Cobra was a very short-lived member of the EMI family. 'Music Week' of the 15th of September 1979, reporting on the label's imminent launch, said that it was to be the 'house' label of EMI's 'Licensed Repertoire Division'. An EMI spokesman was quoted as saying that Cobra was intended "to restore the balance between in-house and third party repertoire in line with EMI's global strategy over the past two years ... the artist roster is to be small." He added that the LRD was very much a part of part of EMI but that it had its separate existence and building. 'MW' of the 6th of October carried a large advert for Cobra, but less than four months later 'MW' of the 26th of January 1980 was reporting on the label's imminent demise. According to another EMI spokesman the decision to drop Cobra had been a marketing one: "We have a lot of labels already and another was unnecessary," he said. Why that same logic hadn't applied four months earlier, he failed to reveal. Six staff had been made redundant, including Cobra's A&R team, and Tony Squire, the label's head of A&R, had resigned. The article quoted Squire as saying that he was "bitterly disappointed that EMI could not have let it [Cobra] continue in its autonomous state any longer in order to prove its success." His frustration is understandable. A couple more Cobra singles came out after the decision to drop the label was taken; presumably they had been lined up for release prior to it. Altogether eight singles were released, numbered in a COB-0 series; the number COB-7 seems not to have been used - perhaps the record that was supposed to have it fell victim to the cut. One of the bands on Cobra's roster, Craze, was shifted onto EMI's Harvest label; the others seem to have been cut loose. The Jeep record shown above is a New Wave version of an old Irish (?) folk song, which takes some imagining; it had previously been issued on Jeep's own 'Airport' label (q.v.).
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.