Mute

When I bought my first single - Tubeway Army's 'Are Friends Electric?'* - I didn't know anything about record labels. Having grown up with my dad's record collection, I knew the label was the bit in the middle and, for example, I knew that some of the Beatles ones were Parlophone and some were Apple but that was about as far as it went. 

The first label I really remember noticing was Jerry Dammers' 2 Tone because that was strongly associated with Ska, which was the one genre that I was into, albeit briefly, before I got into electronic music. I think the next one to come to my attention was probably Stevo's Some Bizarre and then, through my diligent weekly digestion of Smash Hits, Record Mirror, and the NME (I was never a Sounds fan), I became exposed to the myriad record companies that were out there releasing music.

I learnt pretty quickly that there were majors, like A&M, for example, but the interesting labels were the independents. There was Factory, strongly associated with Manchester, Bill Drummond's Zoo (Liverpool), then Rough Trade, Cherry Red, Alan Horne's Postcard Records (Glasgow), 4AD, and many, many more of various sizes, including Daniel Miller's Mute records, which I first discovered when I bought Depeche Mode's 'New Life'.

The best of the labels had variety of bands yet consistency of quality. Even Virgin was pretty cool for a while, having both Japan and Simple Minds on their books. (This, needless to say, was when Simple Minds was, to quote Muriel Gray, "the best band in the entire history of the universe".)

Over the years, though, the label I have remained most fond of is Mute Records and, memorably, I once shook hands with Daniel Miller at a Kraftwerk gig. It makes me feel giddy just writing that down. 

A few years ago, the label released a boxed set of selected tracks called 'Mute Audio Documents 1978 - 1984' and now you can buy 'Mute: A Visual Document', which is a beautiful book and, despite what the reviews say, beautifully bound in such a way that the pages open perfectly to show off the album covers. My copy arrived today and I feel quite overwhelmed with nostalgia!

*Not technically true. A few years earlier, I went to Woolworths with my nan and bought The Archies' 'Sugar Sugar'. However, 'Are Friends Electric?' was the first I bought on my own with my own money.

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