Be “Safe In The Arms Of Love” with Shooting Party

Shooting Party were an 80’s duo consisting of former 70’s band No Nice members Gary Strange and Roger P. Ferris. The pair continued working together after the break up of the band and would eventually release a number of singles and an album through PWL Records, all of which were either written or co-written and produced by Phil Harding and Ian Curnow, engineers at PWL studios.

Strange and Ferris took up the Shooting Party in 1985 and released their first single, “I Know That Mood”, via Siren Records. It was followed by “Trick Of The Light” and “One Shot” that same year, but Shooting Party either left or were dumped by Siren by the year end. They were next signed to Lisson Records where they recorded the singles “Safe In The Arms Of Love” and “I Go To Pieces”, both released with the help of Pete Waterman and PWL Records, but as with their previous singles, these failed to chart.

“Safe In The Arms Of Love” and “I Go To Pieces” came out in 1988 and were followed by their one and only album together, self-titled and produced by Harding and Curnow with assistance from PWL. After one more try, “Let’s Hang On” in 1990, Shooting Party called it a day and both Gary and Roger went their own ways. Gary Strange worked as an enginner himself during the 1990’s and finally got a chart hit record, although not as himself, when he worked on Cher’s 1995 top ten hit “One By One”! Ferris would return to songwriting in the 2010’s when he helped his son, Dominic, on his debut release “Dominic Anthony Ferris” in 2014.

2009 saw the digital release of their debut album while 2023 has seen the official video release of their best known song, “Safe In The Arms Of Love”, in high definition quality through the PWL YouTube channel. It’s a curio of the late 1980’s if that anything else but another piece of the Stock Aitken Waterman/PWL jigsaw that has been as forgotten today as it was when first released 35 years ago.