These two albums, on the cover, seem like two very different pieces of art to put together. However, they have at least two very concrete things in common.Both were released in 1968. For Ravi Shankar, he was introducing the west to eastern music, especially that of the sitar, which had already been brought over by George Harrison of The Beatles after hearing Shankar play.
For The Byrds, Notorious ... was a direction-changing opus. More country and more psychedelic than anything that had been done before. Alt-country was born in this album.
But there's one more common ingredient. In both, there are spoken parts where someone explains something about the actual music.
On Sounds of India, Shankar himself is recorded talking about Indian music and the instruments being used on the album. He goes into rather great detail (more than the average listener would care to know, I think) about the instrument, how it works, what kind of sounds it makes and how all these pieces fit together.
On Notorious ..., producer Gary Usher records a really short explanation to the listener about the album and how the Byrds were very happy with their creation, despite the fact that only Chris Hillman and Roger McGuinn survived the entire process. Also, he explains that it's much more country than other Byrds recording and he introduces the use of the Moog synthesizer in the recording process.
Both statements from Usher and Shankar are very interesting and I'm surprised that more artists didn't do this. I guess Phil Spector had the Christmas wish on his holiday album. Otherwise, that's it. I think fans would find all this interesting. Remember when reading the liner notes on the LP or CD was actually something you did? Basically, these are recorded liner notes.
How much more interesting would music be if you had the artist or someone involved telling you about how the song was written or recorded. Or maybe the guitarist pops on and tells you how a lick is played. We're missing out here.
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