Background: A&M Video was the home entertainment arm of A&M Records, currently a subsidiary of the Universal Music Group. The division was dismantled in 1996, 2 years before A&M itself met its demise and was merged into the Interscope Geffen A&M group. In 2007, the company was relaunched when Sony's Octone Records subsidiary was renamed A&M/Octone Records, before being absorbed by Interscope Records in 2014.
1st Logo[]
(1984-1985)
Logo: We fade in to the crowd footage of one of the concerts for one of the A&M artists. After a second, three rows of the 9 outlines of A&M's trademark rounded-square move in with static colors [Yellow at the top, Blue at the middle, and Red at the bottom]. As we zoom in on the middle row, the others move away, until it stops at the eighth square from the right, which has the orange A&M on it and "VIDEO" below. The footage fades out and the blue static dissolves. The camera zooms at the particular square, as the A&M logo fades out.
Variant: On the 1984 release of Bryan Adams: Reckless, the logo is already formed, but the usual static inside the A&M logo with diagonal dotted lines inside the ninth box, and a merging square wave pattern in the seventh box.
FX/SFX: Actual footage and Computer Graphics.
Music/Sounds: The concert crowd cheering.
Availability: Seen on the 1984 release of Styx Caught in the Act and the 1985 RCA/Columbia MusicVision release of Joe Cocker: Mad Dogs and Englishmen.
2nd Logo[]
(1985-1996)
Logo: On a black background, six white outlines of rounded squares appear in the center of the screen. The A&M logo, flies through the squares. As it passes each square, it leaves a blue imprint inside them. The logo is tilted as it begins its journey, and is perfectly straight when it comes to the fourth square. There, instead of the imprint being blue (or white), it is a white outline, with "VIDEO" below the rectangle. When the logo passes the last square, we zoom up to the fourth square and pause for several seconds. Then, we zoom even closer to the logo as we fade out.
Variant: Sometimes, the imprints is grayscaled.
FX/SFX: Computer graphics.
Music/Sounds: None.
Music/Sounds Variants:
- On the Lamb Chop videos, we hear two reverse cymbals, followed by this dialogue:
| Lamb Chop: What's that? Oh, it's A and M, 'AM'. That is 'AM'. | |
| Shari Lewis: That is 'A&M'. | |
| Lamb Chop: That AM A&M. | |
| Shari: [laughs] That AM; A&M Video!. |
- On some tapes, you can hear a "whoosh" sound followed by a synth-bass pound, another "whoosh", then a synth "twinkle" sound.
Availability: Very rare. This logo was seen on releases such as Raffi concert videos (e.g. Raffi in Concert with the Rise & Shine Band), Sharon, Lois, & Bram's Elephant Show videos, and the Lamb Chop videos.