Liner Notes
Since CDs nudged LPs aside I've heard a number of folks - critics, pundits and casual music fans alike - lament the end of what was, I guess, an age of great album cover art.
Well, um... ok. I pretty much cut my musical teeth on cassettes, which as I recall had little more space than a postage stamp for this kind of thing.
I do miss liner notes though. My parents did not have a large record collection, which is probably another reason the whole idea of cover art leaves me cold. Anyway, they had two records which were pretty much in constant rotation - Meet The Beatles and The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem: In Person At Carnegie Hall. I spent hours listening to these records, more often than not with the cardboard cover balanced on my knees, flipped over so I could read the liner notes on the back. These notes, which related various anecdotes about the bands and the songs on the record in a casual but knowing manner, seemed to me like a glimpse into another world, adult world.
Nowadays, the little booklets nestled in the front of the CD jewel case rarely contain anything more interesting than lyrics and various and sundry thank yous by the artist(s). An exception to this general rule was the CDs by Johnny Cash. Whether it was an album of new content, or a compilation of older material, a Cash CD alsways had something worht reading inside. This makes sense, see as 'the Man in Black' won two Grammies for his liner notes. Some examples...
June Carter Cash wrote these notes, recounting how Elves sort-of-kind-of introduced her to Johnny Cash, for the compilation Love.
Here are the liner notes to Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison - these won one of the two grammies I mentioned above. (He won the other Grammy, oddly enough, for the notes to Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline.
Steve Earle contributed these notes to the re-issue of the At Folsom Prison.
And these are the liner notes to American Recordings, Cash's first record with Rick Rubin.
Well, um... ok. I pretty much cut my musical teeth on cassettes, which as I recall had little more space than a postage stamp for this kind of thing.
I do miss liner notes though. My parents did not have a large record collection, which is probably another reason the whole idea of cover art leaves me cold. Anyway, they had two records which were pretty much in constant rotation - Meet The Beatles and The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem: In Person At Carnegie Hall. I spent hours listening to these records, more often than not with the cardboard cover balanced on my knees, flipped over so I could read the liner notes on the back. These notes, which related various anecdotes about the bands and the songs on the record in a casual but knowing manner, seemed to me like a glimpse into another world, adult world.
Nowadays, the little booklets nestled in the front of the CD jewel case rarely contain anything more interesting than lyrics and various and sundry thank yous by the artist(s). An exception to this general rule was the CDs by Johnny Cash. Whether it was an album of new content, or a compilation of older material, a Cash CD alsways had something worht reading inside. This makes sense, see as 'the Man in Black' won two Grammies for his liner notes. Some examples...
June Carter Cash wrote these notes, recounting how Elves sort-of-kind-of introduced her to Johnny Cash, for the compilation Love.
Here are the liner notes to Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison - these won one of the two grammies I mentioned above. (He won the other Grammy, oddly enough, for the notes to Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline.
Steve Earle contributed these notes to the re-issue of the At Folsom Prison.
And these are the liner notes to American Recordings, Cash's first record with Rick Rubin.
Labels: music
<< Home