CTT – Conjunto Típico Torreense

CTT emerged in the midst of the Portuguese Rock boom, trying to ride the wave of Rui Veloso, UHF and GNR.

With origins in Conjunto Típico Torreense, from Torres Vedras, a dance group, the band decided to use just their initials to launch themselves into Portuguese Rock.

Consisting of Luís Plácido (voice), Augusto Alves (keys), Tozé Monteiro (guitar), Hernâni (aka Nani) Teixeira (bass) and Gabriel Matos (drums), CTT released, in 1981, the single “Destruição” (with “Vai No Ar”, on side B) which was reasonably well received by the public.

This was a group that already existed, unlike many others that formed on purpose to record records. This advantage would give CTT reasons to remain on the crest of the wave, but this would not happen. At the end of 1981 they released a new single, this time with the songs “Hora de Ponta” and “A Moda Que Eu Quero”.

Requests for concerts began to emerge and the author of this article remembers seeing the band live, playing the first part of Girlschool, an English Heavy Metal band made up only of girls. At the concert there was an incident with the band, when the English technicians decided to turn off the band’s equipment and microphones, which ended the concert abruptly.

Augusto Alves, who the remaining members of the band affectionately call “Mr. Augusto” because he is much older than them, made the sound of the organ stand out among that musical mass in a different way than the other keyboardists did. This meant that CTT had its own sound that distinguished them from the other groups that were swarming at that time. In 1982 they released their last musical testimony, an LP entitled “Oito Encomendas Discriminadas No Verso”.

Produced by António José de Almeida (drummer of Heróis do Mar), this LP contains, as the title indicates, 8 songs: “Ovni”, “Em Terra De Cego…”, “Ai Que Sina A Minha”, ” Uma Noite Passada”, “É Bom”, “Ilusão”, ” Há Uma Lei” and “Chapa Batida”. The “design” of the cover is like a postal order and is very well done.

Despite the production by António José Almeida and some of the musical proposals presented on the album were not to be thrown away, the band was not successful with this album. You can hear a good vocalist, a good bassist and the ever-present sound of Mr. Augusto’s organ commanding operations. CTT would continue for another two or three years as a Rock band, returning as a dance group (until 1994).

Mr. Augusto has a band promotion and production company and Nani Teixeira is the only one who continues as a professional musician, being part of the band that accompanies Luís Represas.

CTT remains in the history of Portuguese Rock, as one of the bands that failed to succeed, after the “parting of the waters”. However, as already mentioned, it was a band with interesting proposals.

ARISTIDES DUARTE / NOVA GUARDA

With an even shorter career [than that of other groups at the time] were CTT, a name that this group adopted during the “boom” period without wanting to deny the origin of Conjunto Típico Torreense. They also had a heavy sound and it was with “Destruction, Destruction, Destruction” that they started to kill in the national charts. They came from the dance circuits, they experienced the same explosive and devastating success, the same madness of recording against the clock. “There was little, very little studio time”, recalls Luís Plácido, the former lead singer of CTT: “It was like going in with everything very well rehearsed and just getting going. There was no time for experimentation in the studio or for testing anything. were the possibilities.” Still in the same year, 1981, CTT recorded an album, “Oito Encomendas”, but there was already disenchantment in the air.

The former bassist of CTT, Nani Teixeira, the only one who still remains as a professional musician”, points out that “there was a time of great evolution, an evolution of quality and diversification, but in the name of which they were precisely the bands that opened the doors to the Portuguese rock boom that later ended up paying the bill.” The group’s leader, Augusto Alves, recalls that CTT had “a very different story from most of the bands that appeared at that time”: “We existed before, we all played together as Conjunto Típico Torreense long before all that madness happened. We already had a clientele before, at a certain point we did that, and then we returned to the audience we had.” Refusing to believe that CTT were “a bathing season phenomenon”, the band’s former drummer, Gabriel Matos, states that CTT “continued for a few more years, but people stopped believing in the recordings”.

Augusto Alves, “Mister Augusto”, as the other former members of the band refer to him, largely due to the difference in ages, even more due to the respect for who they identify as the “owner” of the group, was the man who took him by the hand the Conjunto Típico Torreense of dancers to the status of a rock band, in the pioneering times of rock sung in Portuguese. And, if the Conjunto Típico Torreense of the dances survived until 1994, the CTT who entered the top charts in the early 80s, singing “Destruição, Destruição, Destruição”, had long been left behind.

DISCOGRAPHY

Destruction/Vai No Ar (Single, Polygram, 1981)
Rush Hour/A Moda Que Eu Quero (Single, Polygram, 1982)
Eight Orders (LP, Polygram, 1982)

ON THE TRAIL OF…

The band’s bassist, Tozé Monteiro, 44 years old, left the group in the mid-80s, due to difficulties in compatibility with the work he still performs in Torres Vedras Finance. (Public/99)

Luís Plácido, 40 years old, the vocalist who played guitar like Jimmy Hendrix – with his teeth – is an appliance and refrigeration technician and took on much of the cultural programming of the Caixaria community, near Torres Vedras. (Public/99)

The drummer, Gabriel Matos, 49 years old, was a designer, a civil servant, and is now an interior decorator, but he remains stubbornly involved in music, with a band that tours the bar circuits, Banda Sonora, in which Tozé also plays from time to time. Monteiro. (Public/99)

Hernâni Teixeira, 40 years old, owner and master of the bass guitar solos in CTT, is the only one of them all who remains a professional musician. After searching for “refuge” in Luxembourg, because only by moving away would he be able to leave the CTT, he returned to Portugal and has been following Luís Represas for some time now. (Pública/99) Nani Teixieira also accompanied Mafalda Veiga.

Augusto Alves has a band production and promotion company.