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Posts tagged ‘album’

Feb 28

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Skipping Reels of Rhyme: Liner Notes on The Boil

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I am gathering a bit of inspiration here at 6149 world headquarters. I am writing the liner notes for a new EP release of a very good friend of mine.

The EP is tribute to a choice selection of his fave rave Bob tunes. We’re talking bow-down stuff here, people.

Coming soon to an ear canal near you…

Dec 14

10 Comments

Kill the Body, the Head Will Die: Long Live the (new) Liner Notes

The death rattle has been shaking for the album for sometime now. Personally I am not losing faith, but there are a great many marketers, bands, labels and sales charts that are ready to bang the last nail into it’s coffin. 

Sadly, the more people that think like this, the faster the album rusts. I don’t believe this hype. Yes, the album was a static product at one point, but no longer should it be a static concept. Don’t kill it…change it. 

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If you don’t know me by now…I am a fan of the long player, the long form album concept. I like to listen to the sum of parts as much, if not much more than the parts themselves. I also enjoy reading through the material that comes with (came with) the physical medium. I’m a vinyl nut, so that vinyl, gate fold, physical experience is important to me. 

When the cassette tape was the talk of the town, they (the labels) tried to cram all of that content onto an accordion’esque fold out insert that barely fit inside the plastic case it shared with the cassette.  That entire collection of artwork, lyrics, liner notes, song credits, band thank you’s experience, shit the bed when it went to cassettes. Who really wanted to squint and read all of that fine print and spend thirty minutes staring into album art the size of a cigarette pack? No one did. 

When the CD came out it was a bit better (larger), but not by much. If anything the experience went from shit to meh. Yeah, you could see the album art  and you didn’t have to squint so hard to see the liner notes, but still…this was bed-shitting material. 

That part…the added info…of the album experience rusted a long time ago. Look at the digital situation we have today. A majority of the albums that you can get via iTunes, emusic or Amazon still don’t come with ANY liner note type info at all. Talk about obsolete…bands aren’t even demanding this be part of the delivery of their music/album. 

Yes, some digital album downloads come with PDF versions of the liner note and added info…but this sucks as an execution. I love all the added info, but I just don’t like this style of delivering it…the flat, lifeless PDF/print out.

iTunes is trying to help get some of that old timey feel back with the iTunes LP. This execution is ok, not great, but ok. In time, when/if it becomes a standard, it will improve. I actually thought they did a good job with the recent Bruce Springsteen jumbo re-release of The Promise: Darkness on the Edge of Town. The physical copy came with CDs, DVDs and a replica of Bruce’s notebook he kept during the making of the album. The iTunes LP came with all of the above (sans physical format), including a page turning digital representation of the notebook. OK…credit for trying. 

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As I look at what my fave rave bands and artists are doing to promote album releases, I am starting to see what I considered to be the new liner notes. They aren’t physical, they aren’t something you can touch, print or hold. They aren’t being compromised into a “we can say we did it”, micro-format. They aren’t even tangible per se, but they are offering that same rich, insightful commentary that artists once delivered in their album liner notes. 

The new liner notes are the promo videos. 

Video is a such an effective medium for delivering messages. If you are an industry insider, serious music head or causal music fan, video has become part of your music listening (viewing) experience. In 2010, bands, marketers, labels and fans have been leveraging video more than ever before. I enjoy video not for the actual music video, but for the insight gained from interviews, mini-documentaries and behind the scenes goings-on. 

I am not only an album fan, I am a story fan, too. The story is king; it is context; it is the folks and lore found in the songs; it pulls the whole experience together for me. I want to know the why and how behind the album and each song on it. This is why I love these promo videos. If you think about it, these videos are an extension of the liner notes. You are getting that same basic level of info (who played on/produced the songs), plus insights (into the songs), PLUS context (stories about the songs).

The great part about the story telling is that, most often, the artist is telling the story. I find this very compelling (when done well). I want to hear why they wrote a song, what it was about, that the drummer played in a stairwell…and why/who came up with the particular riff, etc. 

One of my fave rave bands of these times is The Drive-By Truckers. For their last album they went deep into the video promo groove. They put out a series of webisodes for each song on the album (I wrote about it here). Each of their webisodes had a band member walking the talk. This was better than handwritten liner notes. We got emotion and reaction along with the information. The effect, on me, was that I was much more attentive to the songs while listening to them as well as more connected with their stories. 

