A small independent, the label of John Greenslade's 'Exeter Sound Recording' studio. E.S.R. seems to have made recordings from around 1974 until at least 1991, though, as is the case with such concerns, its products are hard to trace and the dates are provisional. In the mid '70s its records were numbered in an ESR-000 series and had a rather old-fashioned label which came in several different colours, including red-on-white as well as the examples shown. These early releases included a couple of singles by Exeter City F.C. and a song in support of the Exter Falcons speedway team. Sadly only none of them had a date on it, but one of the football songs, 'Swing Along With City', has been pinned down to 1974. The 'B' sides of the sports singles were given over to other artists, presumably local ones. A more ambitious schedule of releases started in 1979; it resulted in several collectable New Wave records, including 'Ain't No Van Gogh' b/w 'What Did Ya Say' by Silent Movies (ESR-1; 1979), the Living Daylights' 'Heart Stop' EP (ESR-3; 11/1979), and the 'Final Vynal' EP by The Lou Reichner Band (1980). Manufacture of those three records was through custom recording firm SRT. Numbering of these later releases was in an ESR-0 series at first; sometimes SRT numbers were used. Later in the '80s the label design and catalogue series changed several times. ESR had a sister-label, 'Music Machine' (q.v.) Thanks to James Yardley for alerting me to the existence of the Les Thomas single shown above, and for providing the scan; the scan of the orange label comes by courtesy of Robert Bowes.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.