Liner Notes

Not long ago I was speaking with an old friend about our respective relationships to music, relationships that perhaps because of our similar age were more similar than not. Over the last several years he has taken to the ukulele, and I have become close to both an electric and an acoustic guitar. He will certainly be a better player of a ukulele than I will of a guitar, and I am sure that like most trysts mine playing days will end in deception and tears.

But along with our penchant for stringed instruments, my friend and I also see--or perhaps used to see--music as something beyond the auditory. We both grew up when record albums were popular, when going to a store and finding just the right album demanded physical effort: find an artist or two and evaluate any visible artwork, hold the cellophane-sealed cardboard container, and go with faith that the deep cuts were as good as the song or two we'd heard on the radio. Then, at home, we would slice the cellophane and slip the paper sleeve out, cradling the record itself as if it were a newborn baby that we'd helped deliver. on the sleeve we'd find the liner notes, bits of information about who played which instruments on which song, who the producer was where the music was recorded and mastered. We'd find the lyrics, too, and even commentary written by the musicians and songwriter. It was a way, perhaps, to keep track of the music industry itself.

Placing the record on the turntable took care and attention, and we would clean the record first before dropping the needled. If we were especially fastidious, we the first time we ran the turntable we recorded the music onto good cassette tape, saving the original source and playing only the copy.

When CDs and their clean, static-free sound came along, we lost a bit of information just as we lost the hiss and pop from even the most clean of albums. Liner notes got smaller and briefer; lyrics were often excluded; inventive artwork was reduced to underwhelming sizes and proportions. We certainly got to hold the product, but the experience was diminished even if the process had changed only a little. And now, with nearly all music available to be downloaded, we have only the music and not the experience. We seldom take risks with music because it's so easy to listen to and buy only what is presented to us by one gatekeeper or another. Deep tracks on an artist's "album" these days? Bah...the stories and themes that can be developed on an album-length production have been replaced by digitized meanings-of-the-moment. Recording artists for years have sought and been pressured to release a hit song, but today it is too easy for everyone--artists and consumers alike--to stop there.

Perhaps this is just a case of a couple of old people remembering how "things were so much better" when we were young. In fact, "perhaps" might even be too nice of a term. But over the last six months during which three of the best friends I've ever had have died, I've allowed myself to genuflect a bit to certain nostalgic tendencies in several areas of life. Because I had known each of these people for many decades, I know a lot about them just as they knew a lot about me. Some of the secrets we shared are better off now that they, too, are dead, but I'd often prefer the deep cuts and the hiss and pop of a life over one that is clean and static free. 

I think about how tt different times but never together we shared much information and many experiences--our producers, the musicians we played with, our lyrics and personal commentary...liner notes that we could read at our leisure.