Heart of a Punk Soul of a Rasta

Cob Records - The Last Record Shops of Wales

Anyone with even the merest interest in RECORDS, 45's, shellac, vinyl, tapes, cassettes, long players, basically fluff and groove generation will know all about Cob Records in Portmadoc. For me it's a place that has always been there, just like Ivor the Engine, "somewhere in the top left hand corner of Wales".

Reading through the blurb produced by Cob some years ago (here unfaithfully reproduced) I find my memories of COB are nothing unusual. So if you've strayed onto this site, and you're unfamiliar with the crapola I write, I suggest you quickly jump over this next bit shit and read the printed stuff below. You'll find it much more worth while and life affirming. Have you gone? Good then I'll begin.

Cob and I started off on the wrong foot. That's the strange thing with music. One day you and music are just coexisting in a benign sort of way, the next day music is under your skin, deep in your pores and slapping you about the head with a rubber mallet determining every move. Dress sense, political stance and friends all get modified and repositioned once music takes hold. Well that's how it was for me anyway.

Prior to 1977 Cob Records was no friend of mine; it was a place of unremitting boredom. Nowadays when I'm in Cob I get reminded of those distant times. Some bloke will invariably turn to his girlfriend, after flicking through the vinyl for a long long long time, and enquire whether she's "alright?" - Before feverishly continuing his quest twitchily fingering through every CD. Her watery smile clouds to a solemn dead cold glare. She then stares out of Cob's dirty rain splattered windows as if imploring some invisible deity to take her away from this place. When her prayer goes unanswered she simply mouths the words "kill me, please someone, kill me" whilst inwardly planning her revenge.

And this just how I felt when I was first introduced to Cob. Prior to '77 I spent an eternity standing next to my Dad, bored out of my tiny fruit, as he waded through all the second hand eight track cartridges trying to find a particular Sammy Davis Jr LP; one with the extra track on it only found on the US version. Or worse still, I spent what seemed like days, standing next to my elder brother whilst he went through rack upon rack of vinyl trying to locate a particular pissing Bad Company or Uriah Heep album. I could have been on Black Rock Sands or up the Moel y Gest or on the Ffestiniog Railway or at the Portmadoc's Coliseum Cinema watching Jungle Book for the 743rd time, or just sitting on a slate tip in the acid rain. But no I was in bleeding Cob Records watching my whole childhood being slowly flushed down the sodding drain.

Come 1977 my antipathy for Cob Records had turned, almost overnight, into unbridled love. I was only 13, on holiday, and with holiday money in my old sky rocket looking for a place to go. I knew exactly where my KA$H was heading. My juvenile affair with Cob Records was about to start like most juvenile love affairs do; with a simple request. I sidled up to the ocky. Rested my blistered sun burnt elbow on the counter and said "Excuse me mate, have you got "Peaches" by The Stranglers". He quickly bagged up the single and I brought out a crisp FIVER into the glorious sunlight. I upped the stakes. "You haven't got "Get a Grip on Yourself" by The Stranglers as well have you?" "Grip" had been released some months before and this meant a unique Cob procedure was required. The young geezer paused for a moment and gave me a stare. Then quickly ran his thumb down a list of old stock. "Yeah we've got it. I'll just go and get you a copy". He then sprung out from behind the counter, out of the shop, and fought his way across the busy traffic backed up on the Portmadoc Cob. (You still had to pay .05c to cross the Cob in those days - so things went real slow. Some poor caravan pulling twat invariably overheated midway across bringing everything and everyone to a dead stop. Those were the days. Bring back the .05p toll I say). Once across the road he entered a small building next to the Ffestiniog Railway Station, and after some moments of rummaging emerged firmly gripping a copy of "Grip". With such a massive stock like this you were always able to get the stuff you could afford at the time, at a later date. Sweet.

For the next three years this is how it was between me and Cob Records. Once or twice a year I'd wave farewell to my love in Wolverhampton, Sundown Records, for a brief holiday fling with Cob. All I needed for a decent holiday was some records from Cob, the latest Jack Higgins book from the shop next door, and my Bush Box record player. (I bought my Bush record player from Lance O' Regan's Second Hand Shop in Chapel Ash Wolverhampton - Why was his stuff so cheap? And why were the police always in there? They always seemed to be looking for something. Oh well, one of lifes mysteries I guess) A book, a record, and a record player that was all I needed back then, WALES could rain as much as it liked, I was fire proof.

I've made my way to Cob Records most years since the seventies, and it's not changed radically, if it at all. I've been to Cob in Bangor a few times too. I went by bus from Portmadoc once during the eighties; it was a journey that should have featured on the "Worlds Most Dangerous Journeys". Bethlehem and Nebo were just a couple of the stops on this ramshackled voyage, a voyage of truly biblical proportions.

Going to Cob Records today, in the Summer of 2011, now owning a lot more records but with about the same amount of money in my pocket as I had back in '77. I'm still able to find something I didn't realise I must have until I found it in Cob. The promo poster for "Bear Cage" single by The Stranglers circa 1980 is still there pasted to the wall. So too the free "Get Happy" poster given away with Elvis Costello's LP from the same year. COB RECORDS has remained the same because it's exactly how a RECORD SHOP should be. In Wolverhampton every one of the Record Shops that I used to frequent: Sundown, Goulds, Ruby Red Records, Time Machine etc are all long gone. And only the DISKERY in Birmingham is still holding fast from the old days. One day, no doubt, I'll turn round and Cob Records will be gone. WILL IT BOLLOCKS! Cob Records will always be there, long after we're all dead and cold in the ground whether you can see it or not, it will remain, there, somewhere, "in the top left hand corner of Wales".