NOTTINGHAM GROUP (Sept 1983 – Dec 1989)

Eddie Dorey, who joined the band in 1984, with the aid of other band members has put together the story of Working Party.

PART 1 WORKING PARTY – ‘THE LINE UPS’  

Nottingham band ‘Working Party’ were formed in 1983 from members of two previous bands called ‘The Stumble’ & ‘A.W.O.L.’ I was not involved in that formation as my time in the band was not to come until the end of 1984. Two of that first line up were still in the band as I joined, Tony Ward (keyboards) & the late Pete Dowling (drums, vocals & song writer). They produced towards the end of 1984 a family tree leading up to Working Party (6). 

The look of the family tree was ‘Pete Frame’ in style and while mostly accurate, I believe, regarding who & when people joined and left the band, there are a few tongue in cheek elements, Working Party (6) agreed it before it went out as ‘The Working Party Story (So Far!). 

The tree was given to us all & I think to anyone else interested. It has to be said that people were interested, as Working Party, long before I joined, had a dedicated following thanks in part to them playing regularly at The Gregory Hotel in Radford.  

While several of the former members searched their attics for a decent copy to no avail, Pete Donaldson (guitar & vocals who joined at Working Party (5)) came up trumps complete with Blu Tac marks from when he had it up on a wall. Below is the complete version, if you were in the audiences during that period of time (Sept ’83 – Dec ’84) it might bring back some fond memories. Also, if you were in the band during the period described in it your part in the story was always acknowledged and appreciated. 

There is no family tree to cover the period from my first full gig, as only the second singer the band ever had, in Jan1985 to the close down of the band in Dec 1989 so here is a basic run down of what happened. 

Working Party (6) live at The Palais Nottingham Feb 20 1986, supporting local rock band Dawn Trader.     Photographer ‘Unknown’. 

Working Party (6) continued unchanged other than me sneaking in the odd instrument at times, until in late 1985 or early in 1986 Hilary Gardner (alto sax who joined at Working Party (2)) alerted us to the fact that she could be leaving the band at some time during the year. We had already had Tony Fisher (saxes from Working Party (7) to the end) play as a guest, including, at a Gregory Christmas gig but we never the less put out an advert for a sax player. Kevin Marston (tenor sax, & later keyboards, from Working Party (7) to the end) was subjected to two auditions at the end of January 1986. Almost immediately Hilary confirmed she would be leaving but not straight away! That same day we invited Tony Fisher and Kevin Marston to join the band. Our biggest line up loomed. 

Working Party (7) was the same as Working Party (6) but with Kevin on Tenor Sax and Tony Fisher on Alto, Tenor & Baritone Sax. We were an 8 piece line up even if it might be short lived! With Hilary still in the band & my primitive soprano sax playing on some of the songs we could boast a four piece horn section – blimey!! Hilary eased out of the band around March 1986 but came back for our Christmas gig that same year.  

Working Party 8 – Pete Donaldson (Guitar & Vocals) – Tony Ward (Keyboards & Vocals) Kevin Marston (Tenor Sax & Vocals) – Tony Fisher (Alto, Tenor and Baritone Sax & Vocals) – Tony ‘Ferny’ Beall (Bass) – Pete Dowling (Drums & Vocals) – Eddie Dorey (Vocals) This line up saw us bestowing the title of ‘The Radford Horns’ on Tony Fisher and Kevin Marston. 

Working Party (8) by the bar at their musical home The Gregory Hotel, Radford. Photo Mike Howitt.

 At some point in 1988 Tony Ward informed us that he would be leaving the band. It all gets a little hazy around here but he got a good send off at his final Gregory gig on Sept 23 and a party as his last gig with us at The Test Match West Bradford Oct 1, I’m sure he still remembers a fairly large Test Match audience chanting TONEEEEEE as his send off. Pretty sure he got some gifts and a hand made (by Ferny) wooden presentation box for his collection of Working Party cassette tapes. 

Working Party (9) As Working party (8) but no one replaced Tony Ward instead Kevin Marston moved over to the role of Keyboard player.

However in 1989 in what would be our final year as Working Party Tony Ward was involved in the recording of our final set of recordings ‘The Finishing Tape’ and a simple statement in my diary on Sept 17 1989 just says ‘Tony Ward Back’ so while it all remains a tad sketchy in remembering our last days of Working Party it’s more than probable that Tony Ward, as a founding member of the band helped us play out of our last three months together. The final gig was appropriately at The Gregory Hotel and was a Christmas Party gig on Dec 15 1989. 

