Charisma is one of my favourite labels from the early 70s and I think you struggle to find a bad album on the label for most of the 70s. It was founded in 1969 by former journalist Tony Stratton Smith. He had previously been a manager for bands such as The Nice, the Bonzo Dog Band and Van der Graaf Generator.
When I was a kid, it always felt like a label where you’d find grown-up, big brother music by the likes of Genesis, The Nice, Van Der Graaf Generator, Lindisfarne, Brand X, Bo Hanson, Alan Hull, Steve Hackett and Hawkwind. And I went on to collect albums by Audience, String Driven Thing and Peter Hammill, amongst others.
Their first release was the debut by Rare Bird containing their hit ‘Sympathy’ which made #27 in UK and #121 in USA, the album charted in America at #115. In the early days they put together touring packages of two or three acts such as Genesis, Van Der Graaf and Lindisfarne or Capability Brown, Bell & Arc or Audience. Not bad for less than a pound.
The earliest releases until 1972 were on the pink ‘scroll’ logo label and are usually collectible. Then for most of the decade, they had the ‘mad hatter’ label which I still think is somehow in sympathy with the music. The 80s reinvention kept the mad hatter but made the lettering horrible and dotted and it was blue which I’m sure you agree is not a Charisma colouring and it was absorbed into Virgin by 186, ending 17 brilliant years.
It may be just my quirk to assign characteristics to labels, I don’t know. I was so inculcated into love of everything iconographic of rock, I did have an imaginative, romantic, relationship with all things to do with records. But I still feel them now. For example, a pink Island record is more hip and less mainstream to, say, a Polydor record which still seems decidedly non-freaky and straight. The parent to the hip young kid. Is that daft?
