Usually met with in the shape of LPs by Michael Chapman, Criminal saw the light of day in 1978. It received its first mention in the Trade press in Music Week of the 11th of March, which said that Max Hole and Geoff Jukes, directors of production company Gama Records, had formed the company, with David Simmons as a third director. Criminal would operate out of premises at 153 Percy Road, London W12, and would handle its own marketing and promotion. The article added that a pressing and distribution deal would be announced shortly, and, sure enough, 'MW' of the 1st of April revealed that a deal for both had been done with Decca. According to that article the prefixes of the catalogue numbers were to be SWAG for singles, STEAL for albums and KNICK for cassettes, and the first releases were to be an album and a single by Vapour Trails. The Vapour Trails material must have been shelved for some reason: it came out on Warner Bros in 1979 with the credit 'A Criminal Records Production' on the labels, and only surfaced on Criminal in 1980, credited to 'The V.Ts' and with what must have been intended to be its original catalogue number, STEAL-1. This left Michael Chapman's LP 'Playing Guitar The Easy Way' (STEAL-2), from June 1978, as Criminal's first release. Another Michael Chapman album, 'The Man Who Hated Mornings' (STEAL-3), came out in August that same year; it was a Gama production and had previously been out on Decca as SKL-R-5290. A couple of tracks from that album, 'While Dancing The Pride Of Erin' and the title track, were issued as Criminal's first single. Details of early Criminal singles seem not to have been supplied to 'Music Week', 'The New Singles' or 'Music Master', so no accurate dates are available for them, but if that single was intended as a 'taster' for the album, as is likely, it too may well be from August.
Criminal's time at Decca can't have been satisfactory, as 'MW' of the 7th of April 1979 reported that the company had terminated its one-year pressing and distribution deal and had signed with Miles Copeland's independent Faulty Products. SWAG-6 was to be the first release under the new arrangement, but all of Criminal's back catalogue would be available from the new distributor. At some point in 1980 Criminal switched to Pinnacle for distribution, but the end was in sight. There were no records on the Crimimal label issued after that year, although one of the company's productions, 'Stay' b/w 'Comment CaVa' by Fassbender / Russell, surfaced in 1981 in the Netherlands, on the Lark label, as SWAG-99.
One basic label design served Criminal in the '70s. In keeping with the 'criminal' theme it had arrows on it, and the company sleeve had 'Stealing our way into your heart...' and 'The label you can't trust' on it (3). Usually the label came in two shades of grey (1), but SWAG-8 / BRAM-5 came in blues and pink and had differently styled arrows (3) - thanks to Sam Mauger for that scan. After the split from Decca the credits at the top of the label shrank in size (2). A completely different design came into use in early 1980 but it is beyond the scope of this site. In addition to the STEAL, SWAG and KNICK prefixes mentioned above there was also a TAKE one, which was for budget-priced albums. There were at least two other Criminal labels around in the late '70s, both of which were far less substantial than this one; see the appropriate pages. As ever, the discography below only covers the 1970s.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.