We had a fair few members in the band but sometimes circumstances required us to get some help to keep the show on the road. At this point I won’t mention people who guested with us for fun but just the people who played a complete gig(s) with us to help cover for holidays, illness and drummer Pete Dowling’s broken foot! The people who helped us out were John Thomas (Drums), Ken Morris (Bass), and Bob Meyrick (guitar). 

While my role in the band was fundamentally as the singer, there is plenty of photographic & recorded evidence of me playing soprano sax & guitar, but I am more than happy to be remembered for my core role.   

Eddie Dorey (Working Party singer 1985 -1989). 

PART 2: ‘THE STUDIO RECORDINGS’

This section is mostly about the studio recordings of original songs by Working Party.

The majority of the songs recorded were written by Pete Dowling, who was a fairly prolific writer of often sophisticated pop songs inspired by the music he loved. From 1985 a few of the songs I had previously written with lyricist Ken Morris (a long time musical collaborator) for other musical endeavours found their way into the Working Party repertoire as did songs by Tony Ward and Tony Fisher. Working Party were very much a live band but these recordings go someway to demonstrate how we sounded.

This is not too important but it is worth noting that our stuff was ‘released’ on cassette and these digitised versions were produced using the best cassette version available to me, from duplication master cassettes or simply one of the ‘released’ cassettes. I have made no real attempt to radically improve these recordings other than get a good clear digital version of the individual songs. While In some cases I do have the master stereo reel to reel tape I have no way of playing them. Making them sound better was not what I wanted but I hope I have just produced good versions of what our tapes sounded like in 1985-1989 (& a bit into ’90).

If you look back at ‘Part 1 The Line Ups’ you will see there were two sets of recordings mentioned in the ’83-85’ family tree section. The first is described as – ‘The above line up (Working Party 2) record a demo tape on Pete’s Portastudio featuring ‘Jumping to Conclusions’ and ‘Black Slacks’ (both Pete Dowling originals). Now a very rare item to find’ As I type in 2025 it’s even rarer! The second says – ‘The above line up (Working Party 4) record another Portastudio tape ‘Recommendations’, with a printed cartoon sleeve, sells a few copies at £1.50 for 3 tracks (no mention of the songs). Engineered by Rob Forth’ (previously the Working Party bass player and at the time soon to be a regular sound man for the band).

The Mansfield Recordings – These two recordings feature Working Party 6 playing two of Pete’s songs. Interestingly these recordings, took place on January 9 1985 which is sandwiched between me singing (to introduce me to the band’s audience) a couple of songs at the end of a 1984 Christmas Charity Gig which the outgoing singer Brad had performed for the majority of the night and my first ever full gig at the Gregory Hotel on Jan 18.The two songs were mixed on 13/3/1985. In a recent (Jan 2025) conversation with Pete Donaldson (guitar & vocals from Working Party 5) we could not recall too much background information about what was Working Party’s first real studio recordings. It’s also a mystery after all this time why they were seemingly never used outside the band? Both songs were also re-recorded at a latter date(see below).

The Radio Trent Rock Magazine / ‘On The Wireless’ Cassette

The Radio Trent Rock Magazine had regular live sessions of local bands and on August 28 1985 Working Party 6 went in and recorded four songs live at Radio Trent. The next day we (or some of us) went in for the mix session. Two songs were broadcast on Sept 19 with the other two broadcast on Sept 26. We were subsequently gifted the master (or a copy) reel to reel by Radio Trent and with a slight tweak in the running order we put it out on cassette as ‘On The Wireless’. Older readers will get that in the ’80s the Wireless’ was an slightly archaic term for radio broadcasts, younger readers might think we were well ahead of our time!!

The show was Hosted by the late John Shaw and the session was engineered by John Moon with tape op John Boulton. They got us a great sound and the whole experience was really positive and we were off with a studio quality cassette to release.

If you would like hear what John Shaw had to say about our session the audio file called Broadcast has it edited out of the full program which was recorded on my radio when it went out. This audio has no music on it and is a little ‘noisy’ but does show enthusiasm for what we played.

What Red Lights?

Recorded in two different studios (Square Dance Derby & MEK Nottingham) with a professionally designed folding sleeve by Philip Whiting (Conrad Design Associates) and his illustrator Neil Page, all as a favour by Philip as a friend and supporter of the band, this was a real step up. It was also a band in transition as Hilary Gardner (Alto Sax from Working Party 3) would be leaving the band and crossing over with Tony Fisher and Kevin Marston. Who played the sax parts was slightly different on every track. Recording started on Oct 14 1985 and the cassette went on sale at a Gregory Hotel Gig on Oct 10 1986.

