Re: [ARSCLIST] "All hail the analogue revolution..."

[David Lennick <dlennick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

steven c wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Peter Hirsch" <punto@xxxxxxxx>
> > The main issue I have with iTunes, iPods and other manifestations
> > digital music delivery is the complete de-contextualization of what I am
> > listening to. No notes, questionable and mostly useless "artist" info,
> > no art, no package whatsoever. I guess there are some exceptions where
> > the stuff is made available as a pdf or displayed on your computer or TV
> > screen, but it doesn't sound like that would be of any interest to the
> > clients of "Jack the Ripper" that you refer to. I guess that the idea of
> > liner notes didn't fully catch on until the LP era (yes, I've seen them
> > on 78 albums and I love the spoken intros on cylinders and early discs,
> > but they don't illustrate kind of thing I am talking about) and maybe
> > the decline of the format has inevitably lead to the decline of the
> > accompanying content. Even the albums, mostly, but not exclusively, pop,
> > that had only art and minimal track listings but no useful text beyond
> > that are something that I could connect to in some way on a level that
> > is not replicated by downloading from a file server.
> >
> Well, it seems never to have occured to the makers of 78's (except
> Edison) that they could or should have put any sort of information
> about the artists and/or songs on their record sleeves! In fact,
> the idea of sleeves specifically intended for a given record
> only seems to have become a practice (and a far-from-standard
> one) around 1950, and then only for a handful of discs!
>
> With LP's, I assume somebody figured out that since there was all
> that empty space (an LP had to have a protective jacket of some
> sort)...why not fill it! CD's, of course, come with "inserts"...
> but there is no guarantee those will remain with the disc over
> time (or keep on being produced as the rush to find cheaper
> methods of packaging CD's continues...)
>
> Steven C. Barr

Not totally true. 78 album sets came with informative booklets beginning in the
mid 1920s (Musical Masterpiece Series and the Columbia and Brunswick
equivalents)..probably similar at the Gramophone and Columbia companies.
Popular albums didn't even exist until the late 1930s and one of the earliest
of them, the Bix tribute, came with an extensive set of notes. Printing them on
the inside of the ALBUM didn't seem to occur to anyone until the early 1940s
(some exceptions, naturally) and even then, Decca used the space to provide
photographs of the performers, in the case of songs from movies or Broadway
shows.

On the other hand, many an early LP had NOTHING in the way of liner notes or
even information about the songs or performers. Mercury was particularly sloppy
in this area, putting some LPs into thick jackets with a centre hole, the cover
printed on the front and a list of available LPs on the back. Sometimes they'd
put the LP into a sleeve (full color) with the title printed on the front, a
catalog on the back, and no information about the songs or artists on the cover
OR the label (Songs of Israel, formerly Songs of Palestine if you owned the
original Keynote 78 set). Sometimes they'd reissue two Keynote sets and if they
remembered, they'd reprint the original covers on the front and back..I have an
issue of the Tony Kraber/Earl Robinson pairing where you get only one of the
two covers.

Then there was the era of the gatefold cover, where the second printing cut
back to a single cover and omitted all the notes..happened all through the 50s
and 60s.

I agree, it would be wonderful to have "cover art" and readable liner notes
once again. The CD could easily have been sold in full-size albums, using a
corner of the package the way Music Appreciation did for the insert of the
"analysis" disc, and stores wouldn't have had to toss all their old broswer
bins (which they then had to re-purchase when the laserdisc came along).

dl