Fear of Ghosts, which is a sort of great, sort of ethereal, sort of experimental number but there's plenty more in the Cures catalogue. The Smiths are a really obvious band whose sort of Smith's singles became so equally as important, if not more important than the albums. Because virtually every B side is great. From Handsome Devil, the song on the B side of her first single, Hand in Glove, to someone like High Sooners now, which no one can even believe was a B side, along with Please, Please Let Me get what I Want, which is also a B side of William. It was really nothing. Also in the 80s, which I think is a bit of a golden age. There's different golden ages, but the 80s for certain bands. Prince did B side after B side, which was absolutely amazing. So you have something like. I think in the book I go for. I go for. Yep, Erotic City, which is on the Visa Let's Go Crazy, which is inspired by him seeing Parliament Funkadelic and basically reproducing it in a very Prince like way with this sort of 12 minute jam, which has a sort of slightly controversial chorus of We Confunc Till dawn. Or it might not be, but words to that effect. Anyway, so there's a few. I mean, you know, there are very. Loads more. Really. Yeah.
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B
I have to say. And you just like in. In that description, you mentioned like my all time favorite band, the Smiths, and one of my favorite artists, Prince. Right. And it was interesting to me when reading because I was like, how do you pick which one? Right. Like, even though you said you're gonna pick one, it was so like sometimes I was like this. Like you said, like the Smiths have so many that like, how do you just choose one of.
- [12:24]
C
Yeah, I mean, no, there's no doubt that it was really hard, especially with Smithson. I mean, I think I chose Gene for the book, which is one of the lesser known ones. B side of the 7 inch of this charming man in the UK. But I'm not sure what it was in America, for example, but a great song. So, yeah, I just had to go, I think with this missed one because household is now so well known. I just wanted to highlight something else. So I went with my gut on that. Same with the Cure, you know, equally I would say that other choices are valid and my choices are just my subjective choice on a lot of things. So I went through loads of Elvis B sides, you know, for another, an artist who had a surprising amount of B sides which were unique. And yeah, I couldn't not end up with Hamb at the end of it because it's such an emblematic song in his career. And it really was a record that, with the physical appearance of Elvis on TV shaking his pelvis, really sort of established him as a countercultural figure, as someone equally exciting and disgusting to a large portion of public who first saw. And John Lee Hooker, whose first B side was. It Escapes Me now But It Will Come To Me. Oh yeah, sorry. It was Boogie Chillin so. Which is kind of John Lee Hooker at his essence, stomping on the floor, playing the blues, singing in his wonderful sort of soulful twang. But he never really vetted it as a B side of his first single. And you do find that sort of. Some bands don't get any better than the B side of the first single. I'm thinking in terms of punk rock when that comes around in the 70s. And then the Buzzcocks do the spiral scratch EP in the UK, which is important because they self financed and so they'd made a DIY single. And you find lots of bands. Oh right, we're going to do our own single. Which was a really expensive thing to do in the uk just for studio time for pressing. You couldn't Press less than 500 copies in the late 70s, so you had to borrow some money from parents or it was going to cost you a fortune to do it. And there's a good chance these records would sit under your bed for the rest of your grown life unless you got a break or John Peel or someone embraced it. So your B side was. Was going to be a strong song. And if it did get embraced by John Peel more, you know, the chances were he probably would play the B side even if he intended to or not. But no, he did. He did really play a lot of B sides as half of his programming. So that was a. You know, it was an important moment for certainly post punk in the uk.
- [15:14]
B
Yeah. And you mentioned John Peel and you mentioned. And throughout you talk about other sort of DJs, radio hosts, kind of sometimes embracing the B side, whether they were supposed to or not, and making those songs more popular than the songs that the record companies thought should be the songs that came out. So one of the other things that I thought was really interesting or, and wanted to talk to you about is that you cover a wide range not only throughout decades, but also genres of music. Right. This isn't like we're only going to get Brit pop or we're own. Right. You have Motown hits, you have the Funkadelic, like you mentioned the Smiths and Prince. I mean the bands John Lee Hooker, like you have rap B sides. So you have a wide variety. So was there, can you talk a little bit about the, the choices and making sure that you had such a wide variety in this?
