45worlds Forum - View Single Post - FAME>>release dates?

Latest Posts » Vinyl Albums » View Topic

View Single Post

Topic: FAME>>release dates?

2nd Jul 2015, 1:46 PM
	ppint. Member since Aug 2012 6397 Points	nboldock wrote: TopPopper wrote: I can vaguely recall the arrival of Fame. Yes, it is EMI, and until then their main budget label was mfp. In the early 1980s (synthesisers, New Romantics and all that) mfp was looking decidedly naff, with its "Hot Hits" and Mrs Mills-type legacy. I assumed then, and still do, that Fame was an attempt to launch a more respectable seeming label, and break from the image of mfp. As I understand, it was for re-issues of EMI material, and stuff they controlled like UK Motown. If there can be a budget label with street cred, then this was supposed to be it. Wasn't it just the case that MFP was their budget label, and Fame was their "mid price" label? (Not certain) - no, not "just" - though it was certainly true that fame lps' & cassettes' price-point was roughly mid-way between that of the normal full-price lists and mfp's budget price: mfp's range of albums were mostly compilations aimed at people who'd likely have no other lps by the particular artist (if they were single artist albums), never have bought (most of) the original singles (if they were some kind of themed, multi-artist collection), or else, not looked after & kept them, and quite as likely be buying mfp albums as impulse purchases from supermarket & newsagents' racks, as aught else. - fame, otoh, was most definitely aimed at record & music shops, and at followers (if not necessarily collectors) of particular artists & styles of popular, pop, rock, etc. music, people who might need to replace loved lps they remembered paying anything from 21/6d through 25/-, 27/6d, 29/11, 32/6, 39/11... each for, but couldn't or wouldn't wear coughing up £5 (or more) a throw, to regain. - the packaging of the mfp line betrayed its "pile it high, sell it cheap" origins - which is not necessarily any kind of put-down: paul hamlyn (and his backers) made good money selling recordings emi'd lost pretty much all interest in, and selling them in large numbers; and then made a bomb, selling out his group's 50% share to an emi that didn't really seem to know how best to exploit it, once they'd gained total control. (i don't recall seeing fame lps racked in the same way - and i doubt most of them sold in anything like the numbers mfp'd've considered the minimum acceptable to keep them on the catalogue.)