45cat - News

45cat News

12th May 2010	IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME Apologies for the distinct lack of news. To be honest It's getting tricky to keep up to date with the website and that is why some corrections may take a day or two to appear. We're VERY close to having the ability to have other moderators so hopefully we'll soon be back on track and i can write more news blurb like this! Anyroads I'd also like to make a couple of requests. 1. New Releases - As you may have noticed this has dried up a bit (as have new releases but that's another story) - we used to input the information from the Piccadilly record shop mailout but a few months back they revamped their website and it's no longer a quick and easy task. I've had a look at other mailouts but none of them are as straightforward and accurate as the old Piccadilly one used to be. What used to be a reasonably quick task would now take several hours of googling to get all the information and there's simply too much other 45cat work to be getting on with. SO... It's a long shot but i wondered if any of the 45cats out there perhaps worked for a record shop or a distribution company and had easy access to a full list of each weeks new releases? If so please get in touch with us using the Contact Us feature at the bottom of the page. 2. Credits Reminder We've had lots of people adding missing credit information which is great but i'd just like to explain again the system we've decided to use in order to have a consistent style across the website. Basically we want names seperated by commas and with a space between the initial and the surname (otherwise it throws the search engine off a bit). Please don't use dashes or forward slashes to divide the names even if they appear on the label unless it's a double barrel surname like Simon Napier-Bell. Perhaps it's best to illustrate.... GOOD G. Goffin, C. King BAD G.GOFFIN,C.KING GOOD Holland, Dozier, Holland BAD Holland-Dozier-Holland or Holland/Dozier/Holland Not much more to say at the moment other than keep up the great work folks! [Dr Doom]

19th Mar 2010	FIST FULL OF CREDITS We've made it a easier to see the credits for the contributions that you make to the 45cat community: Images now show the person who uploaded them (both with a mouseover message, and a link when viewing fullsize). There's now an Artist/Label Contribution link on each artist and label page. This shows every single member who's contributed information e.g.: The White Stripes Decca President [Apollo Cat]

25th Feb 2010	ALPHABET SOUP Without anyone probably noticing a big change in the database has been made. From now on all artists will be ALWAYS be listed according to the first letter in their entry. i.e. Bob Dylan will come under B and A Flock Of Seagulls will come under A. The ONLY exception will be when the first word is THE. So The Kinks will be under K. This system is slightly unconventional but once you get used to it it's actually simpler and things can be found easier. Now the moderators can finally stop arguing whether Alice Cooper should be listed under A or C! In other news, lots of new compilations have been added. We actually get very little feedback about the compilations feature of the website but i do hope everyone is finding it useful. I do because i have a memory like a goldfish! Dr Doom

9th Feb 2010	SOUND AND VISION As I'm sure everyone has noticed we can now add Youtube clips in the comments section of any 45 in the database. One problem the website has always had is that It's about music but you couldn't actually hear any of the records on it - but now you can. It's impossible for us to physically host soundclips due to copyright and server space issues but this seems like a great solution. Adding Youtube links is very easy, give it a try as we'd like to get as much music on the site as possible. It doesn't have to be just songs with official promotional videos - you'd be amazed by the ammount of clips of highly obscure and collectable punk, reggae, psych, northern soul, indie, metal 45's simply spinning on a turntable. It's a great way to hear the records and hopefully will help us all start to talk about the music a little bit more in the comments section. So please add some clips and preferably with a comment too explaining why you love/hate the particular song so much. There are a few more site developments coming soon. A belated happy new year from the 45cat team!

1st Dec 2009	MY AUTUMN'S DONE GONE Can't believe it's been over a month since my last 'news' blurb. Winter is well and truly here and the second half of this year has flown by. We're still struggling to keep up with the amazing amount of contributions to 45cat - but it's a nice problem to have! As you've probably all noticed our newish member Nanocyar has done an amazing job on the Embassy label, as well as providing scans for early releases on the other big labels which I for one had never seen before. I promised some more fun stuff in this news piece so here goes. Firstly a great 45's blog... Eclectic (and good!) taste, nice write-ups, cool scans - what more could you ask for? One a day too! Derek's Daily 45's Also my thanks to Polegateman for letting us know about a rather splendid Norwegian website which deals with UK company bags/sleeves. We're still someway off adding a feature about company sleeves but this should keep everyone engrossed for now… 45-sleeves Till next time… Dr Doom

