Rough notes on Trade
Sep. 5th, 2006 09:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusJust when you weren't particularly waiting for a book about Rough Trade, along come two at once.
Rob Young's book on the pioneering indie label has just been published. Which means that Paul Cox's, still forthcoming, has been pipped rather cruelly to the promo post.
The Guardian has gone overboard promoting Young's book which, at a cursory glance, seems rather coffeetable compared with Cox's (which claims to be "part authorised biography of Geoff Travis" and to model itself on David Cavanagh's exemplary book about Creation). Today's paper contains a reminiscence by Philip Hoare about his days "working" for the label in the early 80s, and the other day the Guardian ran this splendid Jill Furmanovsky photo of a young (and surprisingly good looking) Genesis P Orridge flogging the latest Throbbing Gristle offering to Geoff Travis back in 1978.
Since everybody is waxing lyrical about the label, I thought I'd scribble down my loose, oblique associations too. I remember a visit, way back in early 1982, to their legendary Blenheim Crescent warehouse, notoriously scented with brown rice and ganja. I was with my first band, The Happy Family, and we'd recently made a demo with Josef K's Malcolm Ross on guitar. Geoff Travis took the tape into his glass DJ booth and listened to it, then returned to tell us he "didn't think the guitars sounded committed enough". Which was his witty way of saying that he'd heard that Malcolm had joined Orange Juice, and that the guitarist was the best thing we had going for us. I remember the warehouse rocking to "Candyskin" by The Fire Engines while we were there; this was the record that was going to break them through. It didn't. It broke them up instead.
My next contact with Rough Trade was in 1988, when Creation was using their art department. By now they'd scored big with The Smiths, and had moved to new premises near King's Cross. I had to go and check the proofs for the "Tender Pervert" sleeve. The building felt haunted by Morrissey, I remember, and you couldn't quite forget all those rankling songs he'd written about Geoff Travis saying he "just hadn't earned it yet, baby". As it happened, the art department at Rough Trade was run by a very pretty blonde girl called Sallie Fellows, who became my girlfriend, leading to a certain amount of after-work drinking with the Rough Trade staff in King's Cross pubs. The affair didn't last long; Sallie met KLF timelord Bill Drummond, married him and had his babies. (She was commemorated on "Hippopotamomus" with a song about masturbating monkeys which she claimed to be too scared to listen to.) Rough Trade also didn't last long: in 1992 it went out of business for several years, stripping down to a distribution hub.
Geoff Travis did well as a manager in the 90s, with Pulp and others on his books. He revived Rough Trade as a label, and currently has some big acts signed. He's lost his signature afro and now looks like this.
My more recent contacts with Rough Trade are just as a consumer dropping into a series of excellent but short-lived record shops in Paris (Rue de la Roquette) and Tokyo (Cat Street). They've both gone, but the Slam City Skates store in London's Covent Garden is still there, and still a regular point of call for me. Somehow, when I'm in there, I feel like music still has the scale and meaning it had for me when I was in my 20s: small scale, big meaning.
Rob Young's book on the pioneering indie label has just been published. Which means that Paul Cox's, still forthcoming, has been pipped rather cruelly to the promo post.
The Guardian has gone overboard promoting Young's book which, at a cursory glance, seems rather coffeetable compared with Cox's (which claims to be "part authorised biography of Geoff Travis" and to model itself on David Cavanagh's exemplary book about Creation). Today's paper contains a reminiscence by Philip Hoare about his days "working" for the label in the early 80s, and the other day the Guardian ran this splendid Jill Furmanovsky photo of a young (and surprisingly good looking) Genesis P Orridge flogging the latest Throbbing Gristle offering to Geoff Travis back in 1978.