The DBTs have a new album coming out on February 15th: Go-Go Boots. Once again they are breaking out the old video camera, but this time they are taking a slightly different, more personal approach. They have already posted their first video of the series. In it, Patterson Hood tells the what, why and how how they will go about creating videos for the album launch. He is not so much marketing as he is being transparent about how they want to connect with fans and tell the story of the album. I think it is brilliant and I am looking forward to it. 
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The DBTs aren’t the only ones to pull videos out of their bags of tricks. Gregg Allman has a new album out in January. He and his team have put together a “making of” video to start the promotion for the launch. I have to believe that if the album just went out with a truncated booklet of notes or a PDF download, you wouldn’t get a fraction of what Gregg gives in these eight minutes of video. The guy never speaks or gives interviews. Here you get more Gregg, more context, more storytelling from this grizzled bear than you have in the promo of his last half a dozen Allman and solo albums combined (I love the shot of him walking on the bridge with the poodle close behind). 

I put a couple more here for reference as well. Elton John waxes on and on about his collaboration with Leon Russell. Even producers get in the act. Daniel Lanois gives a (slightly self-serving) eighteen minute, song by song rundown of the tracks on Neil’s “Le Noise”.

“Kill the body, the head will die“. Context is king. Liner notes, album credits, thank you’s, song credits…these are all essential pieces of the sum total presentation of The Album. They are the body. The music is the head. These pieces need to be considered oxygen to breathe life into the so-called dead album. If these videos are in fact a new version of the liner notes, I am looking forward to how far people can push this concept. Long live the album.  

We are human beings. We like to feel connected…by emotion…context. That’s what stories do, they connect us by emotions to objects, ideas and other human beings. The more intrigued we are and the more effected we are, will impact how much more connected we are to the story. That video/audio experience can nail this to the wall when done right. 

Here are four video-liner notes that I consider “done right”. Enjoy. 

The Drive-By Truckers – “Go-Go Boots”
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Gregg Allman – “Low Country Boots”
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Neil Young – “Le Noise” (Daniel Lanois doing a trac k by track interview)

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Leon Russell & Elton John – “The Union”

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Sep 12

8 Comments

Always Leave a Witness: One vote for letting the EP live when the industry kills off the album

Have you seen the TV show “The Wire”? I just started watching it in August. I had never seen it before. I don’t watch much TV. Never have. I lived alone in my own bachelor-pad the late 90′s and early 00′s and never had a TV. Music was my thing and still is. While everyone else was watching “must see TV”, I was listening to one bow-down album after another. Hell, yes.

I have been sucked in by The Wire for all it has to offer: the characters, the acting, the story lines and the soundtracks. The unapologetic, unabashed, unrelenting honesty is jarring and compelling. If you haven’t seen it, and you should, look out because I’m about to talk dirt on it.

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Omar: EP lover.

I just finished episode four of the fifth and final season. “Butchie” has just been killed by Stansfield’s thugs. When they killed that poor blind bastard Butchie, they let one of his muscle-men live. The thugs told muscle-man that he was to tell Omar every gory fucking detail about how they killed old Butch. This is a time honoured literary tradition of creating legend by leaving one behind.

When I saw this go down I immediately thought of The Album. The Long Player. The LP. Pity the poor LP; The industry can’t kill it off quick enough. What was once a badge of honour for a musician is now the industry’s albatross.

“What the fuck have you done for me lately, eh LP”? What…?

I feel for the LP. It has been contorted to into concepts. It has been the victim of gluttonous, over-stuffed double-album hell. For years it has been the industry’s trojan horse to get singles inside the consumer’s walls.  

Look out LP, because the industry has sent in the thugs. 

The LP got a bum deal. If they are in fact going to kill the LP, I for one hope they let the EP live. Actually, they need to let the EP live. If they are going to put the long player in a deep grave, we need to have a historical account of what it was, what it offered and how it was unjustly killed dead in it’s grooves. 

I am not about to bore you with a history, so…a very long story, very short: 

With the 78 (SP, “Standard Play”) and the 45 rpm, the single was the thing. Singles were the fertile ground for LPs. Why sell one song on one platter when you can sell ten songs on one platter for more money? Then the EP (“Extended Play”) joined the party. Originally they were singles compilations or album samplers. They shared size and speed with 45 singles, but they were packaged up in different fashion as vehicles to promote the new album or as bonus material. When it all shook out, Singles ruled the charts, Albums became major statements and marker’s in an artist’s career and EPs were the booby prize.

Music business boomed.  People wanted more. Artists created more. The industry sold more. Scarcity was king and the labels were it’s queens. 