16th Oct 2009	HELP! So many contributions that we're struggling to keep up with editing at the moment so here are a few things that would help us along... 1. IMAGES This is the most time consuming thing for us to tidy up so the closer they are to what we need saves us more time. It's fine if you can't crop circles as we can do that in the editing stage but please no scans where the sleeve goes over the label as this takes a long time to try and rectify. Also a reminder that we want to use your original scans. No Ebay photos please as they are are rarely of great quality and take a long time to edit into shape. 2. BB Code This is the way we add links between labels and artists but after a few months we changed to a different system which means there are the occasional old links which no longer work. They will look a bit like this.... The Kinks's so if you see one hit Make Correction and type BB and we can edit them so they work again. i.e. The Kinks. 3. Comma's not / in credits we decided to use commas across the site to make things look uniform and neat. Even if the label says Jagger/Richard please input Jagger, Richard Sorry if this weeks news piece is a bit of a lecture, more fun stuff next week i hope. : ) Now back to those record queues....... Dr. Doom

11th Oct 2009	I'VE BEEN AWAY Well not really, but nevertheless lot's of real life things have prevented me from updating the 45cat news, for which I apologise. Anyroads things continue to progress at an alarming rate. We'll soon be at 50,000 45's and we have far more images than I ever imagined. Fantastic stuff one and all! We're still a little way off writing our advanced How do I add images? pages but there is one thing that would make things a lot easier for our moderators. Take the record out of the sleeve before scanning - that way we can crop round the whole label as sometimes the sleeve creeps over making the perfect circle impossible. Moving onto other things it would appear that 7" vinyl has taken a couple of knocks this year. We try to add all the new releases every week and to put it bluntly - numbers are down! Nothing drastic so far but I suspect next year we'll see a much larger drop off. CD singles are on their last legs as (legal) downloads are now the main factor in a singles chart placing, which means that physical 7" vinyl releases are even more of a luxury item for any record label (majors certainly though maybe less so for the indies). Only last week Rotatey Diskers visited HMV on Oxford Street, London to find that the 7" singles were gone and only available to buy online! That's the biggest record shop in one of the biggest Music Cities in the world - depressing stuff. To end on a more positive note here are a couple of excellent blogs to have a look at… Sir Henry Rawlinson = lots of delightful UK popsike obscurities. More aceness here at Anorak thing. and finally not a blog but a proper website with lot's of great stuff from our new member dn784533. Dr. Doom

8th Sep 2009	NEW ORDER Hello again. I left the international piece up for a bit longer so that everyone got a chance to see it but i guess it's time for an update. Over 47,000 singles now - we can hardly keep up! To follow on from the questions about international issues we've also had a few requests asking why the label discographies are sometime a bit jumbled and asking how the database sorts them. I'll try to explain.... The labels are sorted in three different ways - all of which have their pros and cons. 1 - By Date Quite self explanatory. The database will just list any release on the label in chronological order. Problems occur when we enter records where we don't know the release date (even the year of release) as they will automatically be added to the beginning. This method of sorting seems to be the best compromise (for now at least). 2 - By Catalogue Number This only works occasionally for short lived labels who kept to the same Prefix and numbering system. For most big labels it doesn't work very well at all. 3 - Manual Sorting by Moderator This is the ideal option but it's also the most time consuming and it works best when a label discography is completed. It's like a computerised version of putting your record collection in the correct order and i'm sure most of you know that is no simple task! I hope this helps to explain things a little. Some of the labels will look a bit jumbled for now but they will all look neat and tidy eventually. Till next time... Dr. Doom