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C
Yes, so. So I mean it goes back to, you know, I was talking about the spine being the, the first, the top hundred best selling artists. So. So it's so once, once I had that I thought well, I have a populist angle on the book. I have a sort of way but something I can approach publishers with which is recognizable and they will recognize the artists. But I wanted it to be as comprehensive as possible to cover as many genres. To do reggae, to do black music, to do hip hop, country music, soul, R and B. You know, all genres. So after that initial search I started doing really sort of quite deep dive Internet searches by genre, by decade to try and find all these beats sites. I do a bit of work in academia, I work in public health and I've worked on a lot of systematic reviews. So I have this sort of history of finding grey literature. So I kind of used some of those approaches as if I was trying to find some obscure public health gray literature to really dig deep into genres and eras and decades to try and find those records in the 1910s and 1920s that had interesting B sides that might not be immediately apparent or wouldn't show up on a search for the 50 greatest B sides of all time or whatever. So it was. And it's a process that literally took months. Not that I was working elsewhere obviously I was just doing this in between times. But I spent a long, long time just sort of working on this spreadsheet trying to work out what I was going to listening. And the listening took a long time. So I had spreadsheets of various lengths at various stages which would amplify and I'd sort of sort of whittle them down again and amplify. And it went up and so I wasn't, you know, I basically ended up for the book doing I think it's 501B sides. In the main section there are interweaving chapters which deal with certain other B sides traits which take in another 160 odd. So it's still a lot of records covered in a relatively short number of words in the book. But I hope it's certainly as comprehensive as I could make it in terms of covering as many genres. Pop from I think the first singles, 1917 and we go up to at least 2017 otherwise. So it's a hundred year span and as wide as I could make it hopefully.
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B
So good, so good, so good.
- [19:05]
C
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B
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- [19:19]
C
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D
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- [19:56]
B
So with that huge spam, right, and the genre were there certain. Let's talk about some of the B sides. You know, some other B sides. Were there ones that were what? Which one do I want to start with? What is. What was the most or one of the most unique ones you found or ones that really surprised you? Were there any that you know, you were really excited to find out about or really surprised about?
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C
Yeah, I mean there's a few in terms of let's talk about soul and R and D because in sort of in the 60s you had labels like Stacks and Motown and Atlantic basically putting out amazing two sided records where A and B sides were both incredibly strong. Motown had a formula which was or initial formula. It's kind of changed as things went along, but I always had the uptempo song on the A side and the B would be a ballad. And that sort of sort of served them well until some of their ballads started getting much better than the A sides. But in R and B, I always think that it's bizarre that someone like Sam Cooke A change is going to come. This song, which everyone knows, which Barack Obama sort of paraphrases when he goes into the White House, said A change has come to America is a B side. It's a B side of Shaykh, which people probably don't remember, but it was kind of a direction Sam Cooke was going in at the time, a more funky direction. Other R&B one. So I was staggered to find out I say A Little Prayer by Aretha Franklin was a B side. It had been recorded by Dionne Warrick, initially written by Bert Bacharach, her regular writer, but she was basically warming up in the studio to Record an album called the Reefer now. And just with backing singers and producer Jerry Wexler said, why don't you have a run through this? They changed. I think they changed the key of it from G to A. And we're just doing it. And it just grooved so well. They said, well, we're just going to record it. But they recorded it very quickly and didn't think of it as an album track or anything. And just shoved it on the beat. And then they got flipped by DJs, and I think it went to number two in the end. One of my favorite songs of all time, or which became, I think, renewed itself as one of my favorite songs was Ain't no Sunshine by Bill Withers, which was an album track, but somehow was not chosen as the first single, was put on the B side of his first single, Harlem, which is great, but it's nothing to the sheer heartbreak and loss and desolation of Ain't no Sunshine, which is just a wonderful song. When I was writing a book, that sort of became a motif. Something I played every time I started to remind myself, hey, this song is a B side. It wasn't considered a side fodder. Isn't that crazy? That's the reason I'm writing this book, to try and highlight some of these fantastic songs. So very few. And actually one more R and B song, which is incredible, which is strong as death, sweet as love, I'll agree. Which was. It's not so much the song itself is a song about sort of, sort of desperate love and everything else. But it's kind of what happened to Al Green after he recorded it. When he turned down a marriage proposal from his partner called Mary Woodson, and they had an argument. She threw a boiling pot of grits over him. He had his lacerated burns, which