Article MT028
logo The Complete
Topic Records Discography
by Mike Brocken, Alistair Banfield & Rod Stradling

All of Topic's CDs of traditional music are now available for sale from MT's Records Page.

arrow.gif - 0.1 K Click here to go to an area of the Discography

Important - Please read all of this page first before using the discography.

The huge amount of text in this Discography is displayed in compact form using the Arial Narrow font - but only if you have it installed on your computer.  Arial Narrow (in Normal, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic faces) is available on the Windows 95 disc(s), from many widely available font collections, and the latest version is downloadable free from here.

We now have details of every record that our sources can locate, right from TRC1, complete with full track listings - and there are only a few gaps remaining - which I've shown in red so they'll be easy to spot.  Any reader with further information about any missing items is encouraged to send it to us for inclusion.

The discography is so large that I've had to split it into three separate files, but it's presented with a frames-enabled index so that readers should be able to use it as if it were one complete list.  The Index links to the major divisions of the Topic output: Shellac 78s; Vinyl 78s; early LPs, EPs and singles; 12" stereo LPs; CDs; World Series and, of course, the Voice of the People series - plus numbered links every 25 (or so) records.  Everything is presented in chronological order, with the exception of four CDs which appeared slightly before Topic began to release everything in this format - these have been moved into the CD section, but their numbers indicate their position in the release schedule.  Topic's other labels - Special Delivery, Free Reed, Impact, and String - are at the end of the first file.

Searching

It's not possible to easily make the discography searchable (without requiring readers to be on-line the whole time), but if you need to search for a particular performer, song or tune, I'd suggest the two following procedures.

First, the simple one:

  1. Log on to your ISP and go to MT's Home Page.
  2. Go to the Topic Discography (which will get you this page) and then click on Shellac 78s, Stereo LPs, and CDs in the Index bar at the side of the screen.  This will have downloaded the three main files mentioned above.
  3. Log off, but don't turn off your browser.
  4. Click on the Index bar to go to one of the three parts of the discography.
  5. Click once in the main window displaying the list of records.
  6. Use the browser's Find facility to hunt for what you want.
As the Discography uses Frames, this method may not work for some browsers.  If that's the case, try this:
  1. Follow steps 1, 2 and 3 above.
  2. Go to your browser's cache (likely to be in Windows/Temporary Internet Files) and find the three files you need.  They're called 'dis_txt1.htm' (covering everything up to the 12" stereo LPs), 'dis_txt2.htm' (covering all the 12TS prefixed stereo LPs) and 'dis_txt3.htm' (covering all the CDs).
  3. Copy them into a new directory/folder.
  4. Using your browser, open the appropriate dis_txt file.
  5. Use the browser's Find facility to hunt for what you want.
If that doesn't work, maybe you need to try a different browser - or load the file into a text editor and search it from there.

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