Among the piles of everyday hits and misses I plow through upstairs in the vinyl vault, there's always plenty of curios.  I've put aside a handful of UK releases that caught my eye recently and decided to check out the stories behind the labels, here's a bit of briefing...


77 Records was started by Doug Dobell who ran Dobell's Jazz Record Shop in London.  He specialized in rare Trad Jazz and Blues recordings.  As far as I could tell, York Records was a short lived Decca subsidiary, with heavy Yorkshire connections, it seems that it might have been run by a "Yorkshire TV" shoppe.  Automatic Record Co. was a Warner subsidiary started by Nick Mobbs that had a few Modern Rock releases in the early 80's...







VJM specialized in 78 and unreleased rarity comps from Blues & Trad Jazz artists, I believe the organization is still around today. Topic started off as a vinyl label releasing Folk titles and still releases UK folk music on CD.

So here we have another batch of LP's with artwork in the "Modern Rock" style of the early 80's.  Kicking it off with a Paul Butterfield Back to the Future cover and into Lucifer's Friend/Uriah Heep golden throat John Lawton's 1981 make-over Heartbeat...