Labels

I was reading this post about an artist who does paintings of 7" singles in their paper sleeves. He doesn't do picture sleeves, just the old-fashioned paper sleeves with a cut-out where you can see the record label. It got me thinking about the artwork on record labels. Sometimes the label design was a form of guarantee - the Atco Stax and RAK labels gave the potential purchaser an idea of what type of music was contained inside. And some record labels just become associated with a particular artist - I can't see the red Polydor label without hearing Noddy Holder going "Baby baby baaaaaaaaby!!!!"

So what were the record labels from the NWOBHM days that stick in the mind? Well, I'd put forward the following four for starters.


The Iron Maiden EMI Label

There is surely a case for saying that Iron Maiden may be the best-managed band around. What I find most impressive about their early EMI label was the fact that they did it at all. Such a vanity was rare in those days but surely someone on the management team twigged that if they did have their own label it would make people think they were a major band, even if at the time, they definitely weren't. Looks good too.


Bronze

I'm not sure what to make of Bronze as a label. On the one hand, it had Motorhead, Girlschool and Angel Witch on it, but on the other, I can't help thinking that all three of these bands (especially the last two) would have done a lot better if they were on a proper label with real marketing moolah. Still, it was a memorable label; just by looking at it you hear a gruff voice say "...just in case".


Neat Records

We can't let the majors have all the fun. The thing about the Neat Records label is that you know what it looks like even if you don't actually own any records on it. I don't have any records on Neat, and even back in the day the only thing I had on Neat was an awful sampler cassette I ordered from Sounds, but I still know what the label looks like.


Horrible Clickety Clackety Moulded Plastic

Sadly, the golden years of Metal coincided with record labels realising that they could cut costs by doing away with paper labels and just stamping a design onto the plastic. I hated these cheap, thin, brittle buggers. And they scratched and scuffed much more easily than their counterparts with the paper labels. I still have my original copies of Since You Been Gone and All Night Long and they have so much surface noise they sound like they were pressed the same day as one of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five recordings. Still, there's no denying that a lot of great singles ended up being pressed like this, especially by members of the old guard like Thin Lizzy, Rainbow, Rush and Dio Sabbath, so they need to take their place at the table.

So, what have I missed? Should the horrible pink of Carrere's label be there? Or the rather fetching Jet Records label that the Girl and Randy Rhoads Ozzy singles came out on? I'm sure there's something that triggers some of your memories...

10 Random Thoughts on Lemmy: The Movie

 1. I'd like to have seen more of the Tiswas Years. There was a time when Motörhead had Top 10 singles and appeared on Saturday morning TV. I'm guessing that was the time when they attracted most of their long time fans. They haven't always been an underground band.
2. No Girlschool? Kim and Enid were thanked in the credits, but were nowhere to be seen in the film. If you can find space for Jarvis Cocker and Peter hook, then surely you can find space for Girlschool.
3. You need a record company with a marketing budget behind you. AC/DC, Iron Maiden and Motorhead all broke into the charts in 1980 - 82, but only the first two went on to a life of mansions and ivory back scratchers. If Motorhead had been on Atlantic or EMI in the early 80s rather than Bronze, their story may have been different.
4. Stacia really was something, eh? Now I know why my blogging friend Lost Jimmy is so keen to time travel back to 1973.
5. Dave Grohl's "Professional Fan" routine is starting to grate, and he's running the risk of turning into a Metal version of Bono.
6. You don't need to be a professional psychologist to be intrigued by his relationship with fruit machines. He even had one in the dressing room. Unfortunately the film tended to take the "Dude, it's frickin' Lemmy!" approach when discussing eccentricities.
7. Bomber has a great riff. I knew that already, and I'm guessing that you know that too, but go and stick it on just now. It really has a great riff.
8. The Musician's Hyperbole was well in evidence. Despite what Ozzy Osbourne said, Motörhead did not invent Heavy Metal. That was a band called Black Sabbath, Ozzy. You used to sing for them.
9. Watching him leave his flat to go on tour, I was thinking that Samsonite are missing a great sponsorship opportunity.
10. And where was Philthy Animal?