Well, lookeee here…singles are the thing again. This is one big circle-jerk, isn’t it? Damned if the bottom line doesn’t have a mean grip.

Most of this is a result of continued advances in technology: Vinyl > 8-Track > Tapes > CDs > SACDs > MP3s > iPods, Streaming, etc. Advances in technology are a good thing.  As music-fan-idealist, I want advances in technology to support an artists’ creativity, not stifle it by shoehorning it into the lowest common denominator that will support retail sales. 

I like the idea of the LP. I want more than a single’s A Side and a B Side. I want context. I want story. I want nuance. One-Hit Wonderful is not my thing. If the album is in fact “dead” (for now or the time being), I hope they breathe life back into the EP.

The EP is a way to support both the changing commercial medium without compromising the creative message. My reason for championing the EP’s cause is not about selling more; it is about not getting less from artists. Maybe I am a dying breed, but I want more than singles. The EP is a good compromise. An artist could still have a feel or a context in mind for the collection of songs they are working on. They could release them in bunches…as series of EPs over a six or twelve month period. A series of “episodes” from an album. 

(Look out: I’m circling back to my The Wire reference)

What if an album was created and sold to tell a story over a series of “episodes” as a TV show is…like The Wire?  Instead of a bloated fourteen song album, write twenty songs and release four 5 song EPs over 12 months. Build some momentum for the holiday selling season where you can sell infinite configurations of box sets, formats, special editions, etc. This is marketing, people…you can do what ever you want; music fan suckers like me are out there with new ones born every minute. 

I came late to The Wire. Instead of watching it unravel over five years, I’m going to watch it end-to-end in just a month and a half. I bought it in bunches and watched it in pieces and on my own terms/schedule. Can that be done with an intended, purposeful series of EPs. I think so and I would go for it. 

Change the format, the album cycle, the timing, the distribution…change it all up without sacrificing the creativity to the commercial. Each EP release would apease the fastfood, disposable, lowest common denominator music buying culture. The artists still gets to make their statement, albeit with a need to practice a heap of patience. The propensity to stay in tune with the message and to purchase more stuff will increase over this type of slow-burn release. 

There is much opportunity for labels, artists, retailers and fans in this concept. People tune into TV episodes each week. People flock to sequels. People want “the next” all the time (unfortunately it is most often to the detriment of “the now”).

Yes, the EP could very well be the survivor of this LP slaughter. We don’t have to cow-tow to the single. I’m willing to concede the LP, but I’m not ready to give up the premise. Come on labels and artists and marketers…roll with the punches. Use the EP to mix a perfect cocktail of commercial and creative that plays to changing habits and technology. Don’t over think this shit. 

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Oh, shit. I just watched episodes five and six. Omar is back on the killing trail, but he is letting a few storytellers live. Omar must be a fan of te EP, too. 

May 18

11 Comments

“Now, the album is the thing”: a look at the contents of the Super-Deluxe “Exile on Main St.” Re-issue

Exile

That picture is a page from picture book, with photos by Ethan Russell, on the making of the “Exile on Main St.”. It is included in the whiz-bang edition of the “Exile” release. The quote is from the Riff Sorcerer himself, Keith Richards. Oh, Keith…if you only knew then what would become of the album now.  Not only are we back to singles…most of them are shit. The album, pity the poor album. Only a few dedicated fans of it left…so they say. 

I don’t believe them though, dearest Keef. I am on the album’s side…a true Champion, in fact. I love the album…so much so that I have reverted back to the black circle, where the album was born. You would be proud, Keef…I have a rule now. When I buy a new album I have to listen to it straight through, first song to last, at least ten times before I start cherry picking songs. 

By dong this, I get the flavour of the set…the way the artist intended it. Plus, I get a better feel for each of the songs as they were sequenced…they were done so for a reason, right? Who’s with me? Who will fight he good fight…?

Newcomers, now is your chance. Go out and buy one of Keef’s children: The “Exile” re-issue. It doesn’t have to be the super-deluxe package, it can just be the CD.  The important part is that you get it and listen to it front to back. If you have virgin “Exile” ears, believe me and millions of others, you will be floored at the diversity and dynamism of this collection of sounds, riffs, honks and yelps.

This is an album in the truest sense of the word. It demands to be listed from start to finish in its entirety. You will thank us, the Album Champions, later for it. 

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Here are some snaps of the super-deluxe “Exile on Main St” re-issue package. It just showed up at my office. I am definitely sneaking out early to get home and devour this tonight…from start to finish.