Current_page_item problem

Hi guys,

Im wondering if anyone can help me?

I have been scratching my head trying to figure this out for a few days.

I dont have the actual code up live as im working on it on my local machine but if its really needed i can probably look at getting it up somewhere.

I have a two tier level menu.
The top level of the menu displays a black tab when you hover the mouse over it.
The submenu appears horizontally below this and has doesnt have any background image applied to it via the css.

I have setup a class for current_page_parent. So if i click on one of the sub menu items the parent of that sub menu option will have the black tab background displaying to show it is a parent of this.

The problem im having is getting the parents on the top level to show with this tab. If i use current_page_item then the submenu items start to display this tabbed background that i dont want.

So in a nutshell i only want to apply the current_page_item class to the top level of my menu but not the second level.

Does anyone know an easy solution to do this?
Hope this doesnt sound too confusing!