When You Buy The Whole Album And Only Like One Song.

OP… “The only tune I can listen to on that album is 'Snoopy's Search/Red Baron'.”
 

We completely agree!

The internet is awesome.  You don’t have to buy entire albums to get the single song you want.  In my pre-internet days, as a newly-turntabled young man, I loved that I could buy “Alone Again, Naturally” on 45 and not have to own a whole Gilbert O’Sullivan CD or LP, or that the same could be achieved for “Voices Carry” by Til Tuesday, and many other one-hit wonders who had a humdinger of a hit.
I’ve indeed begrudgingly purchased entire albums for one song, but when that song became available in a digital form, I got rid of the crappy CD/vinyl LP containing 95% crap and talking up space and making me feel embarrassed to own 😜

However, there’s something fun about having something, something that’s good,  on a physical format that is currently unavailable digitally.  It feels special.

I love purchasing vinyl or cassettes and discovering a gem.

I grabbed a cool-looking Girl Groups compilation cassette at a record store a year ago.  It yielded a rare gem I’d not heard before: “I Can’t Let Go” by Evie Sands (eventually a Hollies single) and it knocked my socks off.  When I made a mix-tape and wanted to include it, I had to use YouTube as the source.   Couldn’t find a digital copy anywhere. That original 45 goes for $150-$300 in good shape.

I have bought  many, many albums/CDs for just one song, One of my favorite songs as a kid growing up in the 60s in Los Angeles was "Fire" by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, the ultimate example of a One Hit Wonder. I never owned the single or album when I was younger, I only heard the song on the radio. When I got into CDs in the late 80s-early 90s, there was a mail order catalog I used to get that sold  hard-to-find import CDs. One of those CDs was a Dutch re-issue of the original Crazy World of Arthur Brown album that contained the hit song Fire.Feeling nostalgic, I ordered the CD, which ended up costing around $25 with shipping. That was a lot of scratch for one CD at the time. The CD arrived, the first song was Fire, which was great, really happy to hear it again, but the rest of the CD was absolute dog feces. Painfully unlistenable. Spending $25 for that one song still ranks high on my All-Time Biggest Wastes of Money list.  

One genre that is heavy with "1-hit wonders" is the Garage Band music of the 1960’s. After The British Invasion took over the music business in 1964, every town and city in America witnessed an explosion of local bands who were inspired by The Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Animals, Yardbirds, Who, etc. In my home town of San Jose, California, we had The Syndicate Of Sound ("Hey Little Girl"), People ("I Love You", a cover of The Zombies song), The Count Five ("Psychotic Reaction", an obvious, blatant, shameless imitation of The Yardbirds’ "I’m A Man", itself a pale, whitebread cover of the Muddy Waters original), The Chocolate Watchband (no hits, but three albums on Tower Records, and an appearance in the Roger Corman teensploitation movie Riot On Sunset Strip. I was in attendance at their first live gig. The Watchband’s drummer was a couple years ahead of me at Cupertino High.), and Stained Glass (no hits, but two albums on Capitol Records. Bassist/singer Jim McPherson left the group to join Copperhead, the band started by Quicksilver Messenger Service guitarist John Cipollina. John’s brother Mario was later the bassist in Huey Lewis & The News.).

Anyway, Rock ’n’ Roll historian, critic, publisher (Bomp magazine), record company owner (Bomp Records), and Garage Band fanatic/collector Greg Shaw was (R.I.P.) about as hardcore a 45 collector as I am aware of. At the time of his death in 2004, his collection of 7" 45 RPM singles devoted to regional Garage Band releases numbered 100,000! That’s a lotta shoe boxes ;-) . By the way: when Greg was managing The Flamin’ Groovies, their fan club president was Mirian Linna, later the first drummer of The Cramps. I still have my Flamin’ Groovies Fan Club badge, handmade by Miriam. She quit The Cramps to join the NYC Rockabilly band The A-Bones, and has a coupla solo albums. Very cool chick.

i remember john lennon saying [paraphrased] that the problem with music today is that most albums have just one or two good songs on them, and the rest is often just filler ["crap" in his words]. what i do is i make [and have made many of such] compilation CDs with my fave songs from various CDs and LPs/45s/78s] combined on them.