LIVE
WIRE
Live Wire was
owned by independent promotions man Chris Denning. 'Music Week' of the
14th of September 1974 announced that he was to launch his label through Sonet; it
said that he had considered a licensing deal with a major company but had decided
instead to set up his own outlet. He also had his own independent production
company, which would be continuing alongside the label. 'MW' of the
14th of December was able to add more details about the deal: Live Wire had
a pressing and distribution deal with Sonet, the same as Sonet's with
Pye; the company paid a royalty to Sonet for 'office services' - orders, copyrighting
and accounting. According to the article this left Denning free to
control the number of releases and to concentrate on
promotion.
Live Wire issued
some thirteen singles between September 1974 and November 1975, numbering them
in the SON-4000s. They were mostly in a Pop vein but with the occasional
heavier item such as The Protectors' 'Loretta' b/w 'Jump The Sidewalk' (SON-4004; 2/75). Initially the emphasis was on items licensed
from abroad, but latterly it shifted to home-grown material. None
of the singles ever threatened the charts, though the two by boy band Flame
seem to have shifted a reasonable number of copies. Two different but similar label designs were
used, the green one being used up to and including SON-4004, the blue one
from then on. From SON-4006 a black 'A'
appeared on the labels (2); it doesn't denote promo copies. That black 'A'
can be found on some copies of Roy Etzel's 'Soleado' b/w '
Last Dance' (SON-4002; 11/74), thanks to it being reissued in November 1975. Manufacture and
distribution were by Pye, as they were for other records associated with Sonet at the
time.
Some three months after the release of the final Live Wire single 'Music Week' of the 28th of February 1976 revealed
the company had signed a three-year worldwide distribution deal with Private Stock (q.v.). The
article said that its products would appear on the Private Stock
label but that after a year Live Wire would be given a
label credit in the UK and the USA. In the event the agreement seems to have been
short-lived and to have borne little fruit. John Young's 'Yesterday's Hero' b/w 'The Next
Time' (SON-4006) was reissued as PVT-49 with the artist given as
John Paul Young; it was followed by Flame's 'Mary-Lou' b/w 'When
It's Over' (PVT-53; 4/76) and Spunky's 'Funky Feeling, Parts 1 and 2'
(PVT-55; 4/76), but that seems to have been the lot. The latter pair had a
Live Wire logo added to their labels (3), but Live Wire as an actual label never reappeared.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.