your favourite labels

blissblogger

Well-known member
no, not the record companies themselves, i'm talking about the circular bit of paper in the middle of the record!

just a few to get started:

moving shadow (at least early; not sure what it looks like now)

for some reason i'm attracted to the yellow RCA labels of the early Seventies

also the RCA Red Seal labels, same design but, you guessed it, red

Polydor 7 inch singles -- the Jam and the Banshees and such -- used to be not paper but made of this sort of matt-toned chrome-like plastic -- if 'polydor' was a substance, that's what the labels looked like they were made of. and if i recall right, the text wasn't printed so much as kind of engraved in it. i might be imagining that actually. The effect was cool though.

the Virgin labels -- both the signature and the siamese virgin twins, but especially the latter -- perfect congruity between design and music at that point
 

nomos

Administrator
Teenbeat design in general.
The Tommy Boy dancing dudes.
Rising High - with that symmetrical knobby thing that looks like a baby toy.
Those deep red RCA Victor 78 rpm labels (78s in general because they're little).
Wreck - which looked like Nervous but had a guy with bullets flying through his cap.
Photek's "Hidden Camera" EP.
Old purple WARP ones.
Road.
 
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dominic

Beast of Burden
production house -- w/ slogan "our rooms have rhythm" -- shaped like house

shut up and dance -- kinda looks like a pirate hat w/ "shut up" on it, then a pirate's saber crossed over hat with "and" written on it, then "DANCE RECORDS" for moustache and mouth

manhole records -- cobbestone or brick street with manhole

Y records -- at least for the pulsallama record -- has cool label -- women in ballroom gowns holding spears

out records -- at least for the ester b record -- woman with arms spread out, hair blown back, and then man lying perpendicular to her with head on her stomach, and then flipside has red writing -- is the woman flying? or is she lying on a bed? or perhaps sliding down a pole?
 

francesco

Minerva Estassi
labels_33.jpg



http://www.collectable-records.ru/labels/index.htm
 

labrat

hot on the heels of love
obvious but i always liked the labels gradual dissolve was in keeping with their sound
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
First thing I thought of was the fruity SOLAR (Sounds of LA Records) rainbow sweep. Class. :)

I like that kinda blobby Harvest label too, visible in the first image Francesco linked.
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
Those Purpose Maker photos remind me a little of Cheap Records, although the yellow tones are pretty nice.

I like this one especially:

http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?what=R&obid=38460

(The street scene, not the band shot they've ripped from somewhere.)

Actually, the lifted images are kinda cool when you look across all the different labels...



And another series with black and white photos that I liked were Thomas Brinkmann's Max.Ernst ones.

I particularly like this one with a blurred figure jumping on one side and the empty room on the other.
http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?what=R&obid=43553

And the old vehicle ones, eg.
http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?what=R&obid=228441
http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?what=R&obid=57355
 

dHarry

Well-known member
blissblogger said:
Polydor 7 inch singles -- the Jam and the Banshees and such -- used to be not paper but made of this sort of matt-toned chrome-like plastic -- if 'polydor' was a substance, that's what the labels looked like they were made of. and if i recall right, the text wasn't printed so much as kind of engraved in it. i might be imagining that actually.

I remember that plastic-metal - or it could have been aluminium - with text-engraved-in-black bizness - very cool, in a cheap toy-esque sort of way.

And what about those with the lace doyley patterns cut out around the centre (MCA?)? And the ones with the extra-large hole where you needed to add your own plug to play it (did they come out of juke boxes or something?)?

(Juke box is as quaint a term as disc jockey should be these days, but how come the latter has stuck - is there anything as bizarrely formal, unlikely, Smashie & Nicey as Oakie, F(r)atboy Slim, Shadow, Plasticman, etc. etc. all calling themselves jockeys of discs?!)
 

DigitalDjigit

Honky Tonk Woman
The large hole is a standard 7-inch attribute. Something to do with how RCA designed them that way for their automatic record player that would play a whole stack of these.
 

xero

was minusone
dHarry said:
(Juke box is as quaint a term as disc jockey should be these days, but how come the latter has stuck - is there anything as bizarrely formal, unlikely, Smashie & Nicey as Oakie, F(r)atboy Slim, Shadow, Plasticman, etc. etc. all calling themselves jockeys of discs?!)


how about all those hip hop masters of ceremonies?!

the juke box lives on as well I think, aren't creative's mega mp3 players called juke boxes?
 
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