Since everybody is waxing lyrical about the label, I thought I'd scribble down my loose, oblique associations too. I remember a visit, way back in early 1982, to their legendary Blenheim Crescent warehouse, notoriously scented with brown rice and ganja. I was with my first band, The Happy Family, and we'd recently made a demo with Josef K's Malcolm Ross on guitar. Geoff Travis took the tape into his glass DJ booth and listened to it, then returned to tell us he "didn't think the guitars sounded committed enough". Which was his witty way of saying that he'd heard that Malcolm had joined Orange Juice, and that the guitarist was the best thing we had going for us. I remember the warehouse rocking to "Candyskin" by The Fire Engines while we were there; this was the record that was going to break them through. It didn't. It broke them up instead.
My next contact with Rough Trade was in 1988, when Creation was using their art department. By now they'd scored big with The Smiths, and had moved to new premises near King's Cross. I had to go and check the proofs for the "Tender Pervert" sleeve. The building felt haunted by Morrissey, I remember, and you couldn't quite forget all those rankling songs he'd written about Geoff Travis saying he "just hadn't earned it yet, baby". As it happened, the art department at Rough Trade was run by a very pretty blonde girl called Sallie Fellows, who became my girlfriend, leading to a certain amount of after-work drinking with the Rough Trade staff in King's Cross pubs. The affair didn't last long; Sallie met KLF timelord Bill Drummond, married him and had his babies. (She was commemorated on "Hippopotamomus" with a song about masturbating monkeys which she claimed to be too scared to listen to.) Rough Trade also didn't last long: in 1992 it went out of business for several years, stripping down to a distribution hub.
Geoff Travis did well as a manager in the 90s, with Pulp and others on his books. He revived Rough Trade as a label, and currently has some big acts signed. He's lost his signature afro and now looks like this.
My more recent contacts with Rough Trade are just as a consumer dropping into a series of excellent but short-lived record shops in Paris (Rue de la Roquette) and Tokyo (Cat Street). They've both gone, but the Slam City Skates store in London's Covent Garden is still there, and still a regular point of call for me. Somehow, when I'm in there, I feel like music still has the scale and meaning it had for me when I was in my 20s: small scale, big meaning.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 07:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 07:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 07:57 am (UTC)Oh, to commemorate an ex-girlfriend that way! You've given me a new mission, sir.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 08:54 am (UTC)Still shop at the branch at Slam City Skates and I get a far stronger feeling of commitment to music there than I ever did at the original shop.
Books about shops now. Will 'rock' music ever tire of navel gazing? It's weighed down by its history. What next? Books about individual punters and their record collections? Though with Thurston Moore's book on Mixtapes I guess that this may have already started happening?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 09:23 am (UTC)To be fair, Rough Trade was both a shop and a record label. And, some say, a "state of mind". But yeah, it is all terrible navel-gazing, and a sign that music is pretty much over but for the nostalgia industry spin-offs.
What next? Books about individual punters and their record collections?
Eureka! You just invented Nick Hornby!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 11:30 am (UTC)I'd also forgotten Dylan Jones' paean of praise to the iPod and his astonishing ability to programme playlists under such innovative headings as 'Jazz', 'Dance' and 'Rock'.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 02:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 09:38 am (UTC)Try: Hornby, N: "(insert appropriate number here) Songs".
I took a peek at it once, but I didn't see much about music in the sections my eyes scanned.
There was someone I knew from New York who was in the midst of writing a book about the history of Rock Critics. I am not joking. Dawn Eden. Freelanced for Mojo. I ran. She since became part of "Jews for Jesus" and rants about abortion.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 11:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 01:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 01:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 11:10 am (UTC)rock c*it
Date: 2006-09-06 06:13 am (UTC)Mostly likely it's lost in the mailbox of a long-since expired email address, but I might be able to find the title of this tome (that I assume remains unpublished), if it's of interest.
