Primitives' Comeback 'Not a Full-Scale Reunion'

Last week, the Primitives launched a two-week, 12-date UK tour, their first since disbanding in the early '90s. Next month, the group heads to Brooklyn, N.Y., where it will play the Bell House on May 8.

As grateful as guitarist and main songwriter Paul Court is to back onstage, revisiting his bubblegum-punk past, he says he'd never thought much about reforming. This tour is all about "nostalgia," he insists, adding that it's "not a full-scale reunion."

"I was kind of glad not to be doing it anymore," Court tells Spinner, speaking by phone from his home in Coventry, England. "Not just the Primitives, but music in general."

The band split up in 1992, a year after 'Galore,' its third album for RCA, proved a commercial disaster. Court stuck with music another couple of years, fronting similar-sounding groups, but in 1996, he traded rock 'n' roll for painting and graphic design.

"I just thought, 'I'll switch it off now,'" he says.

Last year, Court reconnected with former Primitives singer Tracy Cattell, better known as Tracy Tracy, at the funeral of original bassist Steve Dullaghan. The pair decided they should reunite, Court says, before middle age really set in and made the whole thing too embarrassing to fathom.

"It's sounding really good," Court says of the band. "I'm hoping it's going to come across as a nice, solid, best-of-where-we-were kind of thing. And a lot of people seem to be quite excited about seeing us again, which is nice."

The Primitives are perhaps best known for the tune 'Crash,' a hyper-catchy rush of Ramones crunch, '60s jangle and girl-group melody. A modest US hit in 1988, 'Crash' resurfaced in 1994, when it was included on the soundtrack for the comedy 'Dumb and Dumber.' The film sparked renewed interest in the band, as did the slew of websites and online tributes that began surfacing the following decade.

The music, of course, remains as relevant as ever, and echoes of the Primitives can be heard in everyone from fuzz-lovers the Raveonettes to C86-era Brit-pop revivalists the Vivian Girls and Pains of Being Pure at Heart.

While Court and Cattell recently recorded a couple of cover tunes and are considering booking additional US shows and European festival appearances, a permanent reunion seems unlikely.

"In regard to original material, we've not really thought about that yet," Court says. "There's some halfway written stuff, but that's a whole other thing-to try to finish off songs. Basically, that's why I was glad not to be doing it anymore ... At some point, you think, 'That's it. It's not happening anymore.' I still haven't switched on that switch yet."