Not a record label as such - in fact Deckstar's name doesn't appear anywhere on the labels or the cover of the sole EP for which it was responsible. Deckstar was a British management company run by Robin Eggar and 'Buzz' Carter, whom 'Music Week' of the 13th of October 1979 described as 'Britain's youngest Pop tycoons'. They had Punk band The Members on their books and were to score with Thomas Dolby in the 1980s, but in 1979 they signed Scottish singer / songwriter Jane Kennaway and placed her with publishers Dinsong. The 'MW' article referred to above reported on the deal and added that the pair were looking for a recording contract for her. A couple of months later 'MW' of the 15th of December observed that Deckstar had had 1,000 copies of a four-track EP of her songs pressed up and were sending them out to executives and media in the hope of creating a 'media buzz' prior as part of the attempt to attract record company interest. The EP, which was numbered JKEP-1, offered the tracks 'Hamburger City' and 'Limited Edition' in addition to the two shown on the scan, and was manufactured by CBS.
Despite the use of the EP as a novel promotional tool the attempts to gain a contract for Kennaway must have failed, as her next single, 'I.O.U.' b/w 'Take Me Away', with her band Strange Behaviour, was made by Deckstar and came out on the one-off 'Growing Up In Hollywood' label (GROW-1; 1980). Happily, that single proved popular enough to be picked up by Decca and reissued on the Deram label as DM-436 in January 1981. In its new form it enjoyed modest Chart success, reaching the No.65 spot, which prompted the release of a couple of follow-ups. The first featured two of the songs from the EP, 'Celia' and 'Radio' (DM-439; 3/81), while 'Year 2000' b/w '5 On 84th Street' (DM-444; 7/81) was credited to Jane Kennaway as a solo artist and was produced by Dolby. Neither troubled the Chart compilers. In addition, work started on an album but it was never completed. Kennaway parted company with both Deram and Deckstar before putting out a final single on her own I.O.U. Records, 'I'm Missing You' b/w 'The Way We Really Care' (IOU-999; 1983). As the initial EP was a promo-only record it wasn't available to the general public and it therefore fails one of the criteria that I set for including labels on this site, but as there are quite a few copies around and as it has an unusual history I've decided to let it slip through.
Copyright 2021 Robert Lyons.