Enough atmosphere to start a planet
So it’s Friday night, and a truly appalling week at work has finally, finally ended. If I had not already had a job interview this week (which went pretty well, I think) then I would be logging on to seek.com right now.
My lovely Honey Bear is taking a remarkably well earned break and has just flown off to Sydney for a weekend at Casa del Watershedd. If those two do not get merrily pickled together tomorrow night and leave slightly tipsy comments on this blog, it will not be due to lack of encouragement from me.
Cherub, being rather too young to eat solids, is currently enjoying his first plane flight and Bundle is sleeping soundly. So, to the actual post I was planning to write before I got distracted by talking about me….
If you ever wondered who reads all those “thank you to” sections on CD covers, and indeed everything else in there, it’s me. This may be genetic, as Bundle, who is far too young to read, frequently insists on taking the CD cover out of his Playschool CD and studying it carefully.
Why do I do this? Partly because I occasionally find the name of someone I know and I feel slightly cooler as a result, but mostly because musicians tend to be inherently creative types who occasionally manage to leave a small quantity of pure gold buried in the most unlikely places.
A few examples:
Lists of the musicians who played on a CD, and what they played, don’t usually leave much room for comedy. However, Ben Lee managed it on “Awake is the New Sleep” when he credited Lara Meyerratken with “keys, vocals drums, percussion, enough atmosphere to start a planet”
The ever reliable Kasey Chambers, in an otherwise very straightforward list of lyrics, musicians and general credits on “The Captain”, throws in the wonderful statement that “If angels could sing, they would sound like Julie Miller”
I will refrain from bagging Kasey out for failing to pay attention around Christmas time (Hark the Herald etc) because that is just so sweet.
Sleepy Jackson deliver an even more random moment, when they end an otherwise entirely unremarkable list of thank-yous and acknowledgments by saying “This sleeve is a LOVE POLICE action”.
They do not bother to explain that statement or even the mystifying venture into capitals for NO APPARENT REASON.
And then there’s liner notes, which can be particularly entertaining when a fan/music journalist gets to write the history of a band and their work. The best example I’ve found recently comes from “New Order: Singles.” Having posed the question of how New Order got from “the clattering nonsense of Confusion” to Bizarre Love Triangle, the writer of these particular liner notes answers it in part by saying “through Sub-Culture’s rude disco and the stuttering what-the? of Shellshock and its boyfriend State of the Nation, that’s how.”
Even though I only bought this CD because Shellshock is one of my favourite songs ever, I can’t help loving that sentence.
Lastly, I found this quote in the notes to the Billy Bragg/Wilco collaboration “Mermaid Avenue”. It is not in any way amusing but I include it here because it should be quoted at any and every opportunity:
The world is filled with people who are no longer needed – and who try to make slaves of us all – and they have their music and we have ours – theirs, the wasted songs of a superstitious nightmare – and without their musical and ideological miscarriages to compare our songs of freedom to, we’d not have any opposite to compare music with – and like the drifting wind, hitting against no obstacle, we’d never know its speed, its power…” - Woody Guthrie
My lovely Honey Bear is taking a remarkably well earned break and has just flown off to Sydney for a weekend at Casa del Watershedd. If those two do not get merrily pickled together tomorrow night and leave slightly tipsy comments on this blog, it will not be due to lack of encouragement from me.
Cherub, being rather too young to eat solids, is currently enjoying his first plane flight and Bundle is sleeping soundly. So, to the actual post I was planning to write before I got distracted by talking about me….
If you ever wondered who reads all those “thank you to” sections on CD covers, and indeed everything else in there, it’s me. This may be genetic, as Bundle, who is far too young to read, frequently insists on taking the CD cover out of his Playschool CD and studying it carefully.
Why do I do this? Partly because I occasionally find the name of someone I know and I feel slightly cooler as a result, but mostly because musicians tend to be inherently creative types who occasionally manage to leave a small quantity of pure gold buried in the most unlikely places.
