"the phil spector thread"

[kenneth]

Did anyone here ever play the Crystals and Ronettes instrumental B-sides more than a couple of times? I know I didn't.

I never had any of the 45s, but I read somewhere that Spector would always put these throwaway instrumentals on the B-sides to make sure no one flipped the record over, so that the A-side was the only one that would be played on the radio.

Someone else mentioned the song "Stumble and Fall" by Darlene Love. I love that song! I too heard it first on the "Rare Masters" albums which were quite a revelation when I bought them, kind of like the Motown "From the Vaults" and "Motown Superstars sing Motown Superstars" which I think were the first time Motown had ever released whole albums of previously unreleased material by a variety of artists.

When I was young, I never had any conception that a record company would have anything at all on an artist that never got released. I had always thought an album was always designed as a cohesive whole from start to finish. So to learn stuff existed that I'd never heard was astounding to me. Who would have ever thought that Motown or any studio would have such riches buried away for so long?

Actually, this made me want to ask a question I've always pondered. Based on the old Billboard charts, music critics and reviewers would usually comment that when a record was flipped by a DJ such that the flip became the "A" side, it would depress chart action of the record overall. So, for example, when "Locking Up My Heart" was flipped in favor of the B-side "Forever," neither side charted well, "Locking" cannibalized the chart position of "Forever," and vice versa.

Why is that? I mean, whether someone buys a record because of the A-side or the B-side, the record still sells another copy. Can any of you who might know more about the industry explain it to me? And, in a related question, how does a reporting record store know which side of the record someone was buying? Obviously, a reporting radio station would know which side they were playing, but sales would seem to be oblivious to the A-side vs B-side preference on behalf of the buyer.