A Flock Of Seagulls

This new wave electro pop act from Liverpool, England, had remarkable success in the USA before finding a large following in Britain. The band originally comprised Mike Score (b. 5 November 1957; keyboards/vocals), Ali Score (drum machine/vocals), Paul Reynolds (b. 4 August 1962; guitar) and Frank Maudsley (b. 10 November 1959; bass). Following an adventurous EP on Bill Nelson’s Cocteau label the band made their album debut in 1982 with A Flock Of Seagulls, a splendid example of futurist pop that contained a number of notable tracks including ‘I Ran (So Far Away)’, which made the US Top 10 in July 1982. Ex-hairdresser Mike Score received numerous press jibes for his ‘silly haircut’; he had cultivated his none-too-natural blond locks to hang irritatingly over his keyboards. Although Listen was another infectious collection of songs, they were unable to find any lasting popularity in their homeland to back up the success of ‘Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You)’, which reached number 10 in November 1982. Paul Reynolds departed after the release of The Story Of A Young Heart. That album and Dream Come True (made as a trio) were way below par and the band subsequently disintegrated. Mike Score organized a new version of the band in 1989, touring the USA and issuing a single ‘Magic’, of which commodity this band had little. They, too, broke up. Score resurfaced once more in 1995 with The Light At The End Of The World, and carried the band name into the new millennium. In November 2003, the original line-up reunited for the VH1 series Bands Reunited. After a number of further gigs in 2004 the other members retired from music once more, leaving Mike Score to carry on playing as A Flock Of Seagulls with a new line-up.