Re: rock c*it
Date: 2006-09-06 10:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 01:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 10:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 02:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 10:59 pm (UTC)And could I just pause to mention that your icon is very funny.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 01:49 pm (UTC)And a factual chronicle of a movement can be very useful, especially for those who are too young to have been there themselves.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 10:27 pm (UTC)Small scale, big meaning
Date: 2006-09-05 09:29 am (UTC)Re: Small scale, big meaning
Date: 2006-09-05 09:33 am (UTC)http://tajmall.livejournal.com/90067.html
Re: Small scale, big meaning
Date: 2006-09-05 09:50 am (UTC)Re: Small scale, big meaning
Date: 2006-09-05 09:57 am (UTC)Re: Small scale, big meaning
Date: 2006-09-05 10:10 am (UTC)Re: Small scale, big meaning
Date: 2006-09-05 10:40 am (UTC)&monkey for sallie...need to listen to it now. o.k.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 09:57 am (UTC)(...) I started to notice that a lot of the records I liked best were on a label called Rough Trade, and after reading an old Paul Morley review, I decided to take the plunge with the fantastic sounding Swell Maps, one of the few groups that my new friend didn't have any records by. 'A Trip To Marineville' was such a jolt to my senses that even now when I hold it in my hands and look at the front cover of a suburban house spontaneously combusting, I can't help but feel slightly nostalgic for my 16 year old self, just about to play it for the first time. There I am, glazed then captivated, playing it over and over, notching the volume a little more each time, trying to squeeze a little more out of it. I wanted to rationalize it like Paul Morley or something, and I thought, well, this sounds pretty wild, but I have heard wilder music. But I hadn't heard wilder pop music and that was Swell Maps' trump-card; joyous, uplifting, full-on destructo-pop, abstracting unexpectedly into real moments of beauty. I was faced with a dilemma; should I share it with my wee pal or was this just meant to be my thing? I thought of all the little pricks back in the common-room and decided I didn't want to be elitist; I would be a Swell Maps crusader. First I needed to buy everything I could by Swell Maps which at the time was only three singles, though fortunately there were side-projects too. Next I felt I needed to start thinking like a Map by getting into other music they cited, like Rough Trade label-mates The Raincoats and Television Personalities, and their influences: Faust, Can and This Heat. After a while I'd gone hardcore and was getting my music direct from Rough Trade shop in Ladbroke Grove where Swell Maps sometimes worked. Occasionally there'd be a friendly note in alongside the crazy amounts of records and fanzines I was now buying. Back then Rough Trade just seemed to have all bases covered; every aspect of a music culture I craved, and their mail came to me part Red Cross parcel, part Open University correspondence. Researching this piece I started to re-read these fanzines with names like Let's Be Adult About This, Real Shocks and Station Alien. Immediately I was reminded of the high-quality graphics, the warmth of the writing and the spirit of adventure. These qualities inevitably reflect the parent culture; mostly the stance that Rough Trade had taken in building on punk's nihilism to foster an educated, inquisitive fanbase that for a while dismantled the by then bloated punk star system, and shifted the emphasis back onto music and a new community. I will never forget the thrill of following a label whose uncontrived eclecticism introduced me to everything from Metal Urbain to Robert Wyatt, and from Augustus Pablo to Cabaret Voltaire. I always tried to remember the lessons I'd taken from that era of Rough Trade as I left school and started to learn how to make music for myself. Soon I found I was making contact with people who'd been similarly drawn to the label, like my friend David who was obsessed with building a fuzzbox that would simultaneously emulate the two great treble sounds of The Raincoats; their rhythm guitar and violin. By then Swell Maps had split, but their music never really left my life, and it was through them that I met a soul-mate who encouraged me to believe we had it within us to participate in, and add something to the music culture that we loved.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 09:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 10:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 11:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 01:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 01:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 01:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 02:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 03:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 05:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 01:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 02:50 pm (UTC)My name is Zac.
I am no fool.
I will be moving to Berlin, for graduate study and the other reasons people move to Berlin, and this will happen in three weeks.
I'd like to introduce myself.
I'm Zac.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 02:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 03:12 am (UTC)music is pretty much over but for the nostalgia industry spin-offs
Date: 2006-09-06 06:05 am (UTC)Re: music is pretty much over but for the nostalgia industry spin-offs
Date: 2006-09-06 04:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-10 07:26 am (UTC)