Armed & Ready: Killer

Another band from the Armed & Ready section of Kerrang! Killer were from Wiltshire, which is made to sound like something from the TV series Children of the Stones in the article. Like a lot of the Armed & Ready bands, they had a healthy dose of ambition, proclaiming their music "unusually original", and even designing their own scaled dragon/cat hybrid logo, which they no doubt hoped would be gracing back patches and school jotters up and down the land.

Killer are based in Salisbury and have problems in persuading anyone 'of influence' to travel to the standing stones-strewn wilds of Wiltshire and witness their brand of murderous metal. This in spite of a five track demo tape which, the band claim, has attracted the interest of several record companies.
A cut-throat quintet, Killer have been together for a year and comprise alan Marsh (vocals), Andy boulton (guitar), Ray Disomore (guitar), andy Robbins (bass) and Steve Pierce (drums). Their emblem - a snarling, scaled dragon-cat hybrid, very Dennis Wheately - is a successful amalgam of weirdness, witchcraft and demonic design.
In the past two months, the group have begun to venture into the capital's venues and immoedestly proclaim that they regularly receive 'amazing responses' considering their unkown status. "We are now attracting audiences in excess of 250 every time we play at the Horseshoe in London's Tottenham Court Road," says Bassman Robbins proudly.
Musically, Killer play an 'unusually original' brand of HM 'combining hard-driving rhythms with closely-knit guitar and vocal harmonies'.

Source: Kerrang! No. 3, September 1981

Pan's People Dancing to "Jeepster"

Flick Colby, member and choreographer of Pan's People died over the weekend. I'm too young to remember Pan's People on Top of the Pops; Legs & Co were the first dance act I remember, so what I've seen of them comes from YouTube or the odd TOTP2 show.

I wish I could remember them, because I think they were great. My favourite routine is the one above. It's bright, raunchy and a bit dumb, which, let's face it, is perfect for a T-Rex hit. The 70s are getting a bit of a bad press at the moment, we're being led to believe it was all strikes, spaghetti hoops, football hooligans and going cap in hand to the IMF. Me, I think it's a decade with a long reach.

I'll leave the last word to Clive James. The quote below is from his TV Review in the Observer on March 30th, 1980 (for context, he was criticizing dance troupes of the time like  Hot Gossip, whom were appearing on the Kenny Everett show in stocking and suspenders).

 There was never a sexier television dance group than Pan’s People at the height of their fame, and that was because they gave you what is known among traditional jazz-men as a flash. You can’t have a flash without a skirt.

He's right, you know. RIP, Flick.

The 1982 Air Guitar Championship

Before Guitar Hero came along, people had to make do with air guitar, and I have to say that in my teenage years I was pretty damn good at it. My first axe would have been my elder brother's squash racket. Squash rackets make surprisingly good guitars; the neck is relatively long meaning you can do some serious fretwork, and it's especially good for doing that "drag the plectrum up the strings" routine, like the start of Stargazer. However, Squash rackets also have relatively small heads, so I soon graduated to the more widely used tennis racket. This would have been a cheap wooden racket from Woolworths (a.k.a. the "Winfield Stratocaster"), and it was on this that I perfected my technique. Note that when all this was happening, my ability on the actual guitar never really got past playing Smoke on the Water and Whole Lotta Rosie on one string.

Air guitar was once a serious business. In 1982 there was even the Ad Lib Air Guitar Contest, held at Camden Palace, with judges including Pete Townshend off of The Who, Andy Summers off of The Police, Rick Parfitt off of Status Quo and "Fast" Eddie Clarke. Fast Eddie had just left Motorhead and was presumably available for weddings, bar mitzvahs and these types of events. Come to think of it, he probably still is. Anyway, the winner was Jean-Francois Desbled who won, ironically if you ask me, an actual Vox guitar and amplifier. I hope they asked him to play it.