Drugs Are Bad

Posted below is the b-side from Tom Petty's Last Dance With Mary Jane. That was from a time when artists still released singles in hard copy. It's was a pretty cool idea. You wrote and recorded a bunch of songs. Some of them made it onto the album and others either got thrown into the vault or used for the flip side for a single. Some bands were even gutsy enough to insert one of their better songs into the b-side slot. See Oasis and Acquiescence.

Now we can download tracks not included on the proper album release but I can't really recall having heard an awesome b-side as of late (though I bet I've downloaded one or two) but that doesn't mean they aren't out there

Sort of to the same point, groups used to include bonus tracks on foreign releases, especially for the territory of Asia so as to induce consumers to buy their albums locally rather than cheaper American or British import copies. I'd be interested to know if that's still the case.

Girl on LSD - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

BTW - I've been listening to various parts of Tom Petty's Playback box set, and got to say, there are so many non-album tracks on there that kick ass. Part of me is surprised that no one around TP encouraged and succeeded in getting him to release a few more albums, but thank god he didn't because Playback is a treasure. Much as Springsteen's Tracks has gems. To me those two boxes have multiple albums full of throwaway tracks for Petty and the Boss that would be 5 fucking star albums for most other albums. Allright enough classic rock blah for one night.