Singles A's and B's (Deep Purple, 1993)

At one time this compilation provided a much-needed service of providing late-arriving fans with Deep Purple songs released only as singles or B-sides to others. In the interest of being comprehensive and accurate, some songs are included that are easily available on the regular albums and others appear in their "single version" which means either they are trimmed down to radio-friendly running lengths, or are completely different editions. For example, the songs "Hush", "One More Rainy Day", "Fireball", "Strange Kind of Woman", "Demon's Eye" and "Love Child" are all the same as their album counterparts. "Kentucky Woman", "Never Before", "Smoke on the Water", "Might Just Take Your Life" and "You Keep On Moving" are all "cut" versions that the world outside of radio probably could have lived without. "Bird Has Flown" and "Speed King" however are awesome alternative versions of their album counterparts (Gillan even gets the lyrics exactly right on "Speed King"). The rest are all B-sides that appear as bonus tracks on most current deluxe CD editions of the regular albums, with two exceptions. The big exception is the song "Hallelujah", a Mark 2 oddity in that (1) it's a cover song, (2) Roger Glover is not yet a member of the group (appearing as a session man), but Ian Gillan is, and (3) it was the last Deep Purple song produced by Derek Lawrence, who produced the first three Mark 1 albums. I think it's probably on at least a couple box sets, but if you don't feel like blowing a ton of cash, this is an alternative. One other, slightly less critical inclusion is "Coronarias Redig", which here is the unremixed version (the anniversary edition of Burn only provides a remix version). You really shouldn't buy an entire album just for this.

So as time has gone on, Singles A's and B's as become more of a "Best of" style compilation than a "fill the gaps" compilation. Facing this reality, the ordering of the songs could have been more creative, but for the time the compilers were more concerned about maintaining accuracy than trying to woo new listeners.