Exploring Rock's Hidden Gems - The power of B-Side tracks

Rock Was Never Supposed to Work This Way Rock music has always had rules. Not official rules, obviously. There was never a committee sitting in a smoky room deciding exactly how many chords a respectable rock song should contain, how long a guitar solo was allowed to last, or whether a man could appear on stage wearing a jumpsuit without immediately being arrested. But there were rules. Rock was supposed to sound a certain way. And then, sooner or later, somebody came along and broke the rules. That, really, is the story of rock. Not a straight line. Not an orderly evolution. More like a bar fight where every generation picks up whatever the previous generation left lying around and finds a completely different way to use it. It Started With Attitude Chuck Berry didn't invent the electric guitar. He didn't invent rhythm and blues either. What he did was understand that rock 'n' roll wasn't supposed to sit politely in the corner. It was supposed to move. It had swagg...

  What in the World? – Can't Get There From Here and the Strange World of 1985 June 1985. The world was getting smaller. Television was making everything immediate. MTV was turning musicians into visual icons. Compact discs and videocassettes were changing how we consumed entertainment. The Cold War was still very much alive, but something was beginning to shift in Moscow. And somewhere between the optimism of Live Aid, the hysteria surrounding New Coke, and the increasingly polished world of 1980s pop culture, four musicians from Athens, Georgia released a song that sounded like it had wandered in from somewhere else entirely. Can't Get There From Here. It was R.E.M. being decidedly un-R.E.M. And perhaps that was exactly the point. Welcome to 1985 If you wanted to understand the mood of 1985, you could hardly have picked a stranger year. The Cold War was still casting a shadow over everything. But in March, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union, beginning a perio...

  Five Rock Albums That Refuse to Behave There is a particular kind of album that makes you stop and listen twice. Not necessarily because the songs are loud. Not because the band is obscure. And not even because the record is some undiscovered masterpiece hiding in a dusty record shop. It is because you think you know what you're getting... and then the album changes the rules. A punk record suddenly sounds like psychedelic rock. An indie album starts throwing synthesizers at you. A supposedly straightforward pop record has something decidedly strange lurking underneath. A song you've been listening to for three minutes suddenly swerves into somewhere completely unexpected. That's the fun of digging deeper. Some albums announce exactly what they are from the opening seconds. Others leave the door slightly ajar and invite you to find out for yourself. Here are five records that do exactly that. 1. The Dismemberment Plan — Emergency & I (1999) Let's start with an alb...

  If You Know, You Know - The Secret Language of Rock Inside Jokes, Rituals & Band Lore Only True Fans Know You know you're dealing with a legendary band when the fans start speaking another language. A phrase gets shouted from the crowd. A strange symbol appears on a T-shirt. Somebody makes a bizarre gesture and suddenly everyone around them knows exactly what it means. To an outsider, it can look ridiculous. To the initiated, it's a badge of honour. Because rock music has never just been about the songs. Over the decades, bands and their fans have built their own little worlds — complete with rituals, mascots, strange traditions, running jokes and pieces of mythology that can be almost impossible to explain to someone standing on the outside. And that's where things get interesting. So forget the greatest hits for a moment. Let's go behind the curtain and discover some of the secret language of rock. The Ramones — “Gabba Gabba Hey!” Few phrases announce your alleg...