RECORDS
7.84 Records was a DIY label. serving as an outlet for songs and music from John McGrath and Elizabeth Maclennan's 7.84 Theatre Companies - there were two, one Scottish, one English. 'The Maclean March' b/w 'Every Man's A Maker', seems to have been 7.84's earliest 7" release; there was also an LP, 'The Cheviot, The Stag And The Black, Black Oil', which probably pre-dates it, if not by much. There is no date on the single's label, but its catalogue number, MSRS-1385, was taken from a series that was used by MSR / Midland Sound Recordings of Balsall Common; comparison with other MSR records suggests a release date of 1974. The two songs are reported to have been taken from McGrath's 1974 play 'The Game's A Bogey', which makes that dating sound reasonable. An EP, The Legendary Living Room Suite', was numbered 784-4S, and was likewise undated; the play from which the tracks were taken, 'His Master's Voice', was first produced in 1978, giving an earliest possible date for the record. That EP was recorded in Scotland; included among the performers on it were David McNiven and Angela Rew, formerly with Folk band Bread, Love & Dreams. The 7.84 Company took its title from the fact that 7% of the population owned 84% of the wealth at that time. Distributed By 7.84 Records. 7:84 was a Scottish left-wing agitprop theatre group. The name comes from a statistic, published in The Economist in 1966, that 7% of the population of the UK owned 84% of the country's wealth (compare the Pareto principle). The group was originally founded by playwright John McGrath, his wife Elizabeth MacLennan and her brother David MacLennan in 1971, and operated throughout Great Britain. In 1973, it split into 7:84 (England) and 7:84 (Scotland). The English group folded in 1984, having lost its grant from the Arts Council of Great Britain. The Scottish group lost its funding from the Scottish Arts Council in 2006, though Artistic Director Lorenzo Mele successfully secured funding for a further year from April 2007. John Peter McGrath (1 June 1935 – 22 January 2002) was a British playwright and theatre theorist who took up the cause of Scottish independence in his plays. McGrath died from leukemia in January 2002. Elizabeth MacLennan (16 March 1938 – 23 June 2015) was a Scottish actress, writer and radical popular theatre practitioner. MacLennan died of leukaemia on 23 June 2015 in London, aged 77. David MacLennan (19 June 1948 - 13 June 2014), was a Scottish actor, writer and producer. In 2013, Maclennan was diagnosed with Motor neurone disease, dying in hospital in Glasgow the next year, aged 65. Thanks to Robert Lyons For The Info.
| 75 | 7:84 Theatre Company (England) | Lay Off (Album) | 7.84 | 784 | 001 |
| 76 | 7:84 Theatre Company (Scotland) | The Cheviot The Stag & The Black Black Oil (Album) | 7.84 | 784 | 002S |
| 77 | Not Traced | 7.84 | 784 | 003 | |
| 78 | 7:84 Theatre Company (Scotland) | The Legendary Living Room Suite' (EP) | 7.84 | 784 | 4S |
| 78 | 7:84 Theatre Company England | The Life & Times Of Joe Of England | 7.84 | 784 | 005S |
| 74 | 7:84 Theatre Company (Scotland) | The Maclean March / Every Man's A Maker | 7.84 | MSRS | 1395 |