15th Aug 2009	INTERNATIONAL RESCUE The questions keep coming up so here's where we are at with the 'worldwide situation' at 45cat at the moment.... Why did you choose to make 45cat UK ONLY releases? Two main reasons... 1. We have to start somewhere and if we attempted to include every 45 released in the world ever then we would be in danger of spreading things a bit too thin. That is of course the eventual aim but plenty people think we're crazy enough trying to include every UK 45 ever! 2. The three people who started this website are all UK based (though I'm typing this in sunny Sweden) and it's the area where we have the most knowledge and though we do make many mistakes (ahem) we like to think that the database/discographies are very accurate indeed. When it comes to overseas 45's we're not nearly as experienced and simple things like telling an original pressing from a later one become much trickier. So why are you going to start doing worldwide 45's? What changed your mind? Once again two main reasons... 1. We always intended to move onto other countries at some point in the future but we're bringing it forward partly due to demand from YOU - the 45cat community. That combined with the slightly surprising demographic of members - we seem to have people from all around the world signing up (Unless you're all lying and you all actually live in Coventry) and it seems a waste not to call on that expertise and those 45 collections - I'm very much looking forward to seeing some tasty foreign picture sleeves! 2. One thing we didn't predict is just how blurred the definition of a UK release can be. Things may be fairly clear-cut in the 60's and 70's but as borders fell and common markets formed, things become less simple. For a while now many 45's have had one pressing to cover the whole of Europe but nowadays, with press runs getting smaller and smaller, one pressing to cover the whole world is commonplace. Once we begin doing worldwide 45's this should be less of an issue. So why aren't you doing worldwide 45's yet then? Basically we really want to get it right. Our resident database/I.T. guru is already working on the best way to blend overseas 45's into the existing database without confusing things. We are also very keen that the website continues to be simple to understand, navigate and also look good. We'd rather take our time and get this worked out properly than risk things becoming a bit messy. It's worth saying too that even when we start including overseas 45's we aim for UK releases still to be the main focus of the site with overseas releases kind of as an added bonus. I hope this doesn't sound jingoistic in any way and i can assure that the three of us who started 45cat are globally switched-on forward thinking internationalists! The reasons for this are the ones stated at the beginning. UK releases are what we know best and with (approximately) at least 150,000 more to enter into the database we've still got as lot of work to do to fulfill our first ambition of having information and images about every UK 45 ever released. Of course things can change very quickly and if 45cat continues to grow at the speed it has so far then we'll hopefully have moderators and label experts all around the world who can take care of the areas we're not so sure about. Then and only then shall we start doing cassingles. (A joke!) I hope this clears things up a little for now and that those who are itching to add overseas 45's can hold on just that little bit longer. Feel free to get in touch with us using the contact link if you have any thoughts on my long winded explanations! We're in this together after all. : ) Dr. Doom

3rd Aug 2009	45,000! Another landmark number reached. We've all been adding records at such a bewildering speed that it may be worth pointing some things out that may have been missed along the way. Firstly a big thanks to roywood49 for an amazing collection of scans for the Regal Zonophone label, which is now very nearly complete. If anyone has a spare copy of the missing 45 by The Tickle lying around please send it to 45cat. ; ) I think the reggae label listings are looking particularly strong (many thanks to Skaville1966 whose collection continues to astound!). The problem with Reggae discographies has always been that there is confusion caused by the fact that what it says on the label can be very different from what you find in the grooves! We've chosen to go with EXACTLY what it says on the label, Reggae spelling and all, and hopefully people will add in the comments when an artist is miscredited. Onwards to 100,000..... Dr. Doom

24th Jul 2009	The Seventies Every time i stumble upon a curious 45 from the 70's which Isn't already on 45cat, the first place i look for information is a wonderful website called Seventies Sevens and I thought it was about time i recommended the site to my fellow 45cats. It features an A-Z of nearly every UK label active in that decade, loads of discographies, label scans, label biographies and a subtle sense of humour too. Enjoy! Dr. Doom

17th Jul 2009	Company sleeves. A decent 50's/60's/70's single looks indecent without one. Quite a few of you have contacted us asking if we are going to have something on 45cat all about company bags and the answer is that we WILL but it's still a little way off. Until then i can recommend two websites for you to feast over... Sam Holloway (aka Wronksian on 45cat) and for sleeves from around the world... The Record Envelope Enjoy! Dr. Doom

9th Jul 2009	Our contributor retaliator has pointed out a couple of interesting interviews on YouTube with Chris Berry of No Future Records and Simon Edwards of Riot City Records. When you've watched those click through to the other stuff (all part of Cherry Red.TV) for more interesting interviews (Momus, Bridget St. John, The Monochrome Set, Sonja Kristina, Alvin Stardust [!], etc) and videos. Rotatey Diskers

2nd Jul 2009	Click HERE for a nice little photo slideshow the BBC put together explaining how 7" singles are made. Including this mind boggling statistic.... Seven-inch sales peaked in the UK in 1979, when a staggering 89 million of them were sold, but by 2001, annual singles sales dipped below 180,000. Now, however, they are back above one million a year I've been somewhat neglectful of our NEWS feature as things have been moving along very nicely with the site so far. I'm going to start adding new bits at least once a week from now on, mainly highlighting cool blogs/news features/fansites that we stumble upon while researching 45cat. Watch this space! Dr. Doom

