Remember all the verbal garbage that was written on the back of albums? It was really tedious BS…stuff like “the animals decided to record an album like no other…the inspiration to make the cut was provided by NNNNN, who based his interpretation upon the “New World” symphony. VVVV found that expressing himslf via the lyre gave him new insights into…”
Now that this crapola is written in teeny size type on the CD cases, does anybody bother to read it? Who wrote this stuff, anyway? Was it actually meant to mean anything?
I read it. It saves having to buy a book about the artist’s intentions
Well, LP’s certainly aren’t extinct - I just bought three brand-new records this week - but the “blather” is always a fun and interesitng read on older records. I think of it as more of a stylistic affectation of the era, probably because artists (and their audiences) had less access to the media that would tell them about the record.
One of my favorites is on the first M. Frog record (who later went on to be a member of Todd Rundgren’s Utopia), as it explains what a young genius M. Frog is, how he bought one of the first Moog synthesizers, and how he even invented his own form of music notation. It’s really hilarious. 
On the Traveling Wilburys’ albums, it was Hugh Jampton, E. F. Norti-Bitz Reader in Applied Jacket, Faculty of Sleeve Notes, University of Krakatoa; and Professor “Tiny” Hampton, University of Please Yourself, California. (Who I seem to recall hearing were Michael Palin and Eric Idle.)
They are very useful on classical albums, which give historical context to the artist and explain something about what you might be hearing.
For popular artists – not so much. It was a hangover from the early record albums, which were classical and were thus expected to have information. But most liner notes for pop artists were quickly determined to be useless: they didn’t sell the album, nor did they usually say anything important. By the 60s, they were phased out.
As a teen, I used to love to sit down and pore over the blather. Especially if there were in-jokes that I read about in my latest Rolling Stone. One of the cool things to do was read the writing in the inner circle part of a vinyl album. Occasionally there were funny little phrases engraved there.
Some of the LPs came in works of art. Anyone remember the pop-up woodcut Jethro Tull album, Nothing Is Easy?
Oops.
I mean to say, the pop-up Jethro Tull album called Stand Up.
(Nothing Is Easy is a track on the album.)
Jethro Tull was especially good about that kind of creative packaging back in the day. There were also the Thick as a Brick newspaper cover, the Living in the Past photo-album cover, and A Passion Play with the mock program bound into the gatefold.
Amen to album art. I’ll part with my LPs when you pry my cold dead tone arm from them. 
I was an album reader-that’s one thing which was a bummer about 8-tracks and cassettes: nothing to read. Even reel-to-reel came with musical information, but as noted was often limited to classical recordings. So I still read the info with CDs-but what do we call it nowadays? Liner notes seems too restricted to LPs.
Heh. I love that album.
Another one here who loves that stuff. Liner notes, album art. Good music is good music, and bad music is bad, but a creatively and substantively packaged album will typically find its way to my heart.
I worked in music merchandising when CDs started appearing. I seemed to be the only person appalled at the fact that they didn’t just tuck the CD in a small packet inside a standard album jacket. I LOVED the blather, and the artwork.
To this day I still hate CD packaging.
Art on the front, blather on the back – what could be better!
The other thing I miss is lyrics on the back cover.
And double albums. What a treat!
When I first started buying my own LPs, nothing could compare to the thrill of plopping that black disc on the turntable and settling in to read the the album liner notes & lyrics and peruse the cover art while listening to the whole album Side 1 then Side 2. No skipping around . It was a total experience.
Now it’s more rip the plastic off, discard the case and shove the disc in the player. It just comes up a little short.
I have about 300 LPs and no turntable. They sit on their little shelf unused but not forgotten.
The best blather ever was the entire front and back cover (and insert) of XTC’s “Go2” album.
The worst? A tie between “Silver Throat: Bill Cosby Sings” and “Beatles for Sale”
And very useful, too, for filtering out the stems and seeds.
Remember the comic strip inside “Captain Fantastic” (I think it was)? Elton and Bernie go to Disneyworld and Bernie meets a girl that becomes his wife, Elton is envious. Some other stuff happened too, discussion of earlier albums, etc. Yeah, I miss those days.
Biffy, don’t forget the comic strip in the middle of Too Old to Rock and Roll.
I still read the blather. But since i have mostly jazz now, the blather starts to run together. I miss albums too. Cover art rocked.
And they were great for cleaning dope. I particularly liked to use A Child’s Garden of Grass. Anyone remember that?