tradesecrets
On the eve of a package tour celebrating the independent but ambitious ethic that gave birth to an inspirational force within UK music, Neil Cooper charts the highs and lows of Rough Trade Records
F ive months before Margaret Thatcher’s landslide 1979 victory, and with Britain’s city streets still retaining the air of a depressed bombsite, highbrow arts programme The South Bank Show appeared to have been hi- jacked by a cell of musical terrorists. Their mission in such dark times seemed to be to corrupt the nation’s already restless youth. Among the grainy live footage of earnest punk polemicists Stiff Little Fingers, the sax-led free- form skronk wail of Essential Logic, the scratchy squat-rock of The Raincoats and the disturbing synthesiser throb of Robert Rental, serious theorists discussed manifestos in clandestine fashion, seizing the means of production to create a samizdat cultural underground and, ultimately, a state of independence. It was called Rough Trade, and it was going to change your world.
Shadowy and intense, Rough Trade, founded on a punk-hippy ethic and then just a year old, was as far away from the filth and the fury of the tabloidisation of ‘Punk Rock’ as was possible. In the normal world, where the bunny-fixated
‘ALL I REALLY DO IS ENCOURAGE THE PEOPLE WHO DO INTERESTING THINGS’
appeared on our three-channel TV sets late one Sunday night in 1979. Headlined by Jarvis Cocker, himself an embodiment of DIY aesthetics, with Jeffrey Lewis bringing up the rear, Looking Rough at 30, which stops off at Edinburgh’s Picture House, should be a testament to surviving the lean years and coming of age, in public or otherwise, disgracefully.
The Rough Trade story is a rough trail: from smash hit success with The Smiths and 1980s boom years over-expansion, to bankruptcy, the subsequent loss of the label’s catalogue and name, and a split from the shop which sired it. There’s also the triumphal 21st century rebirth with The Strokes, more big business strife, a 2005 Mercury Music Prize win with Antony and the Johnsons’ I Am a Bird Now album, and, in Rough Trade’s current state, a glorious return to its independent roots. For label founder Geoff Travis, whose white- boy afro as witnessed in The South Bank Show
schmaltz of Art Garfunkel’s ‘Bright Eyes’ had just spent six weeks at the top of the singles chart, it was shockingly clear that Rough Trade, based in the west London record emporium that had become the neighbourhood’s Liberty Hall, wasn’t so much a record label as a wake-up call to an alternative way of life. Thirty years on, things may not have quite worked out as planned, but Rough Trade is still with us, still independent and still at the forefront of a permanent musical revolution. To celebrate, the label is about to embark on a package tour which, in spirit at least, resembles the one that
SOUND INVESTMENTS Neil Cooper and Mark Robertson have their pick of momentous RT releases
Cabaret Voltaire ‘Nag Nag Nag’ Genius primitive electro- squelch, now a staple of electro-clash dancefloors.
The TV Personalities ‘Part Time Punks’ Dan Treacy’s hilarious DIY paean to the Kings Road scene that may or may not have spawned a movement. Robert Wyatt ‘At Last I Am Free’ This cover of a Chic number transcended an song into something even lovelier.
Young Marble Giants ‘N.I.T.A.’ Spooky minimalism from the recently reformed trio, possibly the oddest, most disembodied break-up song ever.
The Fall ‘Totally Wired’ Mark E Smith never liked Rough Trade’s co- operative ethics, but this pop-eyed anthem remains one of their greatest early singles. The Smiths ‘How Soon Is Now’ Johnny Marr’s layered guitars turn Morrissey’s forlorn lyrics into a complex blues of depth and feeling.
The Sundays ‘Can’t Be Sure’ Harriet Wheeler was briefly every sappy student boy’s pin-up. Her soaring vocals on this indie classic prove why.
14 THE LIST 27 Nov–11 Dec 2008