The B Side

I was doing a search for Solomon Burke, whose new albumI am enjoying a great deal, and I stumbled upon this wonderful website. Its creator appears to own rooms full of old singles, and each post centers around an underappreciated B-side (which you can listen to, static and all) along with incredibly detailed biographies of the artist, someone associated with the creation of the music, or a summary of the state of the genre when the single was recorded.

His loves are primarily 60s soul, old school hip hop, and early funk (I wholeheartedly share the first) but it's never easy to say where one genre ends and another begins. He also has less extensive sites devoted to A sides, old gospel, and extremely obscure soul. God bless obsessives! Each post overflows with enthusiasm for its subject and is filled with information that I at least find fascinating (Bobby Byrd's contribution to the James Brown sound! The origin of the term R&B!) It is also one of the few personal sites on the Web in which vanity appears to play a negligible role. Good for him. I would love to know this much about anything.