space gypsy

One of my favorite things in life is reading liner notes. The feeling I get when I buy a new record and read its liner notes for the first time is not unlike the feeling young children get when opening gifts on Christmas morning. I love learning every detail about a song I’m listening to - who wrote it, where it was recorded, who played which instruments, who provided background vocals, who produced it, and etcetera.

Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall is among the first records whose liner notes I read and absorbed. This album (my personal favorite of MJ’s) stayed in heavy rotation through my childhood. I remember seeing names in the liner notes like Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder, and Paul McCartney and recognizing all of them, but not knowing who Rod Temperton was. All I knew at the time was that the songs on this album that he wrote were among my favorites (and that his surname reminded me of one of those characters from the animated film Charlotte’s Web). Off The Wall (and lots of other records) transitioned seamlessly from music I loved as a child to music I love as an adult.

Similarly, Heatwave’s “Boogie Nights” went from being one of those songs I liked to hear on the radio while riding in the car with my mom, to being one of those songs I like to hear while I’m out dancing and drinking. At some point my older, more mature ears got hip to the undeniable similarity of the bass lines of these two songs. When I saw a copy of Too Hot To Handle at a used record store one day, I opened it up to read the liner notes and was ridiculously excited to learn that Rod Temperton, writer of “Off The Wall,” was a member of Heatwave and the same person who wrote “Boogie Nights.”

“No wonder the bass lines to these songs sound like siblings,” I thought. “They share a parent!”