he was just trying to deal with when he found out she'd shot herself with his gun in his house. So it was an absolute tale of tragedy. And that's really what sort of took Al Green into the ministry and sort of changed his life away from music sort of completely. So it's an impactful song for another reason, but a very brilliant one all the same. So that's just a few sort of R and B examples, which all of those sort of, sort of came as a surprise to me, which I wouldn't have known if I was writing the book at all. Some rock and roll things, which I really. Some records I really liked sort of sort of came out of this. So which I, you know, I Don't know. I came into music via sort of the end of punk. 1978 was when I started buying records. So it was kind of, you know, the bad end of punk. But when it started to get power pop end before it. And then it got really interesting with new wave and, you know, records from 78, 79, early 80s, pretty much all had brilliant B sides. But I didn't know a lot of the early rock and roll B sides. So stuff like. I mean, one that I loved when writing a book is Brand New Cadillac Vince Taylor, which came out because end of the 50s, there's a B side of a song called Pledging My Love the Clash covered. When they're recording London Calling. It's one of the first songs I think they recorded. But the Clash version is nothing. It's pants compared to the original. Which is just a stunning rock and roll song by this guy, Vince Taylor, who kind of missed the boat, certainly in the uk. He did become the inspiration for Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie, which was kind of modeled on. On his sort of failure, really, to make it. So that was really interesting. The biggest rock and roll one which we can't ignore in any discussion of B sides is We're Going to Rock around the Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets, which was the B side of this sort of ridiculous male fantasy song, which is 13 women and only one man in town, which is a cover which basically flopped. And the single was about to die completely when Richard Brooks, the director of Black Boy Jungle, he was over at the house of Glenn Ford, lead actor, who was. And we were just chatting. And Glenn Ford's son, I think, put on Rock around the Clock just because he loved it. And Richard Brooks heard it and said, well, it's got to go in the film. And he put it in the opening credits of Blackboard Jungle, this sort of country cultural movie. And it just went crazy at the cinema. People. It sounds like it's made up, but by all accounts, people were getting up and sort of dancing in the aisles at the cinema when it came on and snowballed from there and became the breakthrough record of rock and roll. And Bill Haley, the most unlikely, perhaps looking sort of rock and roll first make an impact because without being funny to my dad, he looked a little bit like my dad had a little pot belly and his little kiss curl. And, you know, but it was such a catalyst. A couple of others be Bopalula. Gene Vincent was a B side, unbelievably so, to a song called Woman Love, La Bamba Richie Valance, which he learned phonetically because he only spoke English. And his record label were really happy that they had this song which would not compromise the A side, which is a song about his girlfriend called Donna, which became his last single ultimately. And then La Bamboo sort of took off after he died in a sort of tragic plane crash with. So. And, yeah, one, yeah, I got to mention a B side that wasn't a B side, but was supposed. Was two actually rock and roll B sides which were supposed to be B sides which weren't, which got flipped at the very last moment. Fortuitously, in the case of Cliff Richard, who was going to release in Was going to release. Cliff Richard was, to people who don't know, was sort of UK's answer to Elvis, who sort of styled very much like Elvis at the time, in the late 50s. But he was about to release a single called Schoolboy Crush, which is this sort of dippy, sort of old Bobby Helms song. Not much to write home about. But he'd record this fantastic B side called Move It. It's about the rock and roll movement that gets in your soul and your heart and your soul. And it's got fantastic guitars on it. It's written by guitarist in his band, the Drifters. Ian Sammy Samuels on the bus going home one night. But anyway, the producer is this really esteemed British producer called Norrie Paramore, who did a lot of film soundtracks and stuff. He said, well, it's all right. Well, you know, it'll do. It's good enough for B side. Well, you know, we'll have it. And then. So it would have been. Cliff Richard might have been this sort of minor star, but there was a TV show called oh, Boy in the uk, which is sort of a teen show. And its producer, Jack Goode, said, well, I don't want the Ace, I don't want Schoolboy Crush. I want Move it because it's rock and roll. It's what's happening now, it's what the kids want. And so the label flipped it at the last moment and Cliff went straight up to number two in the charts and basically sort of set the template for British rock and roll. So a really important record for in the UK for a victor to see a visible rock and roll star who wasn't American at the time. The other one, which wasn't a B side but was meant to be a B side, is. And it's kind of. Sorry, it's just evading my mind at the moment, but it will come to me yeah, I've got it. I've got it, I've got it. So, right, Jerry Lee Lewis, so he is doing It'll Be Me. This is his second single. Jerry Lee Lewis obviously went to Sun Records straight from Bible school, as the story has it. So he's always straddling that divide between the thrills of rock and roll and Christianity and being damned to hell for loving rock and roll. But anyway, he. It'll Be Me and he records it. He cuts it, I think.
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A
Great.
