“Mother’s Lament” - the last track on Cream’s “Disraeli Gears” album, a nice little throw-away a cappella rendition of a traditional folk song.
“Marais de Nuit” - the last track on Neko Case’s “Middle Cyclone” album, consists of about 15 minutes of nighttime insect noises, or frogs croaking, or something. It’s not something I like to listen to every time I listen to the album, but it’s relaxing and fun to put on when you are trying to fall asleep at night.
Worst:
Top of the list has to be "Revolution 9" from the “White Album”. What a waste of vinyl.
“Less Than You Think” from Wilco’s “A Ghost Is Born”. It’s a nice little three-minute song followed by 12 minutes of annoying electronic droning.
The annoying interlude on the CD version of Tom Petty’s “Full Moon Fever” while we wait for album/tape listeners to get up and turn it over to side two. It wouldn’t be so bad if they had made it a separate track instead of tacking it onto the end of “Running Down A Dream”.
The double hidden track at the end of Indigo Girls’ album Come On Now Social - dead space, outtake of “Sister”, long pause, then the song “Philosophy of Loss”
“Thank you, boys!” at the end of Jane’s Addiction album Nothing’s Shocking
A not-so-favorite:
“Forward March” on Pat Metheny Group’s album First Circle
I don’t know whether this counts as filler, but how about side 2 of the Yellow Submarine album? I can’t imagine that many people listened to it more than once, and a lot of people probably stopped listening after the first track.
Tom Petty’s “Hello CD Listeners,” from Full Moon Fever, with “barnyard noises” by Del Shannon and Jeff Lynne. It’s 23 seconds long, and silly, but fun.
Edit: ugggh, I missed mention of this at the end of the OP>
Back in the early days of CDs, it seems like the record companies liked to add a bunch of bonus tracks and previously unreleased material when releasing older albums in CD format. In many cases there was a good reason that material was not released in the first place. The CD version of Traffic’s “John Barleycorn Must Die” had a couple of real stinkers tacked on.
For the longest time in the 80s and 90s almost every comedy album would have at least one song, usually an unironically bad “rap” that was just one liners from the album put to a beat.
Would “Endless Nameless” from the first CD pressing of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” count? This was a hidden track that popped up about 10 minutes after the rest of the album ended.
I still have no idea what the hell is going on with Hüsker Dü’s The Baby Song. It’s essentially just Grant Hart (I assume) messing around with what sounds like a child’s flute and xylophone for 46 seconds.
The hidden track “Eurotrash Girl” from Cracker’s Kerosene Hat album made it onto their Best of… album so apparently it was a pretty popular discovery among listeners.
Worth checking out; it’s my kids’ favorite song! Since toddler age, when they used to sit in the bathtub and beg me to belt it out in Full-On Bad Cockney.
Twenty years on, they’ll still bribe me with a drink if I’ll sing *
“A muvvah was warshin’ her BIYYY-by one noight…”*
Many think that ELP’s Benny The Bouncer, Are You Ready Eddy? and The Sherriff are throwaway tracks, but I like them.
Same with Revolution 9…I didn’t like it for a long time until I learned to accept it as a soundscape rather than a song. (It sounds really cool on the new 5.1 mix)