A few examples:
Lists of the musicians who played on a CD, and what they played, don’t usually leave much room for comedy. However, Ben Lee managed it on “Awake is the New Sleep” when he credited Lara Meyerratken with “keys, vocals drums, percussion, enough atmosphere to start a planet”
The ever reliable Kasey Chambers, in an otherwise very straightforward list of lyrics, musicians and general credits on “The Captain”, throws in the wonderful statement that “If angels could sing, they would sound like Julie Miller”
I will refrain from bagging Kasey out for failing to pay attention around Christmas time (Hark the Herald etc) because that is just so sweet.
Sleepy Jackson deliver an even more random moment, when they end an otherwise entirely unremarkable list of thank-yous and acknowledgments by saying “This sleeve is a LOVE POLICE action”.
They do not bother to explain that statement or even the mystifying venture into capitals for NO APPARENT REASON.
And then there’s liner notes, which can be particularly entertaining when a fan/music journalist gets to write the history of a band and their work. The best example I’ve found recently comes from “New Order: Singles.” Having posed the question of how New Order got from “the clattering nonsense of Confusion” to Bizarre Love Triangle, the writer of these particular liner notes answers it in part by saying “through Sub-Culture’s rude disco and the stuttering what-the? of Shellshock and its boyfriend State of the Nation, that’s how.”
Even though I only bought this CD because Shellshock is one of my favourite songs ever, I can’t help loving that sentence.
Lastly, I found this quote in the notes to the Billy Bragg/Wilco collaboration “Mermaid Avenue”. It is not in any way amusing but I include it here because it should be quoted at any and every opportunity:
The world is filled with people who are no longer needed – and who try to make slaves of us all – and they have their music and we have ours – theirs, the wasted songs of a superstitious nightmare – and without their musical and ideological miscarriages to compare our songs of freedom to, we’d not have any opposite to compare music with – and like the drifting wind, hitting against no obstacle, we’d never know its speed, its power…” - Woody Guthrie
posted by I'm not Craig at 10:42 PM
6 Comments:
Wow - another liner reader. I am not the only one.
Just this week I got the new Killer's album and I pulled out the liner notes to count the number of names I could recognise.
An even better (more dorky?) thing to do is comparing notes over albums. The guitarist's girlfriend is credited on the first album, she's the 'lovely' wife on the second, she disappears from view after the divorce only to re-emerge without the 'lovely' on the fourth next to a list of their oddly named offspring.
Enjoy your weekend!
i've also been a reader of those bits, but that's cause i'm a reader of everything.
best one i know of is aloi head's one. cause i knew everyone in that band. another good one was the allniters one, cause i knew them as well.
and i took photos for no nonsense that appeared on one of their things.
if anyone has heard of any of these bands, i will be validated in some small way.
[laughs in a disbelieving kind of way]
Wow, there’s three of us. We should hold a convention or something.
Ms Batville, your dedication to liner reading is awesome and worthy of great admiration. I will follow your example in the unlikely event that I ever manage to buy two CDs by the same artist.
This is something I have done twice in my life, three times if EPs count.
Melbster, it is wonderful to have few more lesser-known bands mentioned on this blog. My profile includes a few bands that are there partly because I like their music and partly because I know people who are or were in them and I wanted to check if any other blogger in the world has included any of these bands in their profile.
They haven’t.
I don’t spend as much time trawling through second hand CDs stores as I did before I started spending money on shoes for my children and stuff, but if I come across anything by any of the bands you mentioned, I will buy it and review it on this blog immediately.
yes, those kid shoes are damned expensive, aren't they? i used to travel internationally all the time, before i was having to buy those shoes. two of them, each time. so annoying, but you do it for love.
Oh god. Me too (liner reader).
The good news is that among the world of non-liner readers one can appear REALLY well-informed about the activities of the band in question.
And yes Melbournegirl, there is something quite validating about showing up on a band's thank yous.
I'm Not Craig: I was greatly impressed at your inclusion of Rebecca's Empire. Frankly, my entire family has a crush on Rebecca Barnard.
MG,
Just a touch of satire there, I suspect.
Giggles,
Does this mean you are in a band's thnak yous? Which one?
And further to my previous comment about hardly ever buying two CDs by the same band, one of the three exceptions was indeed Rebecca's Empire.
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