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C
This is, you know, this is, this is the second single we want. This is, this is. This is going to get this. It's got hit written all over it. And he said, but what have you got for the B side? He says, oh, well, I've just been, you know, that's been trying. Trying this song out live and it seems to be, you know, seems to be going down well and it's a whole lot of shaking going on, which everyone hears and is completely flawed by said, well, no way, no way is it going to be a B side. So it's going to be an A. So there's a couple that got flipped at the last moment which were absolutely incredible.
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B
So, so my next question, and I'm going to premise it by saying that I am living with a 12 year old who has fallen in love with not only records but 80s British pop, right? Like Wham. She's. She cries when she realizes she'll never see Wham and George Michael and. And she. So she listens to. Also she loves Tropicana, right? And so you have Club Tropicana's B side in here, which I'd rather listen to than Trump Club Tropicana. Ages and ages and ages every day. But like, so do you have. What are some of those? And I'm gonna guess that one is not as controversial. Some others that come up where you're like, the B side is better than the A side. Like, she would probably argue with you. I don't know how many Wham like fanatics are out there that would argue that with you. But do you have ones that after people have read this or looked at it, are like, yeah, I don't agree with you. You. I think the A side's better than the B side.
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C
Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, all the time. I mean it's, it's a subjective opinion. I'm with you. I'm with you on the Wham B side. I think Blue is a really great song. It kind of became something that when Wham played those Shows in China became. It was a really essential part of it and it was a record that showed where Wham were going, where George Michael was ultimately going. Sort of, you know, really moving towards that more electronic America and R and B sound and away from the sort of rap stuff that really defined Wham. All the sort of British version of American rap stuff that defined Wham in the early days. So I think it was an important record in that, you know, it was the change that was happening. But you wouldn't know about it unless you played the B side. So. But yeah, I just will.
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B
Not to go down the Wham route. No, I was just going to say not to go down the Wham route. But yes, I like 100% agree with all of that and I've never heard so much weird rap in my life. Life when. As opposed to listening to like old Wham stuff with my daughter. Yes.
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C
Yeah, but I mean, yeah, there's, it's, you know, it's ultimately subjective. I think it's one of the things about record collecting and buying vinyl and everything else when, you know, you're. Well, I'm a man of a certain age, I'm 56. So when I started buying records, my parents didn't really have anything but I could get with. I had some very straight ahead jazz, some, some film soundtracks, some easy listening Reader's Digest compilations. So nothing I really wanted to play. So when I started buying records, you know, I only had the two songs on a single and when I only had a few singles, you know, what do I play? After I play the A side a few times, I'm going to play the B side. So the records that sort of get into your system sometimes by default, sometimes by repetition, it's. It's like albums. When you buy albums when you're a kid and you don't have much money and you saved up a few weeks to buy an album and you might not like it at first, you might be really disappointed and think, well, this is not what I was expecting or it just doesn't connect. But you keep playing it because you haven't got anything else, you haven't got much choice. And then suddenly something in it clicks and you think, my God, it's the greatest album of all time and if I hadn't given it a chance, I would never have. I just wanted rubbish of her. So there's plenty of examples of that. I think it's the same case with a lot of B sides that you might dismiss at first or if you give them a Quick listen, you think, nah, it's not as good as the A. I like the A side. But the records that sort of often creep up on you unawares or you find them or, you know, they're different records to the A side. One of the first bands I really liked was the Boom Tie Rats. And their B sides were always self produced and they sounded almost like a different band. Their albums were produced by a guy called John Mutt Lange who went on to produce AC dc, Shania Twain, Def Leppard, Doobie's really sort of high gloss commercial sound. But I think he had that sort of that pop sensibility which he really brought to the bimtown Rats. And the B side sounded like a sort of Irish, sort of almost punkish R and B band. A lot different. And. And so if ever one of the first bands where I wrote. Actually there's something. There's something different about the B side. You can be someone else. You can use it to show another side of your psyche or personality. It can show a completely different side. It's a blank canvas which you can use in any way. Be that an experimental way, an instrumental way, whatever. Lots of bands use it to just. Just as a dumping ground for weaker songs which are, you know, we can say, I think comfortably most B sides possibly are worse than the A side. Most are. The band would consider the inferior song. So it is. It is kind of, you know, going through them and finding the ones that aren't or the exceptions to the rule. And that's really what the book is about.
