Today I decided to embark on a little trivial project to pass the time.   On Planet Rock tonight they played More Than A Feeling by Boston.   It is a good song, but probably the only song by Boston that most people could name.  I have to admit that it is the only one I could name – and I bought the 7″ single when it came out so really I should at least know what was on the B side ((readers under twenty – ask a parent what a B side is)) but I don’t.

So my little project is to spend some of my Spotify time listening to a few tracks from bands that are only well-known for one track.  It may be that some of these bands really are not any good and only made one decent record, but equally it could be that they have a back catalogue of really good stuff that is cruelly overshadowed by their big hit and overlooked by the general public.

The thing to remember is that these bands are not classic one-hit wonders: most of them had long album careers, selling plenty of records and touring large venues. Some still make a steady living out of dedicated fans, they just never reached out beyond that circle of fans.  Taking Boston as an example, according to Wikipedia they have produced five studio albums, with four of them platinum or multi-platinum sellers.  Two of them were number one in the US album charts.

I tried to think of other bands with a distinguished career who are only known to most of us (well.. to me anyway) by a single song.  I came up with:

• Golden Earring (Radar Love)
• Blue Oyster Cult (Don’t fear the reaper)
• Renaissance (Northern Lights)
• Strawbs (Part of the union)
• Steppenwolf (Born to be wild)
• Ozark Mountain Daredevils (Jackie Blue)

Any more suggestions?   Many people would add the Tubes on there for White Punks On Dope and Spizzenergi for Where’s Captain Kirk? but they don’t count for me since I know the rest of their stuff quite well so I have a different perspective on them – like all those millions of Boston fans will have in the case of Boston.  Maybe Jackson Browne?  I know he did lots of stuff, but I can only think of Stay.

Despite getting the inspiration for this bout of catching up with stuff I probably should have listened to twenty or thirty years ago by hearing Boston on the radio, I actually decided to start with Golden Earring.  Checking on Wilipedia again I see that they released 24 studio albums between 1965 and 2003.  They also released 8 live albums and 18 compilations, including one called Greatest Hits, Voume 3.  And yet I still only knew the one song of theirs.  This sort of deep back catalogue is just the sort of thing I have found Spotify to be great for, so I did a search and got a surprise on two counts.

It turns out that Spotify only has one Golden Earring track in its vast library… and it is not Radar Love!   The only Golden Earring track on Spotify is one called Twilight Zone on an album of live 80s songs.  I had never heard of it, though apparently it got to number one in the US and Holland.  I listened to it, but it didn;t really do anything for me.  Meanwhile there are 18 cover versions of Radar Love by other artists like Ministry, Unsere Leibling, King Diamond, Oh Well and White Lion…  and a rockabilly version by Lobos Negros.

So starting with Golden Earring was a mistake, although it did eventually lead me to Lobos Negros’ interesting cover of Highway 61 Revisited.  Not sure whether to just give up, or move onto Boston and Blue Oyster Cult.