As a kid, did you ever buy a record based totally on the cred of the record company issuing it?

When I was a teenager in 1976 I bought the YES 3-LP Live "Yessongs" based (well mostly on the cover) upon the fact that Led Zeppelin were also on Atlantic. I had never heard a single YES song at the time - just bought it because I thought "if they're on Atlantic, they might be as good as Zeppelin". Irony of ironies, they were as good as Zeppelin - I was right (for a completely unrelated reason than what I thought).

Same is kinda true in 1977 for Genesis 2-LP Live "Second's Out". Because it was on Atlantic and Bill Bruford played on it (till then - I had never heard a single Genesis song).

Again, kinda true a couple of years later for King Crimson "Lark's Tongue in Aspic" and "Starless and Bible Black" (till then - I had never heard a single KC song). I saw they were on Atlantic and also had Bill Bruford and thought "well, if they're on Atlantic they might be as good as Yes". They were, again, for a completely unrelated reason than what I thought.

What can I say - back then - I kinda had a "thing" for bands on Atlantic Records.

 

No

 

Yes!! In the sixties, when I was a teenager, DGG was synonymous to me with quality music. One of the convincers for me was the fact that the pressings were so great. The ONLY records I saw that decade that showed that pride as PRODUCT. clean, virgin vinyl, immaculate pressings. To me it spoke to a sense of pride that was sorely lacking in all the rest of the records I bought that I found irresistable. I bought records from them indiscriminately. Renaissance, Baroque, classical, I didn't care. I just saw DGG and picked it up. I was repaid by discovering the karajan Beethoven and Sibelius symphonies, Walcha playing the Back organ masterpieces and on and on.
Walcha playing the Bach organ masterpieces and on and on.
.
In the late sixties I bought albums from Warner Brothers indiscriminately. This was about '67-71. Did I love everything? no. But nonetheless the label seemed like a gift to me at the time. Still seems that way in retrospect.

I had always been a fan of Joe Boyd's so when he finally started a label in 1980 I just bought whatever he came out with. At the same time I discovered a re-issue label in the U.S. that had a connection with Hannibal called Carthage Records, so I would buy anything they releaseed as well.

For me, these turned out to be a great way to find stuff I would really really love

 

no. didn't care about any of that stuff as a youngster. too busy trying to work out what the guitarist was playing.

 

Not as a kid. In fact, my favorite label was Roulette....only because of Tommy James & The Shondells. Despite the fact that it was a catchy attractive label, most of its other artists looked kinda boring. Exceptions being Morning Dew because of the buck naked hippie chick on the cover, and Alive 'n Kickin'.

If asking me that question as a grown up however.....

 

Eno's obscure
Sire
Stiff
Stax
Ecm
Factory
Deutche grammophone
Archiv
Impulse
Motown
Eg
Atlantic
Telarc
Swan song
Asylum
Apple
Hipnosis
Windham hill

And the first
K-tel compilations at 12


Does 21 years old count as a kid?

 

Yes: Audio Fidelity.

 

Sire, I.R.S Factory, 4AD, Mute

 

Growing up, Motown/Gordy/Tamla and Stax, also Atlantic if it was R&B. Later, Asylum, Blue Note, Candid, ECM, EG, Hi, IRS, Radar, Riverside, Sire, Stiff, Virgin (late 70's/early 80's), and Westbound.

 

Yes, particularly Nonesuch, Turnabout, DGG, Elektra, ESP

 

I really couldn't afford to until my early 20s

I bought Terje Rypdal's Odyssey and got me on a buying binge of ECM LPs. By the mid 80s, they disappeared from the stores I shopped in. About five years ago I started buying them again. ECM and Hat Art are two labels I've bought a lot of over the past couple of years without being able to hear it first.

I don't think anything on Hat Art is available in streaming services, nor is much of it on youtube so every single one of those I've bought blind and I'm only indifferent to one of the classical ones I've bought. The other 30 or 40 are great.

Only a few new ECM albums are streamable, although ECM has streaming of a track on most of them, so they're usually not totally blind buys, but pretty close.