- [36:40]
B
Well, and I will say too, I have to say that it was another great thing about your book is that. That it did bring back like I. I re. I do remember Jean Loves Jezebel, right? Or there's other bands in here where I'm like, oh, yes, right. Like. But you know, like there was also like. And I, you know, would go through and there would be some. That I was like, yes, I remember that band or I remember that song. And it's one of those things that just like you haven't heard it for a while and then it was hard because sometimes too there were B sides you mentioned that I hadn't heard of. And I kind of wanted to stop or I hadn't heard for a long time and like just listen to, you know, go down a rabbit hole of listening to it as well. Which I guess is a good thing. But there's that too, right? Like you have this collection here where you're like, oh, I want to hear what I Is that B side really as good as that song or is it better? So there's that going on too.
- [37:36]
C
Absolutely. And when I was writing it, I mean, I went down so many rabbit holes, you know, there's almost no law left at the end of it. Because I was also looking in fan forums when I was writing to try and narrow it down. So say I was doing Cardi Minogue one afternoon, trying to find out the best Cardi Minogue B side. So I thought, well, I'll look at a few fan forums, see what the fans say, because there's quite a lot to hear. And so if I can narrow it down to what the fans really want. And then, unfortunately, I'd get sidetracked by other discussions going on in the fan forums about Kylie's gold pants or whatever, and you suddenly realize you spent two or three hours reading about Cardi's pants and not listening to any of the B sides and still at the starting point, and you've written nothing down on your spreadsheet. So it's rabbit holes galore. And there's also just rabbit holes of listening. You listen to someone think, wow, it's amazing. And then you go to the next song, YouTube will bring up another song by them. And so you can get serially sidetracked by it. I did have done for the book, which is in the introduction, some YouTube playlists so you can listen, watch and read at the same time. So you can follow the main text with a playlist and for some of the interweaving chapters. So it is possible to do that, which is quite nice. But also, as you said, I think in the introduction, it's a book you can dip into if you want. You can leave it in the bathroom, you can read it in the book. You can just dip in and dip into a book almost at any place and sort of find something that you might not have found before. It's not a book you have to read from COVID to cover, necessarily. You can read it in dispatches. It's up to the reader. But I think it's quite a nice quality for it to have.
- [39:32]
B
Yeah. And we should say that you do have these interweaving chapters, but for the main B side sides, they're just sort of a really meaty paragraph. Right. It's not. So you can. You can really do that sort of dipping in. Or if you're hanging out and someone's like, okay, what about this song? And you can look it up and it's, you know, it's not pages, it's like it's a good, you know, two minute read or one minute read, that kind of quick read. So you can kind of see what all those B sides are about.
- [40:01]
C
It is. Yeah, it's. It's wonderful.
- [40:03]
B
So I think that's. Yeah, so.
- [40:04]
C
Yeah, yeah. So it's one paragraph per song, basically. And as you say, it's a meaty paragraph. So none of. I don't think there's an entry over about 250, 260 words. The shortest one's about 120. So it's cramming quite a lot of information within that paragraph. So there's a title, there's the A side, there's a quick line, a summarizing line, and then there's a paragraph. But also just to just. There has to be sort of a line or two to try and put some artists in context. I'm assuming when I'm writing it that people know a bit about music, but also they might not know this particular artist's history in depth. So I've tried to put them quickly in context while trying to get to the song of the B side and also the A side in a lot of cases. Because. Because the B side, how it exists in relation to the A side is really important as well. And sort of be it complementing the A side being a completely different thing or in contrast to the A side. And that's some of the greatest thing about B sides being so different or being so complementary to the A side that makes them really stand out.
- [41:24]
B
So I have to ask you another question. You could have formatted and put these in many different orders, right? You could have put them in order by the artist. You could have done decades, that kind of thing. But you put the book in alphabetical order by the B sides. So can you talk about that choice and why you chose that?
- [41:43]
C
Yeah, I did look at it in various different ways. I looked at formatting it in different ways and one of the. I could have done it chronologically. I could have on it. Yeah. Straight up 1917, the first peace side straight through, which would have mean you would have had a lot of jazz records, blues records, rock and roll records, all grouped together pretty much in a line. I thought I would be a bit dull. I could have done it by genre, which again, you would have had. But I also think. I think people would read it would prioritize the genres that they have a particular affinity for and maybe not necessarily read about other records which I thought were important. And it's not so hard to go from A to z and read 120 words about some sort of, sort of mad hip hop B side like Hit him up by Tupac or something that you, you might not have heard, but was a massively important record for hip hop that you probably should have heard in the context of pop. And it also. I liked it because I build it as a flip sided history of pop. I liked it to be dotting around from genre from year. I just think it makes it as a playlist. If you listen to it just as a playlist or if you read the book. I just think it makes it more interesting than if it was all grouped together along strict genre lines. There's a section in dub and in the book which is an interweaving chapter, which is the only one that I really did because that was the only way I could do it. But even in the dub chapter I brought in sort of all the pop acts. He suddenly started doing sort of dub mixes. Even Fleetwood Mac did a dub mix in the 80s which sounds crazy, but it just became the norm.
