An independent label from the Isle of Wight. Solent was started by John Waterman in 1970 as an outlet for the recordings of local acts; it fulfilled that role so efficiently that it released more than one hundred records in the next twenty years and survived until 2011. In the '70s Solent LPs, EPs and singles alike were numbered in an SM-000 series up to and including SM-030; the prefix changed to SS from 031 onwards - the 'M' appears to indicate a mono recording, the 'S' a stereo one. As can be seen, during the '70s the labels appeared in several different colours but with one basic design. They were blue at first, changing to yellow around 1974, to red in November 1977 (with SS-047), and to orange in June 1978 (with SS-049). The orange colour saw out the decade. Thanks to Robert Bowes for the first and third scans. Such 1970s Solent releases as I have managed to track down are listed below; thanks to Christophe of Inoxydable Records for filling-in several gaps and for providing some important tweaks to the text. Albums are in square brackets.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.