My Turn: Ian Ross of Plainview on loving life's liner notes

Ever since I can remember, I've been a music geek. There were always various genres of music playing in our house growing up. My start in examining the "media" the music came with was when my dad was in the music distribution business. He would bring home labels for 8-tracks, and had me proofread to ensure the artist and song titles were spelled correctly before they went to press.

As my own tastes in music developed, and a favorite artist's album came out, I raced out to the local record store to buy it. In addition to listening over and over, I dissected every album cover, pored through the inner sleeves, read all liner notes and digested every line item, i.e., who sang, who played which instrument, where the record was recorded and produced and who contributed on the album. I even studied the vinyl itself, as some producers added comments in the disc pressing (see Bill  Szymczyk, producer for the Eagles).

And of course, I read and memorized the words to every song. Added-value posters, pictures (think Beatles' White Album), etc. were just icing on the cake. I  own well over 600 vinyl albums.

When cassettes came out, that was a turning point, as music was now more portable, and we could listen wherever we went. However, cassettes were a small package. The jacket wasn't as distinctive. There were no inner sleeves, the liner notes were minimal and the fonts were tiny.

It was a good evolution in music, though, as many of us were now buying more cassettes than albums. I probably bought more than 500 cassettes.

Then CDs emerged, and it was a combination of something new and something retro. They had great sound quality in a familiar square package. There was more of a defined cover than with cassettes, and more and larger liner notes were back. CDs had a perfect sound quality, and offered no crackles or pops like with albums, and no hisses or flip noises, as found with cassettes. I scooped them up, and collected over 600 CDs.

For me, however, the liner notes in albums were and still are the quintessential great ingredient to any music collection (aside from the music itself). When my son was very young, he wanted to know the words to Queen's “We Will Rock You.” As this was a pre-internet search, I ran to my album collection, grabbed the “News of The World” album, and showed my son the words on the liner notes. He was impressed, and said, "This is the largest CD I’ve ever seen. How does it fit in your car?”

Poor kid had never seen an album before! Realizing this, I got in the car, went to the nearby PC Richards and bought a small turntable and speakers. When I got home, I set everything up, put on the album (with all the great crackles and pops) and blasted the song. The family did a rousing number of "We Will Rock You."

I've now come full circle in my music collecting, as I just bought a specific vinyl album for my young grandsons, whose names are coincidentally matched to the artists'. Neither a cassette nor CD would do, as the album cover boldly features the first names of both grandsons. I hope when they're older, they'll like this work of art ... and also read the liner notes to this album and to the others I'll save for them.

Ian Ross,

Plainview