April 1978. 45 years ago. Daniel Miller created a pair of tunesusingsome now-affordable gear, and pressed up an optimistic 500 copies. With a DIY ethos of Letraset and a punk aesthetic (although far from the unlistenability of punk itself) and even putting his mum’s address on the back of the sleeve, Miller was expecting the majority of them to end up under his bed for eternity. Instead,1978’s TVOD/ Warm Leatherette went on to sell 15,000 copies and kickstarted one of the greatest independent record labels of all time…
Within a few months Miller became inundated with demos through the post to his mum’s address (she was fine about it, apparently, even ending up posing for photos later). However he’d had no real desire to launch a label and wasn’t wild on what he was hearing. That was until he was introduced to Frank Tovey (although he was going under the more showbiz name of Fad Gadget). Suitably impressed, the pair went into the studio to record his debut Back To Nature. There was also the semi-fictional outfit Silicon Teens who were billed as ‘the world’s first teenage electronic pop group’ when in fact it was the work of Miller who’d made electronic versions of classic rock‘n’roll hits such as Memphis Tennessee as well as the album Music For Parties.