Songs I'd Forgotten Existed, Let Alone Loved (An Occasional Series): Special "Great Lost B-Sides of the '70s" Edition

[I originally posted a slightly different version of the below back in 2009, when the world and this blog were young. I'm re-upping it now because I recently stumbled across the song in question and wondered anew if it had finally made it to CD. The answer, alas, is still no.]

Okay, here's a very sad and, frankly, very pathetic story that proves I really need to get more of a life. So please try not to laugh.

But first, from 1975, please enjoy the B-side blues/gospel/pop ballad confection "Believe in What You Do" by the shoulda been bigger Maxine Nightingale.

As I said, the song is from 1975; more specifically, it was the flip side of Nightingale's "Right Back Where We Started From," a world-wide multi-million selling smash that still gets played on oldies radio.

Said B-side has never appeared on any subsequent vinyl album or CD by the artist who recorded it, as I mentioned up top; the video here is a rip from a vintage 45.

The only reason I ever heard this one in the first place is because, at Stereo Review, I was on the United Artists promo singles list, and for some perverse reason I always played the flips of records that were on the radio, on the off chance that there might be some buried treasure, as it were. To my ears, at the time, it sounded pleasantly like the kind of song Rod Stewart might have done before his artistic decline; it also sounded to me like a decent Eric Clapton tune, albeit sans guitar. In any event, I always liked it, especially the minimalist Floyd Cramer-esque piano solo, and in fact at one point I may have tried to con my 70s band (we had a girl singer) into covering it.

In any case, I lost both my copy of the 45 and a low-fi cassette I duped from it during a house moving episode in the late 70s, and over the last several years I've developed a jones to hear it again. More recently, I've tried without success to find a downloadable version anywhere on the intertubes. So at some point (I can't recall exactly when) I finally broke down and paid ten bucks to get a used vinyl copy from Amazon. Another fifteen bucks at a studio got me a decent cleaned up mp3 transfer, which alas I can't share with you for lack of the software needed to insert it into Blogger-friendly HTML.

Bottom line: To my surprise, the song still sounds as insinuating to me as it did in 1975. On the other hand, I think there's an obvious reason why it's never been on any vinyl or CD compilation by the artist in question, and that's because -- wait for it -- it's not really all that interesting to anybody but me. I mean, given the (putting it charitably) sparseness of the production, I'd be very very surprised if the thing wasn't just some publishing demo that was rushed onto the flip when the producer/writer team behind both tracks sold the record company on the eventual A-side smash. Which doesn't sound remotely like "Believe," by the way.

So -- just to recap. For some reason, I became obsessed with a song that nobody else, including the artist, the producers or the songwriters, felt strongly enough about to ever even acknowledge its existence. And I then forked out 25 bucks that would have more profitably been spent on hookers and blow to hear it again, through a patina of crackle and turntable rumble.

Hey -- I said this was a sad and pathetic story. I didn't say it would be interesting.

BTW, since I originally wrote the above, I have been semi-reliably informed that the keyboard player on the track is the sadly forgotten Dave Rowberry, the guy who came in for Alan Price when he departed The Animals. If anybody out there can confirm this, I'd be your best friend.