I love sleeve notes…
And gatefold sleeves and picture inner sleeves (even the ones that just had little black and white pictures of other LPs on – who knew what you might discover?). And lyric inserts. I even learned to love picture discs even though it somehow felt like the end of something pure and wonderful (how little we knew…)
I have a particular fondness for this
if only because of the (I think) Melody Maker review which ran something like ‘Take Me Home? You couldn’t get her through the door in that getup…’
But I digress.
I’m not sure why I should remember sleeve notes with such fondness. Many of them were little more than puff pieces – and it’s not as if CD reissues don’t sometimes contain excellent notes – but, somehow, reading them was all part of that slightly ritualistic process of listening to music when it came on incredibly fragile shiny black discs from actual shops. If you weren’t there you can’t know.
Even more then sleeve notes, I love talking about music – in that way that is really boring for people who don’t share your particular enthusiasms but, just occasionally, will make you the instant friend of a complete stranger.
Since it’s my website I can bang on about whatever I like so I thought I’d start by talking about some of the songs on Everybody Says Don’t – about where they come from and why I like them and, maybe, why we played them the way we did. After that, who knows, I might just ramble about whatever takes my musical fancy…