PUNKIN' BEE

There's something inherently punk about B-sides; they're no-goods nobody has any time for, conceived in a hurry, then discarded, now doomed to a life of tagging along with their bright successful A-side siblings, etc. etc. Often the roughest, couldn't-care-lessest music of the 50's and 60's was to be found on a 45's flipside. Most garage classics started out there (the granddaddy of them all, Richard Berry's "Louie Louie", first saw life as the flip to his version of "You Are My Sunshine"!), the Beatles' wildest stuff was to be found there, and even later on in the years of manufactured bubblegum pop, they'd put a bunch of noise on the B-side so the DJs couldn't be mistaken as to which side was the "proper" one. Of course, this whole esthetic of trash-thrown-down-then-picked-up became one of the key elements of punk.
So how about punk B-sides? Are those punker-than-punk? (Or punk x punk = punk squared?) Well, no. DIY artists had a hard enough time putting out their 45s, often selling their mopeds/ record collections to cough up the money, so they didn't really feel like wasting half a record on throwaway stuff. (or, in the case of the Pagans or Desperate Bicycles, they put the same music on both sides to save cutting costs!)
It's the (semi-)big label artists that have the interesting B-sides, either because they didn't care about them, or because that's where they let their guard down. For instance, Year Zero punks the Damned would acknowledge their 60's roots by covering "Help!" on the flip of the very first punk single; likewise, Generation X put out a very early (methinks it's Billy Idol himself on out-of-tune guitar!) Peel Session of John Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth" as a B-side.
Dave Goodman, the Sex Pistols sound man who did all their B-sides (their A-sides being done by hotshot producer Chris Thomas), made a one-off punk record called "Justifiable Homicide" (which strangely sounds like the Chris Thomas-produced Pistols!), but the proggy flip "Take Down Your Fences" exposes him for the old hippy he was! (I like it.) Magazine on the other hand, who were consciously getting away from the "standard" punk sound, put a scorching punker with the great title of "My Mind Ain't So Open" on the back of debut single "Shot By Both Sides".
When the Lurkers had "gone powerpop" in 1979 with "Out In The Dark", they apologetically followed it on the 45 with an old-style punker (uncredited on the sleeve) called "Cyanide" (although that's not technically a B-side!). If you think the Stranglers couldn't punk out then check out their so-punk-they-were-probably-kidding "Shut Up", clocking in at 1:02 and flipside of "Nice 'n Sleazy". The Stranglers put out lots of extra-curricular stuff, often in the form of fanclub releases, but on the B-side front another er... interesting one is 1979's "Yellowcake UF6", an instrumental slowed-down and played backwards, a bit like Husker Du's "Dreams Recurring". The prize for all time worst punk B-side however goes to PiL, who chose to couple their most accessible, uplifting song ever, debut single "Public Image", with a piece of horrible noise called "The Cowboy Song". There you have it, six punk B-sides, varying in quality from great to "interesting" to crap, but all of them shedding a different light on the artists in question!