THE CORTINAS
The two albums:
‘Please Don’t Hit Me’ and the live album ‘For Fucks Sake Plymouth’ will be released worldwide on all digital platforms on 6th October 2008
ARC031 THE CORTINAS
‘FOR FUCKS SAKE PLYMOUTH’
Recorded Live in Plymouth 1977
1. Defiant Pose
2. Tired Of Compromise
3. They
4. We’re Gonna Play In tHe Subway Today
5. Further Education
6. Fascist Dictator
7. Tokyo Joe
8. Gloria
9. Gonna Get Mary In The Bus Shelter
10. Have It With You
11. Television Families
12. Have It With You
13. Slow down
In 1977 even Bristol, home to The Cortinas, never mind Plymouth, was not the accepted face of ‘mint’ it is today. If we weren’t country bumpkins, we were middle-class twats and us girls well, we thought lines and mirrors were to do with washing and make up. So sayeth the great Tony Parsons, Lord of NME and reviewer of the Cortinas Bristle Colston’all gig in July of that year.
What ‘know it all’ 23 year old Tone failed to predict was that class had nothing to do with being a punk, as the pedigrees of the past great punk bands now confirm. If you’d been on a stage in ‘76 with 3 chords, no vocal ambition, angry lyrics and defiant pose, you were punks.
The Cortinas were all that, their first gig was at our Youth Club and they were fantastic, I went to take the piss, what the hell was Jeremy Valentine doing fronting what I had assumed would probably be a cross between Jethro Tull and my piano lessons. I was so wrong, I got it, this wasn’t intense naval inspecting ‘progressive’ bollocks, this was stuff I understood.
And this Live Album recorded in Plymouth sometime between those two gigs in ’77 tells the story, you can’t quite hear all the lyrics, well that was what it was like, and titles like We’re Gonna Play in the Subway Today said it all, to us anyway, if not to Tony. He took particular offence at Fascist Dictator, (single released June 1977), because 15 year old Bristolians couldn’t possibly understand the politics. Hey maybe the Cortinas helped raise our consciousness ready for ‘Rock against Racism’ a few months later?
For all their alleged youthful naivety, Van Morrison’s Gloria is played just as intended, a teenage lust ridden 3 chord rock anthem, allowing Jeremy to ad lib, the emerging guitar talents of Nick Shepherd and Mike Fewins to let rip and the ability to copy the conceit, albeit tongue in cheek, of introducing band members….. as Johnny.
Larry Williams’s Slow Down hints that maybe our boys abilities stretch beyond punk, but it’s Defiant Pose, Television Families, Having It, (Have It with you) and Further Education played in John Peel’s radio session, together with Facist Dictator, that sum up this period best.
If anyone accuses you of not knowing your Punk from your elbow slip this album on and they’ll soon be gobbing all over you
( GILL LOATS )
ARC037 THE CORTINAS
‘Please Don’t Hit Me’
1. TRIBE OF THE CITY 3.55
2. I DON’T REALLY WANT TO GET INVOLVED 2.40
3. YOUTH CLUB DANCE 3.00
4. ASK MR.WAVERLEY 3.40
5. HAVE IT WITH YOU 2.05
6. BROKEN NOT TWISTED 3.20
7. HEARTACHE 4.15
8. RADIO RAPE 3.40
9. JUSTICE 2.25
10. FURTHER EDUCATION 2.35
11. I TRUST VALERIE SINGLETON 3.50
12. FIRST I LOOK AT THE PURSE 2.35
Recorded at ‘Steppin’ Out Studios, Bristol on the 9th Jan 1978
Recorded and Engineered/Produced by Andrew Peters
The Cortinas are:
Jeremy Valentine Lead Vocals
Mike Fewings Lead Guitar
Nick Sheppard Rhythm Guitar
Dexter Dalwood Bass
Daniel Swann Drums
Remastered by Shaun Joseph at Optimum Bristol 21st June 2008
By late 1977 interest in The Cortinas was at its peak. They had released two singles on Miles Copeland’s Step Forward label. They’d supported The Stranglers and headlined at the Roxy. They’d been top of the bill at The Marquee played with Chelsea and Sham 69 and toured with Blondie and Television. Promoters had booked them with the caution befitting a punk reputation, which had been further guaranteed by Jeremy’s photograph in NME precariously close to the incident involving Shane MacGowan and the missing ear lobe.
It was time for an album; Miles who had his finger in every punk pie going and was the king of the record deal gave them CBS. Please don’t hit me comprises the demo tracks that secured the Cortinas the deal and consequently the album True Romances.
And ‘real’ punk does still exist here; the critics argue it was lost on the album released after the band split. Please don’t hit me disagrees: Youth Club Dance takes us back not only to their very first gig, but also to that non-relationship between words and music synonimus with the genre… you –ooth club dance.
Tribe of the City was slated on the album, it is repetitive, never gets much beyond three notes, and as John Hamblett –NME says in his review uses ‘sixth form philosophy ‘…yep that’s what it was about.
Never able to shake off the schoolboy image, much was made of Mike Fewings and Dexter Dalwoods waif-like image and drummer Danny Swan was still just 17. CBS used the bands age to counter criticism but did nothing to promote the album or further it’s members careers. Hamblett further suggested they’d either grow into fine young musicians- either that or Oxford Dons – well they did more or less, but he didn’t manage to forsee the famous artist Dexter was to become.
By their own admission much of the punk stuff had been ‘hastily written and perhaps a bit formulaic’, many said the tracks that became True Romances had returned them to their formative r&b roots. First I look at the purse- a Smokey Robinson remix could give The Jam a run for their money in the reworked Tamla department, and I always want to hum Van Morrison’s Brown eyed girl when I hear the opening bars to the CBS single Heartache.
So is this compilation punk, post punk, alternative or what we used to call r&b, (not today’s slush)? Whatever the verdict, you’ll find Ask Mr Waverley’ going round and round in your head for days after hearing it and if you remember him, you probably know the answer already or don’t give a Valerie Singleton.
( GILL LOATS )