31st Mar 2009	Today is widely considered the 60th anniversary of the 7" 45rpm single. I'm going to celebrate by going record shopping (for a change!) Here's a nice wee article by Saint Etienne's Bob Stanley.... Happy Birthday to the 45 Dr Doom

27th Mar 2009	Composers, Producers and Arrangers. These are now searchable using the advance search feature on the main toolbar. It's a good idea to just search for the surname (i.e. goffin, dodd, meek, talmy, wirtz, etc.) as we've followed exact label copy on all our entries including any weird spelling quirks - especially important when it comes to the wonderful world of reggae spellings! It's also worth mentioning that you can now add missing credits to any 45 already on the database. Simply click on the blue link Contribute Missing Info and you can then fill in the blanks. Please follow the text from the actual label or record sleeve rather than from reference books or compilations. If you have a single and the credits differ from what we already have on our database please add this information as either a comment or using the Make Correction link. Anyway enough of my waffle. Take a look at the wonderful job Skaville1966 has done on the reggae labels Jolly and Giant. Beautiful. Dr Doom

27th Feb 2009	VIEW LARGE IMAGES Our programmer is particularly pleased with this new feature and he has every right to be. It looks ace! Simply click on the orange button next to an artist or label discography. Here's the one for Cornish psych band The Onyx And here's one for my favourite contemporary label The Great Pop Supplement We're even making great progress on the bigger labels such as President It's like an online Panini Football sticker book but for erm... records instead. : ) Dr Doom

18th Feb 2009	Your 45cat Avatar. Have you chosen one yet? Simply click on My 45cat on the Toolbar and then Edit Avatar. You will then be able to choose any of the sleeves or label scans we have for your own profile. It's worth mentioning that they are first come, first served and once someone has chosen one nobody else will be able to use it. So get choosing! Thanks to Retaliator for adding a complete set of scans for the Punk label No Future and to Col Wolfe for the multitude of President scans. Lot's of records I've never heard of before let alone seen evidence of. Keep them coming folks! Dr Doom

21st Jan 2009	There have been many updates over the last couple weeks and the main one must be... ADD RECORD By the look of the rapidly changing updates this seems to be working great so far but please contact us if you are having any problems or have any suggestions. We've been entering records into the database for over a year now (It's still fun!) and It feels exciting having some people join in the mission. Especially as we have no idea what will be coming next.... I'll finish with a few more labels and artists that we've completed recently and may have been lost in the whirlwind of new additions. Hey Ho! Lets Go! It's The Ramones, too many classic singles to mention. We're still missing a few scans to complete the listing (one of my 45's is too covered in beerstains to scan!) so to quote Joey Ramone - Won't you please lend a hand. Also a trio of interesting labels await your comments, scans and ratings. Namely Coventry's finest 2 Tone, Bristol art school post punk label Heartbeat and second wave punk label No Future. Dr Doom

10th Dec 2008	The first twenty or so Sarah releases have just been added. I'm still working out a way to show images of the free posters tucked inside each single which are too big for my scanner. Would be great if someone could send scans of an issue copy of Pristine Christine as the test pressing came without a sleeve. More Sarah 45's coming soon.... Dr Doom

5th Dec 2008	Lots of new scans for The Fall. Still missing a few so please fill in the gaps.... Dr Doom

26th Nov 2008	Hello and welcome to 45cat. A new website dedicated to that wondrous pop artefact - the seven inch single. Nearly 60 years old and still going strong, we decided it was time for a website where people can research, discuss, review or simply gawp at their favourite 45s. In time we hope to have EVERY 45rpm single EVER released in the U.K. and for that we will need YOUR HELP. At the moment you can comment upon, rate or add scans of records that we currently have on our database and soon you will be able to add records from your own collection that we haven't got round to including yet. We're keen to see any comments and they can be as simple as whether or not you like a track or as factual and detailed as you can manage. Check out Solzhi's comment on this Beatles 45 for a great example. Take a look at a label like Seminal Twang or an artist like The Monkees where we've managed to scan nearly all their releases. Looks pretty cool eh? Well with your help one day ALL of them will look like that. At the moment the really big labels with 1000s of releases may look a little jumbled but once we have all the jigsaw pieces in place they will be as neatly displayed as we've made them for say the Deram label. This is only a Beta version of the website and we'll be adding many clever new features over the following months. If you think the site looks good now it is only going to get better! Keep checking here for updates of labels and artists that we've completed and please DO JOIN IN. Dr Doom (Co-creator of 45cat)