Zoo Records was a British independent record label formed by Bill Drummond and David Balfe in 1978. Zoo was launched in order to release the work of the perennially struggling Liverpool band, Big in Japan (the label's first release being the From Y To Z and Never Again EP). The label also released two singles by Lori and the Chameleons, Balfe and Drummond's band formed after Big in Japan folded. Zoo Records went on to release early work from The Teardrop Explodes and Echo & the Bunnymen. The label also released the first single "Iggy Pop's Jacket" by the Liverpool band Those Naughty Lumps.
Only two albums were released on the label: a Scott Walker compilation put together by Julian Cope, called Fire Escape in the Sky, and a label compilation called To the Shores of Lake Placid. (In 1995, an American bootlegger took various Zoo 45s and tracks from To the Shores of Lake Placid and released an illegal bootleg entitled The Zoo Uncaged 1978-1982.)
Intriguingly, Fire Escape in the Sky had the catalogue number Zoo Two, while To the Shores of Lake Placid had Zoo Four. Zoo One was scheduled to be the Teardrop Explodes album Kilimanjaro (later released on Mercury Records) while Zoo Three was to be the same band's album Wilder (or perhaps their 'never released' album Everyone Wants to Shag the Teardrop Explodes).
Read more about Zoo Records: To The Shores of Lake Placid, Lori and The Chameleons
Famous quotes containing the words zoo and/or records:
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—Martha Shelley, U.S. author and social activist. As quoted in Making History, part 3, by Eric Marcus (1992)
“In America, the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents it.”
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