Would anyone know where I can find information (discographies etc.) for Festival Records releases from the 70s. I understand they were the Australian subsidiary of United Artists in the early 70s.

I'm trying to trace information on an album by one of my favourite musicians which was possibly released in Australia in 1971. As the artist is German, she falls outside the remit of this site, but if anyone could provide information on Festival's releases from this period, it would be very much appreciated.

Charger, I'm afraid you've been misinformed sorry. Festival was our biggest Aussie owned independent label & were not a subsidiary of anyone, In fact quite the opposite, they were the distributor out here for United Artists records, as well as other major OS labels like A&M, Island, Chrysalis, Arista, Charisma, DJM, Rocket, 20th Century to name just a few. Plus they had there own house label & distributed many smaller independents like Spin (home of the Bee Gees), Sunshine, Infinity & several others.

In fact they did more to support & record Aussie artists than any other. Sadly they started to decline in the 80's & they lost most of their distributorship to the big internationals. In many ways it was only because of their success with the local Mushroom records, home to the likes of Split Enz, Kylie, Jason & a who's who of Aussie bands, that they managed to survive through the 90's. However in 2003, just after celebrating their 50th Anniversary, the label was bought out by Warner Australia who have sat on 95% of Oz music history ever since. This is in contrast to Festival who even in the CD age, kept most of their most popular titles in print. I suppose it was also this illustrious back catalogue that also kept them going as long as they did.

I knew then though that it was the worst move of all as Warner have long had a reputaion for never re-issuing anything unless there's a guranteed profit in it. In fact they rarely even lease out songs by their artists to other labels for compilations.

Of course this has in a way led to the success of Midoztouch as much of what you'll find here is originally from the Festival stable of labels & it's unsurpassed array of artists. I tell ya mate, pick out almost any name that ya see in this forum, and there's a good chance Festival recorded them at some stage at least, if not for the their whole careers. I'll leave it there coz the whole subject gets me fuming

Cheers mate (BTW Who was the artist you wer looking for?)

Micko

Thanks for that, Micko - that explains why so many of Richard Clapton's albums are out of print now (a policy that makes less than no sense, IMHO).

The singer in question was/is a lady called Katja Ebstein.

She of "Star Of Mykonos" fame? That single was on the UA label as I recall. I'm sure I can remember something about her being Israeli. Maybe she was a dual citizen. You seem to be able to do that everywhere as an Israeli.

That's her. She was on the United Artists label, but I have an Australian pressing of the album "The Star of Mykonos" which was pressed by & distributed through Festival. The album I'm looking for is called "My Life is like a Song", which I'm informed was released in Australia in 1971.

Katja Ebstein was/is actually German, possibly of Polish descent, judging by her birth surname (Witkiewicz) - she was born in Girlachsdorf, in what would have become part of East Germany if the region hadn't been given to Poland as war reparations. Her family fled to West Berlin to escape from the advancing Red Army.

Unfortunately, none of her music was released here in Ireland, and even if The Star of Mykonos had received an Irish release (I hear it did well in Australia), I wouldn't have been old enough to remember it - the song was released in 1973 in Europe, a few months before my first birthday....

I had it as vinyl when I was a kid, but it went long long ago. It did do pretty well in Australia. The pop charts accommodated much more variety back then too.

The Star of Mykonos is on Aussie CD Living in The 70s Vol 6

It was made in the 1990s.

Someone may have the whole CD????


Tom Mix


Tracks also include:

1.1 Ronnie Burns - Smiley
1.2 Frijid Pink - House of the Rising Sun
1.3 Bobby Bloom - Montego Bay
1.4 Flake [AUS] - Life is Getting Better
1.5 Blue Mink - Banner Man
1.6 The Fortunes - Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again
1.7 Digby Richards - A Little Piece of Peace
1.8 The Marmalade - Cousin Norman
1.9 Freddie Hart - Easy Loving
1.10 Vicky Leandros - Come What May (Après Toi)
1.11 Hurricane Smith - Oh, Babe, What Would You Say
1.12 Jigsaw - Mademoiselle Ninette
1.13 T. Rex - Children of the Revolution
1.14 The Hollies - Magic Woman Touch
1.15 Albert Hammond - It Never Rains in Southern California
1.16 Dawn - Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree
1.17 Sweet - Hell Raiser
1.18 The Ormsby Brothers - You Don't Own Me
1.19 Katja Ebstein - The Star Of Mykonos
1.20 Barry Blue - Do You Wanna Dance
2.1 The Glitter Band - Angel Face
2.2 Hot Chocolate - Emma
2.3 Gary Glitter - Always Yours
2.4 Brian Cadd - Let Go
2.5 Paper Lace - The Black-Eyed Boys
2.6 Nazareth - Love Hurts
2.7 Janis Ian - At Seventeen
2.8 Typically Tropical - Barbados
2.9 Sutherland Brothers - Arms of Mary
2.10 Sailor - Traffic Jam
2.11 Carole King - Hard Rock Cafe
2.12 Blondie - In the Flesh
2.13 (Albie Donnelly's) Supercharge - I Think I'm Gonna Fall (In Love)
2.14 Yellow Dog - Just One More Night
2.15 Graham Bonnet - Warm Ride
2.16 Flash and the Pan - Down Among the Dead Men
2.17 Smokie - Do to Me
2.18 Randy Vanwarmer - Just When I Needed You Most
2.19 Dollar - Who Were You With in the Moonlight
2.20 Graham Gouldman - Sunburn

