The Silver Label Era & IRS Records
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The early 70's replacement for the ochre label. The "A&M" letters are a light tan, with the background fading from white to silver. This label would remain until the late 80's.
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Graphically, it's one of A&M's most boring promotional labels...but it did the job. The only logo is the tiny A&M badge at the very bottom of the label.
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Although somewhat rare, the dbx encoded LPs were a brief sensation a few years before the dawning of the CD era. While it appears A&M pressed some of their own dbx LPs, others were usually pressed by a different audiophile company. The Police, Zenyatta Mondatta, was manufactured by Nautilus, for example. With an outboard decoder, dbx LPs are as quiet as CDs in the background. As of this writing, dbx decoders are selling on eBay for anywhere from $20-$40 (look for the NX40 or 224 models). (dbx can slo be used for cassettes.) Other dbx titles were available from Cat Stevens, Styx, Herb Alpert and Joe Jackson, to name a few.
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Another rare series, selected popular A&M albums were released in an audiophle version on a variation of the "silver" label. The major improvement was that these were half speed mastered, and pressed on premium vinyl which was purer, cleaner and harder than the standard black vinyl. (Held up to a light, the vinyl as a faint brown glow to it.) Although A&M would just use the standard LP masters for their releases, this was actually their response to the growing audiophile market, copying (in spirit, if not in execution) the success of audiophile label Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs. There were some Mobile Fidelity pressings of A&M albums, which sound far superior to A&M's own efforts due to the use of original master tapes in producing the album.
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In the late 70's, Miles Copeland started his own series of record labels, most of which fell under the IRS (International Record Syndicate) umbrella. The basic IRS label had a white background with a "rainbow" border featuring a "ransom note" font style. IRS was manufactured and distributed by A&M during its formative years, and would later move to MCA's distribution network.
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Popular variations of the IRS label would include "cool" artwork. Here's the label from Oingo Boingo's first IRS release...an EP.
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A redesign of the IRS label would incorporate the "IRS Man" logo in maroon on a silver background, and would remain until IRS bailed out for MCA. In a way, this is a variation on the A&M silver label in that it uses the same typeface and layout for the lettering.
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