Recorded music history: The Famous Charisma Discography

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The Famous Charisma Discography - 2nd Edition
This is the winner of Best Discography in the 2022 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence (Best Historical Research on Record Labels category)
Updated and Expanded 2nd Edition - forewords from Monty Python's Michael Palin and String Driven Thing's Chris Adams.
Front jacket of The Famous Charisma Discography (2nd ed.)The Famous Charisma Discography (2nd ed.)
Tony Stratton Smith’s acquaintances have said he named his record label after what he himself had in abundance, χάρισμα – an extraordinary power and appeal of personality with an innate ability to inspire a large following. His vision led to Charisma becoming home to several uncompromising and ground-breaking progressive rock bands, a maverick classical conductor, a cross-dressing Australian satirist, a cult TV comedy combo, a sports commentator or two, a singing school teacher, a well-known psychoanalyst, the Poet Laureate, and more. Strat, as he was known, then got it completely wrong in music industry terms by caring about his acts. The rest, as they say, is history. In the Charisma Disturbance sleeve Tony Stratton Smith said, “A record label is the sum of its artists”. With Charisma, however, it can be argued that the record label was the sum of its owner. This book celebrates Stratton Smith’s vision to sign to Charisma “anything good of its kind”, which led to its nurturing such disparate talents as Genesis, Van der Graaf Generator, Lindisfarne, Monty Python, Clifford T. Ward, Sir John Betjeman, Hawkwind, Vivian Stanshall, Malcolm McLaren, Peter Gabriel, Gregory Isaacs, Trevor Billmuss (a glorious little LP!), Brand X, Steve Hackett, Joseph Eger, Gary Shearston, and lots, lots more.
Here we are now in 2021 and the updated and expanded 2nd edition includes:
  • Listings of all known UK LP and single releases from 1969 to 1987
  • Details of original label design and advised release date for the majority of records
  • The most comprehensive listing of cassette and 8-track releases published
  • A look at Charisma Books, Zigzag magazine, and Charisma Films
To contextualise the listings, the book includes a detailed history that discusses both Strat and the organisational set-up at Charisma, supported by memories from those who worked for the company alongside those of artists that made the label such a delight of eclecticism in an industry where confirmation of taste through providing bland, watered-down product is the norm. Charisma bucked this trend and in its heyday provided an intelligent and varied mix of the sublime and the (mostly deliberately) ridiculous for anyone who was willing to listen.
Note that, thanks mainly to Brexit, the paperback version of the FIRST EDITION of this book is only available in the UK.
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