I actually have "The Star of Mykonos" in English, French & German. The English version was never released on CD - I have it on the album "The Star of Mykonos" - Australian pressing - which is comprised of versions of Katja's songs with English lyrics - I bought the album on eBay and have copied it onto CD.

Thanks anyway, Tom - much appreciated.

Just a few points re: Vestibule, if I may?

Festival was often described as "independent" but this is only true to the extent that it was not a subsidiary of a major o/s label.

It was in fact a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd (now News Corp.) from 1961 until its demise in 2005, so technically it was Australian-owned until News was re-incorporated as an American company (early 90s?), when Rupey threw a tantrum about the government's inexplicable failure to reform the media laws in his favour and flounced off and took Yank citizenship.

History-wise, Festival was founded in 1952 by a merchant banking company called Mainguard (company founder Paul Cullen died late last year) but when Mainguard got into trouble ca. 1958 they sold Festival to the Hooker real eastate and hotel congolmerate, but it performed poorly so Hooker sold it on to News in early 1961, the time when Rupert was busily buying up dailies and suburban newspapers in NSW and trying to get his grasping mitts on a Sydney TV station.

However, it's fair to say that, in terms of its day-to-day operations, Festival was effectively independent -- Murdoch reportedly has no interest at all in music (another reason not to trust the guy IMO), only visited the company HQ two or three times in forty years, and basically let Alan Hely and his staff do what they wanted, as long as there was a healthy swag of cash for him to cream off each year to cross-subsidise his other ventures. According to journo David Higgins, this could be as much as 90% of Festival's annual profits.

The loss of distribution rights badly dented their turnover, to be sure, but a lot of the blame for the final collapse ultimately has to rest with Murdoch himself; in the mid-90s he appointed his dopey younger son James to run the company, despite the fact that the kid had dropped out of uni and had virtually no business experience. Basically it was a ploy to get the recalcitrant son back into the family business, and as soon as the company got into trouble Daddy transferred James to Sky in Hong Kong and let Festival drift onto the rocks.

The Mushroom takeover cost them a bundle (and made Greedinski even richer) and they wasted money hand over fist in the last few years -- they probably invested about AU$100 million over the last few years and lost most of it -- they would have been lucky to have recouped even a quarter of that when it was closed down and sold off.

Finally (with greatest respect to the marvellous Micko) I'll venture the view that Festival was not technically "taken over" by Warner -- as far as I'm aware, Festival Mushroom Records P/L was formally wound up around the end of the financial year in 2005. Everything was then put up for sale -- the trading names, website addresses, etc, were bought by the Warner Music group, who also purchased the entire recording archive for the bargain basement price of AU$10m; (Ed St John must have been laughing all the way to the bank!)

The lucrative Festival Publishing catalogue was sold to Gudinski for an undisclosed sum, about a month later.

re discographies, Chris Spencer's Moonlight Publishing has released a Festival discography compiled by uber-collector George Crotty.

FYI George had one of the most amazing Aussie collections in existence (I saw it once -- scary!) but his daughter reportedly got hold of it when he was in hospital after a near-fatal heart attack and sold off all the good stuff.

George is also the guy behind the Sixties Reunion Parties in Sydney in the early 2000s, which were without doubt the 'inspiration' for Long Way To The Top -- Thorpie surprised everyone by turning up for the second one (poor George was in hospital fighting for his life that night) and of course we all realised soon after that he'd basically gone there to network and recruit for LWTTT.

http://www.howlspace.com.au/moonlight/index.htm

Cheers all

Dunks