A Welsh label - yes, really. Ty Ar Y Graig - 'The House On The Rock' - started out in 1969 as an independent company, initially based in Gelliwig, Porthmadog. In 1971 it began to distribute records made by another Welsh independent, Sain (q.v.); at that point both operated out of the same premises, in Llandwrog, Caernarfonshire. Sain appears to have taken over Ty Ar Y Graig in late 1971 or early 1972 and to have used it as an outlet for the kind of vocal / choral / folky material that had been popular in Wales over the previous decade or so: in his essay on the Welsh Pop Charts Craig Owen Jones says that Swn magazine of August / September 1972 accused Sain of selling 'Rubbish for money' on their new outlet and of abandoning their forward-looking image. The accusation doesn't seem to have troubled Sain unduly, and the same kind of material continued to feature on Ty Ar Y Graig as had done previously. The final Ty Ar Y Graig record was issued in 1975. After that point the Tryfan (q.v.) label seems to have served a similar kind of function, at least initially.
Ty Ar Y Graig concentrated on EPs, which it initially numbered in the TAG EP-200s; the 'EP' part of the prefix was dropped in or around 1971. It seems that for some reason the numbers started at 231. TAG-242 was a single, and there were also at least three LPs, which were numbered in a TAG LP-1000 series. The label design remained basically the same throughout, but the font of the logo altered by the start of 1972 (perhaps at the time of the link-up with Sain?), becoming bolder (4), the artist's name shrank in size and moved to the bottom (5) with TAG-243, and the colours changed from yellow through blue and orange to red. Manufacture was by a number of different companies, including Orlake, Pye and EMI. A couple of the later EPs have Pye-style matrix numbers in the run-off, narrow EMI-style dinking perforations, and 'crater' markings around the spindle hole that are reminiscent of Irish pressings - were these mastered by Pye and perhaps pressed by EMI Ireland? Thanks to Stuart Muckley for contributing to the discography.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.