Speaking of music journalists, the highly recommended 33 1/3 series out of London, of which I have enjoyed more than a dozen of their over two-hundred volumes based on seminal records of the rock era, has just released a very interesting compendium penned by many of the same authors to dig deep into their secret loves of overlooked classics (hence B-Sides) – some by wildly successful artists and others almost completely ignored. It is a revisit to records that for reasons broached in each essay need to be reconsidered. It’s a fantastic idea and a great read.
There is so much care and passion by the authors on each selection, it is hard to cite the most compelling. I was, of course, jazzed by selections I too think are easily dismissed as lesser works by significant artists, The Rolling Stones’ It’s Only Rock and Roll (written by David Masciotra), The Cars’ Candy O (Susan Fast) and still others that I believe are masterpieces in their own right as in Sinead O’Connor’s brilliant, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got (Tara Murtha) Jane’s Addiction’s Nothing’s Shocking (Rolf Potts) and Songs of Love and Hate by the always evocative Leonard Cohen (Drew Daniel).
Full disclosure, back when the series was published by Continuum Publishing, also out of London, I was working with an editor there to write a volume about the 1976 KISS album Destroyer, a record (in the spirit of B-Sides) I have long argued has been discounted in the pantheon of great 1970s hard rock releases, mostly due to critical prejudice of the band’s cartoonish persona. After extensive interviews and mounds of research bloated the project that would eventually be titled Shout it Out Loud – The Story of KISS’s Destroyer and the Making of an American Icon I was to take it to my current publisher Backbeat Books for a 2015 release.
Nevertheless, the very concept of trying to reimagine its impact was an inspiration.