 

If it had an Apple label, I usually bought it.

These days its labels like Audio Fidelity.

 

Not exactly a kid, but around the time I was 16, I noticed a lot of albums I loved were on Matador: Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville, Bettie Serveert's Palomine, Pavement's Slanted and Enchanted, and Superchunk's On the Mouth. It started to seem like a safe bet that I would enjoy pretty much anything they put out. I started buying pretty much anything I could find that they released throughout the rest of the '90s and was rarely disappointed. They had a heck of a run during that time period: Guided by Voices, Helium, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Spoon, Cat Power, Come, Yo La Tengo, etc.

While not as consistent, it was generally worth taking a gamble on anything Alias put out during that time. They released excellent albums by the Loud Family, Archers of Loaf, Knapsack, Matthew Keating, and Lida Husik. They also released great records by Yo La Tengo and American Music Club before they moved on to other labels, as well as reissued a few Game Theory albums.

In retrospect, DGC also released a lot of great music during the same era: Hole, Veruca Salt, Elastica, Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Beck, Aimee Mann, Weezer, The Posies, Jawbreaker, and The Sugarplastic, to name but a handful. I'm guessing of all the major label releases I bought during that time, I own more DGC titles than from any other label.

 

As a kid, no, but as an adult, often. Basically anything issued by Australian Parlophone or Columbia released between about 1965 and 1975.

 

Yes. Asylum stuff.

 

No

 

I always pause when I see the Elektra logo in the bins.

 

In 1967, I was 10 years old. My Parents got me one of those portable battery operated record players.
I would sit on the stoop and play my 45's, this made me very popular in my neighborhood, but I
remember the first 45 I bought was, I believe "Ain't Too Proud Too Beg " by The Temptations.
from then on any Motown labels I would just buy. I believe 45's cost 29 cents then.

 

+1

 

The only time I've ever really done this is when I'd be going through a stack of used singles, with nary a hint of what was in the grooves within. This usually worked with labels that were known for a specific kind of music, like Starday for country or One-Derful for soul. If it's a general-market label like Capitol or Columbia, then you can't always tell what's what on a 45.

Interestingly enough, I used to have a friend (R.I.P.) who was a major soul collector. He told me that early on in his crate-digging days, he wound up buying a few country 45s by accident because they were on the King label, which he identified with James Brown. If he saw "Grandpa Jones" or "the Stanley Brothers" on King, he automatically thought they'd be hard funk like James Brown. He didn't know that King had a sizable country stable as well.

 

yes, hundreds (blue note)

 

In my early 20s EG records - Eno, Roxy, Crimson
Stiff

Now - original Riverside and Impulse jazz

 

It's funny when you talk about the Capitol label. In 1966, when I was 15, I got a job working for a lady who ran the Capitol Records Fan Club in Los Angeles. My job was helping to stuff envelopes with promotional literature and to send it out from a mailing list. I think I made 20 bucks a day back then and my hours were from after school and Saturdays. It was pretty good dough for a young kid.

As a fringe benefit, I got to keep hundreds of 45's with the yellow and orange swirls and the earlier purple label 45's. There were all kinds of different artists. The ones I can remember were of course the Beatles, Beach Boys, Peter and Gordon, Dick Dale and the Deltones, etc. However, I also got records by people like Matt Monroe, The Four Preps, Jerry Cole and the Spacemen, The Piltdown Men, The Four Freshmen, Tennessee Ernie Ford, The Honeys, The Kingston Trio, The Lettermen, Nat King Cole, Mrs. Miller, etc. etc.. I remember spending hundreds of hours going through all these 45's. If I didn't like it, I gave them away or tossed them like a Frisbee. I wish I still had a few of those today. I was a knucklehead when it came to music back then.

However, my obsession were the gold label Elektra LP's. I think I collected a bunch of them.

 

As a kid I didn't even notice who was on what label, but I would not have bought anything I wasn't familiar with as money was too tight.

Now I sometimes pick up CDs in the used bins on 4AD, Nonesuch, and Subpop, maybe a few other indies.

 

Stiff and 4ad I did