Tank Records, which started out around 1975, was primarily a custom recording concern, one of those companies which recorded and had pressed a limited number of discs for anyone who was prepared to pay for those services; though by late 1978 it appears to have started signing artists and releasing records in its own right - a handful of its records were mentioned in 'Music Master' with distribution by a firm called Uptown. Tank was owned and run by Monty Bird and Bob Young. For at least part of its life it was based at Snitterfield, near Stratford On Avon, but by 1979 it had moved to Warwick. It made a considerable number of records, both LPs and singles; most of them are rare, by their very nature, but not many are collectable - as is the case with custom recording labels, there was a preponderance of records by Club / Cabaret / Country artists. One numerical series, BSS-100, was shared by singles and albums alike, but - as Klepsie of the 45cat site points out - the odd numbers were reserved for singles and the even ones for LPs. The catalogue numbers of the 7" records seems to have jumped from BSS-151 to BSS-201 in 1977, and from BSS-213 to BSS-301 the following year, perhaps to keep them roughly neck-and-neck with the LPs - there appear to have been more LPs than 7" records made in those periods. BSS-101 was issued on the Bird Sound Studios label (q.v.), but from BSS-103 onwards the Tank name was adopted.
Early Tank labels were rather plain and were coloured red. The font which was used for the logo of the first Tank single BSS-103 (1) became a little more decorative for the second (2). By the time of the third single, BSS-107, a more adventurous kind of design featuring a stylized tank had been adopted (3). The red turned to a blue-green for BSS-113 (4), perhaps reflecting the name of the band whose EP it was - the Emerald Stars. The red label with a central tank continued until BSS-149, after which the tank migrated to the top of the label and the company's name became bolder. BSS-151 had yellow labels but after that the label turned white (5). The colour of both background and printing varied (6, 7, 8) but black-on-white and latterly white-on-black (9) seem to have been the norm. At least five EPs (BSSes 203, 309, 321, 331 and 345) had all the credits on one side and a picture on the other; the first and third were black-and-white (as for 10, 11), the fourth and fifth red-and-white. Pictures made a one-off return in 1979 just as a feature of the label of BSS-367 (12, 13). BSS-373 devoted one side to a picture and the other to the credits, in the old style. Some records with Tank numbers came out on the Bop Street and Agra labels (q.v. both), while others were given new labels and catalogue numbers but kept the Tank number as a matrix number - see 'Squad', 'Wizzo' and 'BB' for examples. Pressing of the few early issues that I have seen has been by Orlake, with Linguaphone eventually taking over.
Sadly, Monty Bird died in 1979, from leukaemia, aged only thirty, and Tank was wound up the following year. By that point catalogue numbers had reached BSS-420. The discography below lists all the Tank singles and EPs that I have been able to trace. As mentioned above, there are a couple of big gaps where numbers seem not to have been used. The sixth scan comes by courtesy of Anthony Ryan, the eighth was kindly supplied by Robert Bowes.
Copyright 2008 Robert Lyons.