Sunday 25 May 2014

Bored Teenagers


This blog’s entry last December about the west Cornwall punk rock scene put me back in touch with a couple of old compatriots from the punk wars. So with grateful thanks to Jonathon Plunkett, here’s a track from the demo tape recorded at Sentinel studio by The Rusty Bottles in (educated guess) early 1978. The band later metamorphosed into An Alarm, more of whom elsewhere. The sound & songs are pretty lo-fi, but thinking back to 1978 I remember being pretty excited that I knew someone who knew someone who was actually in a punk rock group that had actually recorded a demo tape. It was almost like knowing Johnny Rotten. That the songs were so primitive was irrelevant. It’s still irrelevant. The point was: if you understand, go and join a band.
So, here is the opening tune from that demo, “I Know It”. Quality is a few generations down and –apparently - mono. But it’s all we could find.





In a further comment on the west Cornwall punk scene, Jonathon reminds me that April saw the release of “Bored Teenagers Volume 7”, which includes four numbers from fellow Penzance punkers The Vendettas, recorded in 1977 (again, an educated guess) at Sentinel. A brief history of the combo, together with an audio sample, can be found over on the excellent Kernowbeat website, while the album can be ordered direct from Detour Records. Their demo is a little more polished than the Rusty Bottles recording linked above....but it's all relative.