Well what can we say about the Escorts.....

Well, they released one of the best Powerpop singles ever to of come out of the UK between the late 70s / early 80s. Their single "Bingo" is up there with "The Kids Just Wanna Dance" by Fast Cars, "Everybody Knows" by The Incredible Kidda Band, "Nobody Loves me" by The Letters, "Crazy Today" by U.X.B.... Yep, this is how high we rate their single!

As a collector of UK Punk, New Wave, Mod & Powerpop this single was one of the toughest ones to track down. Collectors worldwide have it on their wants lists but even us Brits struggle to find copies of it. Once I became aware of it's existence due to a rare CD compilation album that was released in Holland called "Everyone's a winner" I went in search to find a copy for my collection. Now twelve years on or so I can now put together a web page for them as I finally found a copy.

This copy that I found wasn't just any copy, it was from the photographer who took the pictures for the sleeve.

Below is the story how we set about in finding this long lost band.

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First of all, let see if the sleeve or labels could tell us anything like band members, engineers, record producers etc? This was hard straight from the start as we didn't own a copy so I had one of my fellow collectors who owed a copy to email the images in to us.

This is were we draw our first blank... No names, places or any other information mentioned at all. Perhaps the name of the label could throw anything up. So we did a search for "Rainbow Sounds" and came up with a recording studio in Nottingham. Could this be the same one, twenty five years on? So a good friend of mine got on the case and emailed them. To our amazement they emailed back and confirmed that it was their studio that recorded this single. Then came the bad news that they couldn't remember anything about the recording!

So I then knocked together a quick web page for them with the images of the front and back of the sleeve as well as both sides of the label. I then put as much info that I knew and mentioned "Can any one help?"

So at least we knew the band were from Nottingham or the surrounding area. (Sadly this was a bit of a red herring)

So we then set about emailing everyone one and every business in the Nottingham area to see if we could throw anything up. After about a month we had to give up as we hit a brick wall. Then I decided to email all the Churches, Vicars, Pastorals, Curates etc, basically any churches in that area who had email address's. I attached a image of the back of the sleeve that shows a picture of the band outside of a church. After about sixty or so emails I started receiving replies... I felt that I was onto a sure winner but although these email replies were very helpful I turned up nothing - No one could identify this church.

Well, this is where the story ended for a few weeks.....

Then out of the blue I had a young lady email in saying "was we still looking for the Escorts as she knew one of them". I couldn't reply to her quick enough.

The next two days went by with me checking my emails every few minutes but sadly nothing came in. Was this a wind-up? I then left it another day and then re-emailed the young lady again. Then came a reply saying she grew up living next door to the drummer. In the mean time, she had called the drummer to see if he would speak to us. Then came her reply with YES with his name and telephone  number.................

I then telephoned the drummer and had a good long chat with him and managed to get as much information that I could including the line-up of the band. I then telephoned each band member to get as much information as possible so that I could put together this web page for them and to make it interesting. Sadly, no band members had any spare copies of the single as only 500 copies were ever pressed and had long since sold out!

One thing that did come up was the name of the photographer who took both pictures for the sleeve. When I finally located him he told us the story behind the photos, the location of the church and more amazingly he still had the roll of film.

The church that was featured on the back of the sleeve was the 'St. Andrew’s Parish Church' in Kegworth, Leicestershire.

Kegworth only other claim to fame was in 1989 when a Boeing 737 airplane crashed onto the M1 motorway near East Midlands airport, killing 46 people but astonishingly over 80 people survived. The British Midland flight 092 was forced to crash land after both engines of the brand new aircraft failed. It slammed into the motorway embankment at 2026 GMT, breaking into three pieces. Motorists on the M1 had a lucky escape as there were no vehicles in the immediate vicinity at the moment of impact.

Pat the photographer told us that he had only two days to get the sleeve together so he called the band up to come down to his local church for the photo shoot after clearing permission from the local Rector. Their only request was to cover up his name from the 'Services' board out side of the church entrance.

 

So at five o'clock one evening and with fading light the following photos were taken....

 

Bob W Anthony G        Dave T            (Standing)   Andrew S

Above are two alternative shots that were taken on the same day as the others but were not used.

 

Page Three

 

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