The ‘A QUID DEAL’ Cassettes Numbered 1,2 & 3

Strictly speaking these recordings were not done in a studio, however they were recorded by Kevin Jackson of MEK Nottingham on a professional standard reel to reel tape recorder. The recordings were drawn from a full double set gig at The Gregory Hotel on 20/11/1987. Kevin was situated in what was our regular rehearsal room (an unused ‘Function Room’ a floor above where we gigged and a good deal of gaffer/duct tape was used to keep the cables secure and any audience member safe as audience and cables passed through a door into the the room we were playing. Thankfully no one was injured in the making of these recordings!

After we got the recordings to listen to (I think) we had some sort of band ballot to decide what songs (two per Quid Deal) would make up the Quid Deals over three cassette releases. Two of the songs were covers which I have not included here but the sleeves clearly show what they were!

The original songs chosen were two Pete Dowling songs, one Ken Morris-& Eddie Dorey song and an instrumental I had written, which on the night was played by the rest of the band while I popped upstairs to see how Kevin Jackson was getting on recording us! I can’t remember or find any evidence on when ‘A QUID DEAL 1’ went on sale at gigs or when all three were available.

The Finishing Tape

Recording at both Canning Factory Nottingham (March-June 1989) and Frontier Studio Beeston (Oct 1989 – Feb 1990) The Finishing Tape had the final line up of Working Party joined by joint founding member Tony Ward on two of the four tracks. It also was not completed until after Working Party had played its final gig. After a large passage of time we are not sure how it was then distributed other than possibly by the two main related bands that followed on from Working Party at the time, Pete Donaldson’s Blues Band & my own Serious Business.

It was an interesting collection of songs especially as only one song, ‘Car Trouble’, was by Pete Dowling, our main songwriter. However it was one that our audience loved and over the five years of singing it it was always great to have the audience sing back at me ‘Oh no here it it goes again’ as loud as they could during the chorus. Particularly at The Gregory where we were expected to perform it and they were ready to play their part.

‘Keep Talking’ was written by Tony Ward and reflected the ongoing debate across the globe in the 1980s with regard to Nuclear Weapons. Similarly Tony Fisher’s ‘Africa’ was still current at the time of recording as Apartheid did not end in South Africa until March 1992. ‘Love for Love’, written by myself & lyricist Ken Morris, was the only song I played an instrument on. Live it normally finished with Pete Donaldson playing a longish and powerful guitar solo. The recorded version had that but also I got to pick up on Pete’s solo and continue it on slide guitar that took it to the fade out.

Some extra credits/thanks regarding the recording of our original songs.

Firstly to Kevin Jackson of MEK Nottingham who had a fair bit of input into our recording adventures and, as far as I can recall, wherever we recorded we mostly went to Kevin for our tape duplication requirements.
I would reiterate the credit given above to the support of Philip Whiting (Conrad Design Associates) particularly with regard to the sleeve of ‘What Red Lights?’
It should be noted that all our other sleeves were created in collaboration by Tony Ward & Pete Dowling. Our sleeves try to show who played what and who engineered, recorded and mixed our output.

All recordings were digitised by Eddie Dorey.
All cassette sleeve images were digitised by Pete Donaldson.

So that was it with regard to Working Party studio recordings. We hope if you saw us at the time these recordings bring back some fond memories and if you didn’t see us back in the ‘80s and are just curious about what Working Party sounded like we hope you wont be disappointed.

PART 3: WORKING PARTY ‘THE POSTERS’ 

From really early on Working Party produced their own posters, particularly for The Gregory Hotel Radford gigs but also for other venues or events that required them for marketing purposes.

Once again Tony Ward & the late Pete Dowling were the instigators and came up with the style of the band’s idiosyncratic poster style.

Their mutual admiration of Leeds born cartoonist Glen Baxter’s work coupled with a collection of Boy’s Own and similar annuals meant they could respectfully borrow some of Baxter’s ‘subversion of adventure comics’ with odd and surreal narratives about upcoming gigs. Some were completely made up obviously but some were based on stuff that happened in the band or an exaggerated version of it!

Other styles created by band members were occasionally used and obviously some events had their own posters that they required us to use but the more typical style was to continue up to the band’s demise in Dec 1989.

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NEWSPAPER CUTTINGS

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

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Reunions

Working Party would have occasional reunions, usually in aid of charity. I was involved in one in 2013 – Working Party Acoustic (see attached poster) at the Poppy and Pint in West Bridgford. The photo, taken by Mike Howitt, shows (from L to R) Tony “Ferny” Beall, Pete Donaldson, Eddie Dorey, Ken Morris, Tony Fisher and me (Bob Meyrick).