Radar Records Singles 1978-79

After my Howard Werth post I finally bought The Wild World Of Barney Bubbles, an absolutely fabulous treasure trove of his designs and paintings. He was miles ahead of others during that time, great to read about his influences and concepts.  It also provided a lot of insight of the music scene in those days and the groups/musicians he was close with; Hawkwind, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Nick Lowe, Billy Bragg, a.m.o.

Special mention must be made for Jake Riviera as ‘mover & shaker’, a British music business entrepreneur, manager of Costello and Lowe, and co-founder (with Dave Robinson) of Stiff Records.  He was a firm supporter of Barney and in 1977 recruited Bubbles to work with him on an impressive run of designs for record sleeves, posters, badges and advertising and promotional campaigns for Lowe, The Damned, Costello and such performers as Ian Dury, Wreckless Eric and the veteran music hall star Max Wall.

However later that same year Riviera left Stiff, taking with him Barney, Costello and Lowe to the newly launched label Radar Records.  Nick Lowe’s Breaking Glass was the first Radar 45 release and a hit for the new label.  Barney had designed both the Radar Label’s logo and the sleeve for Nick’s hit!

Radar lasted only 2 years before Riviera moved on, again taking key artists and Barney with him, to another new label… But during those 2 years Radar released a lot of good music, besides Costello and Lowe, there were also excellent records by Bram Tchaikovsky, Inmates, 999, Yachts, The Pop Group, a.o.

Several of Radar's early releases (including Iggy Pop and James Williamson's Kill City, the Good Rats' From Rats to Riches and Pezband's Laughing in the Dark) were licensed from independent American labels. 

After reading and thinking about the above I suddenly realized something odd! During my vinyl buying days in the previous century I bought quite a few Stiff and Radar singles, extended plays, and albums. I have good memories of the various Stiff artists compilations (later CDs as well), and downloaded Stiff collections from different blogs, etc. But I never bought a various Radar artists album/CD or found a digital collection online.   

This is because strangely enough Radar never released any such compilation... 

As for why nobody ever considered putting a digital collection together, that's anyone's guess...  Therefore Jokonky proudly announces the arrival of the Radar Records Singles 1978-79 compilation!

Despite the fact that virtually all of regular visitors are probably familiar with Lowe & Costello, I still felt that I had to include them. A perfect candidate was the Nick Lowe single I bought back in 1978: A side - American Squirm with on the B What’s So Funny ‘Bout (Peace, Love and Understanding) by Nick Lowe And His Sound which turned out to be Elvis Costello!

Besides the earlier mentioned Radar artists and groups, there are also: Bette Bright And The Illuminations, Metal Urbain, Neon, Ray Campi (licensed from Rollin’ Rock!), The Red Crayola, The Soft Boys, Sussex, Tanz Der Youth, The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Visage, and Wayne Kramer.