Essay by Mona Austin
Packaging, Streaming, and the Staying Power of The Clark Sisters
Used bookstores hold the history of collectible music. In 1983, compact discs reached American consumers, and a smaller medium set off a revolution in audio recording. Through every change in packaging since, the sound of The Clark Sisters has endured. This is a Slice tribute to their staying power and a look at how the presentation and consumption of music have changed over four decades.
One afternoon, to the dread of my allergies, I stepped back in time, facing the dust-laden, stale air inside a used bookstore to browse the CDs. I was searching for nothing in particular when I wandered into the music section and spotted a piece of vinyl treasure. I quickly scanned the area to see whether anyone else was eyeing the jewel I'd found.
I snatched up the LP, the medium that predates the CD, with a quiet "eek" and a slightly louder "O-M-G." I gawked at the cover of the 1980 recording Is My Living in Vain, by the Dynamic Clark Sisters with Mattie Moss Clark. To the average listener, this discovery would mean nothing. To a gospel music lover and music journalist it was priceless. The album was also a reminder that speaks to the legacy and staying power of the Clark Sisters career.
The music industry has evolved to the point that physical media is becoming a thing of the past. I write this essay to reminisce over the music relics we once knew and what they meant to the way we connected in life to the music artists and to each other. Finding the Clark Sisters seminal albums caused me to think about what albums meant to and perhaps others. I grew up in a household where a family member collected albums. Most of the music was before my time but I was interested in the "artwork" on the covers and inside. These details help tell a bigger story about the artists and their project. sits squarely at the intersection of an era change in music packaging and distribution. More practically, when I see that cover it brings back personal memories like the feeling I got when I heard their first harmonies and trying to imitate them. What album covers come to mind for you? Is it Michael Jackson's Thriller? Prince's Purple Rain? Or Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life? What ever comes to mind, there is likely an associated image that accompanies that song if it was released before the digital era. These covers are as classic as the music on wax they held. The Clark Sisters album was not one I owned but it is also a classic that I fondly remember in part due to the physical packaging.
The Music Artifact -- A Dying Medium
Music has always shaped how we socialize around entertainment and the fanfare around a new release is still high. How buzz gets shared, though, has changed from word of mouth, radio DJs, and music magazines to social media sharing and texting. For artists like the Clark Sisters, whose music spread through grassroots performances on the church conference and revival circuit, and whose budgets, the album was the norm.
Writer David Merline describes where that "artifact" is headed: "And now we're moving into the all-digital age, in which there is no artifact, and all accompanying art is screen-rendered (save for the underground music scene, in which vinyl is ascendant and even cassette covers are again designed and printed) and the only cover one sees is a 150-pixel square."
Cover art was a big part of how records were marketed in the '60s and '70s, and it remained so in the '80s. The Clark Sisters' cover was not especially elaborate or striking, but it was how groups were recognized in print. The back and inside sleeves carried details about the group and the project, known as liner notes. Cover art also made it onto flyers, posters, and other paper materials that promoted ticket sales and upcoming projects.
Additionally, Is My Living in Vain shows how a physical medium helps record history. This classic album gave us two popular singles, "Is My Living in Vain" and "Pure Gold," two songs that alone made the discovery worth every consequential sneeze. To my knowledge this is the only cover on which the sisters appear with their late mother, the legendary COGIC Music Director Dr. Mattie Moss Clark. It also pictures original member Denise Clark Bradford, who left the group and is absent from the lineup most current fans know, whether a trio or a quartet, depending on when and where the group performed. She stands front and center on this cover. (Sidebar: A long-standing rumor holds that their mother, as music director of the Church of God in Christ's national music department, was given an ultimatum to remove her daughter from the group or lose her position because Denise had become pregnant out of wedlock.) As a gospel enthusiast, I saw this small detail as proof that neither religious ostracism nor changes in the lineup could erase or deny -- that the group had another original member. The album also marks a turning point in packaging. Full-size, fully designed album covers began to decline with the arrival of the compact disc, which originated around the time this record was made.
The Senses and the Social Cost
Consuming music engages sight, sound, and emotion. Traditional packaging carries an emotional connection to the past, and its loss has contributed to less human interaction around music. Social media is a byproduct of the digital age, and it has disconnected people from one another offline.
I have witnessed major shifts in how entertainment is shared in my lifetime, and I miss the human connection of yesteryear. I recall the wobble and crackle of records on a phonograph, or record player, in the 1970s, when I was a child. By the early 1990s, during my freshman year of college, compact discs had overtaken vinyl and cassettes as the dominant medium for recorded music. The change happened so quickly that physical music seemed to vanish. As the song tells us, "Video Killed the Radio Star," and the digital age is killing music collecting. Every generation has its culprit.
My children were growing up in the transition from CDs to MP3s, a digital-only format. By the time my grandchildren arrive, CDs may be obsolete, and books and other media made of paper or plastic may join the packaging of bygone eras. Streaming now dominates, only requiring that we touch a screen or in some cases that we speak to download what we want to hear or watch.
What's We Have Lost
The digital revolution is moving at the speed of light and eliminating the need for packaging. What comes next? I am not a nostalgist or a technophobe, but I'm not ready for Scotty to beam me up, with a device deciding what I want to hear and playing it in my ear. Along with the packaging goes a piece of our social story. A handheld device knows nothing about us from the magazines or books we read. It is a battle of automation versus manual production, and I believe what we had was better than what my grand children will experience, unless they attend a live show. My main reason for lamenting these changes to how we consume music is that human interaction to music could fade it we are not attuned to what we are letting go with the changes we are seeing.
These changes affect several areas
- Social interaction
- Sentimentality
- Employment
Consumers want on-demand access to music, but that doesn't mean they don't want a shared connection with others in a more noticeable way. Advancements in technology do not always make things better from a sociological standpoint. They just make things faster, easily accessible and physically minimal.
For me, touching the media and opening the package to read bios and liner notes is as much a part of the fan experience as listening. I'd rather turn a page or open a package than point and tap or let an algorithm do the exploring for me. I also appreciate having something I can put on display and/or collect, and I like to interact and share in person. As the world goes green, downsizes, and "improves" things in this digital revolution, we have used bookstores to thank for housing the history and the lessons, and for preserving the memories of the people who sign the covers, take the photos, and illustrate and design the product presentation.
Ultimately, as long as the art is available in any form, nostalgia remains.
NOTE: Since the initial writing of this essay vinyl albums and record stores (on a local level) have made a comeback.