Used-to-be and supposed-to-be are not the same

Thursday, dark and clear.  I didn't see the moon this morning (curious) but did see stars on my drive in this morning.  I left the top down from yesterday afternoon, so really did get to keep an eye on the stars. It only takes a morning (or evening) drive top down to remind me why I like this so much.  No idea why I've been so hesitant to drop the top the last few clear and dry mornings, but it couldn't have been because of the dark since that's still my favorite top-down time.

I'm still listening through the new Belle & Sebastian album and still digging it.  One of the tracks (Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John) features a female voice that didn't sound like any of the usual band members to me.  In fact, it sounded very much like Norah Jones.  Hmmm.... need to check this out.  But the track title didn't mention any other artist (often, if there is a guest on a track the song title will have a "featuring...." appended to the track name).

And that brought me to pondering the loss of liner notes in this age of digital convenience.  As someone who really likes music, pulling the sleeve of the LP out of the jacket to read the liner notes and lyrics was simply de rigueur (do we still italicize non-English words and phrases?). Eight tracks didn't offer much by way of liner notes, but cassettes and CDs managed to fit them in, and sometimes included small booklets.  And digital albums sometimes include a PDF file with all the content of whatever is tucked into a physical CD.  That isn't a consistent thing, though, and there was no such digital addition to the B&C album I had downloaded via iTunes.  However, the iTunes store write up for the album, rather than liner notes, per se, provided the answer I was seeking.  Yes, it is a duet with Norah Jones (and it really is a gem).

If this had been the album era, I would have simply pulled the liner notes out and (knowing me) found what I wanted and then re-read the entirety of the notes just for the fun of it.  On the other hand, since the question came up for me on the drive into work, I would have had to wait until this evening and then remembered to check while I was home.  Instead, a quick online check via my iPhone answered my question in the immediacy of the moment.

So, is it really that we have lost liner notes, or that we have gained more immediate access to the same information?  Or, is it simply one of those changes that doesn't necessarily improve or diminish, but which simply comes about with the evolution of life? That's how we did things yesterday and it was good, this is how we do things today and it is also good. And those of us whose lives extend across both the then and the now are the carriers of the way it used to be.  We just have to be careful to not confuse the way it used to be with the way it's supposed to be.

No playlist this morning.  Having one album on shuffle, I wasn't able to trace back exactly which tracks I listened to on the way in, with the exception of Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John. Really, a great album; good stuff.