- [43:32]
B
So we've been talking about this for a while and I could probably keep talking to you and asking you questions about these B sides. And I really do think this is a great book. It's also a great book if you have a bunch of friends who are fans of, of music to just be like, I feel like this could also become a drinking game. Like what's the B side on this album? Right. Kind of thing. But so there's lots going on with this. So I'm going to ask you my kind of final question. Are you working at either with this or are you. What are you working on now? What's your kind of final self promotion? Is there anything with this book or do you have a new thing that's coming out? What's going on? On?
- [44:13]
C
Yeah, I haven't started anything. I have a couple of ideas which are basically along the same lines. One's a hip hop book, so one's a very deep dive into a particular artist which I can't talk about too much without giving it away, but it would be a very analytical drive into someone with a very large catalogue and almost going for it song by song, but in a very micro fashion. And I can't really say much more now. But that's one idea that's taking prominence over another idea which is to do with albums, so not to do with singles. And again, it's kind of under wraps. So I have a couple of music ideas which will basically entail me, I think Sort of. Sort of going into a dark room with my spreadsheets and trying to figure out a structure in the same way as I did this because I spent so long working on the structure. Then when I had the structure, it still took to write it. So it took me basically a year to get it down. So however much planning you do, you still have to do the difficult bit, which is the writing. And then. And then in my case, it was a bit longer than it appears in the book format, so giving it quite a deep edit to get it into a concise format. So I have a couple of things coming up. I really like the B side drinking game idea, which you just mentioned, which I hadn't even considered, which is a brand extension I shall definitely be pursuing it. Could be. Could do it with Christmas singles alone. But, yeah, there you go.
- [46:06]
B
I live in a small little town, but there is a brewery there. We have. Yeah, we have a brew pub. And they do record night. And usually what record night consists of is people bringing records. And then they'll play. They'll pick one side and they'll play the whole album side.
- [46:20]
C
Right, okay.
- [46:21]
B
But, like, when I was reading this, I'm like, there's a bunch of record geeks there who, five times out of 10, might not be able to guess the B side. Like, it was interesting. Like, my husband's a musician, and we were talking and I brought up. I was like, oh, I didn't like, just the John Fogart. There were so many that I was like, oh, I didn't remember this was the B side. But, like, the John Fogarty center field being the B side. And he automatically knew the A side. Right. Like, he's like, oh, that's right. The A side is this. But then I was, like, thinking, this would be super fun. Like, can you name the B side to this? Or this was the B side. Do you know what the A side is? And I'm like, this would be a great game.
- [46:57]
C
Yeah, totally, totally. No, no.
- [46:59]
B
I mean, you have quite the catalog there, so.
- [47:02]
C
Yeah. Well, I'll cut you in 10 seconds. So. Yes, absolutely.
- [47:07]
B
Thank you. Thank you.
- [47:08]
C
You can run with that.
- [47:14]
B
Go. Go right ahead. Go right ahead. You just work on the. But I was just thinking. Yes. I'm like, I know many people who. This would be like, hey, do you know the B side of this song? I mean, some of them, they might, but there's others that. I'm like, oh, you would never. Now.
- [47:28]
C
Yeah. No, no, no.
- [47:29]
B
Unless you were a big fan.
- [47:31]
C
Yeah. And I would say, because I, you know, I thought I knew quite a lot about B sides when I started and, and really I didn't. So, you know, so, so I, I've written about music for 30 years and I thought I had a pretty good handle, but you just tend to, you tend to know the artists you know, or the records you bought, and the rest of it is a bit of a minefield. So, you know, I hope, hopefully that solves the mystery and can become a great pub quiz as well.
- [47:58]
B
There you go. So. Andy Cohen, B side A Flip Sided History of Pop. Thanks for talking with me for new books on popular culture.
- [48:07]
C
It's been a great pleasure. Thank you for talking to me too.
- [48:21]
A
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C
Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera.
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A
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C
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B
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B
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