ROUGH TRADE
In 1978 the world was a very different place. Punk was in ashes Music was still in a format were u would send in demos and get a record label to make you a star. The digital age was still a hazy blur at this point. It was in this year that the Rough Trade record label began.
Geoff Travis was traveling in North America and amassed a huge record collection as he moved from coast to coast. He then shipped these records back to the UK, which became the basis of the Rough Trade Shop. The label started out as a record shop, which Geoff Travis had opened in a chaotic record shop in Kensington park road West London in February 1976.
Life before Rough Trade Label
Geoff Travis was born in 1952, the son of an insurance loss adjuster. As a teen he went to many of London’s rock venues and took to the London’s music, seeing bands such as The Who, and The Rolling Stones Travis graduated from Churchill College in Cambridge in the early 70s after studying English and philosophy. In 1974, he flew to America and hitchhiked across the US with his girlfriend, and his record collection of 400 LPs and vinyl’s bought in shops and car boot sales. Travis set up Rough Trade after borrowing £4,000 from his father to help cover the costs of stock and premises Inspired by record stores across the US he decided to set up rough trade. Buying and selling worldwide records of all genres creating the inspirational atmosphere of the USA. 1976. Specialising in vinyl, foreign imports, and punk and reggae music, it was and still is considered by many as revolutionary and unique.
The Rough Trade Label
In 1978 it had created a distribution system and was taking and selling records from bands benefiting from an emerging DIY culture of music. Where small bands would approach for help and ideas. But then taking bands and making deals to pay for recording and manufacture costs, in return for 50% share of the profits made. Which lead them to make the decision to become a record label. The Label was set up in 1978, founded by Geoff Travis. Welcoming, radical and even revolutionary upcoming bands to perform and trial out. ‘Paris Maquis’ by French punk rock band Metal Urbaine has the distinction of being the first Rough Trade release and was swiftly followed that year by an eclectic further eleven singles, many of which stand today as classics of their genre. Reggae reflecting the label’s location in the heart of the West Indian community punk and a healthy slice of electronic music were presented.
By the end of 1979, a number of bands now commonly associated with Rough Trade had started to release records on the label, including Scritti Politti and The Raincoats. When its first album, Stiff Little Fingers’ ‘Inflammable Material’, was released later in the year, it became the first independent record in history to sell over 100,000 copies and charted at number.
The Move
Rough Trade had grown far too large for its legendary Kensington park road West London premises. The growth of the label’s success and distribution meant that larger premises needed to be found and in December 1980, the label and distribution moved to Blenheim Crescent.
Rough Trade released over the next few years some of the finest independent music ever committed to vinyl. New acts to the roster included The Fall, Pere Ubu, Young Marble Giants, This Heat, Robert Wyatt and many more.
The signing of The Smiths in 1983 drew Rough Trade into a new experience. In which they had formed a new style and genre known as ‘indie’ and The Smiths, although not entirely foursquare with the genre, found themselves at the forefront it The intensity with which the media embraced them, and the ensuing parallel success of their records meant that the label had to learn how to promote a band in a way it had never had to do before.
By 1984, Rough Trade was successful and on the move again, this time to larger premises in Kings Cross. In spite of its growth it had shed none of its principles and those characteristics that defined the company early on such as its release of ‘strike’ by the enemy within distributed to help support miners’ families at the time of Miners that struggled against Margaret Thatcher’s government. They also donated records to the children of the miners. In 1987, Jeannette Lee joined Rough Trade and would go on to co-develop the Rough Trade record label, as we know it today. A former member of Public Image Ltd and former employee of the legendary punk clothing outlet Acme Attractions, Jeannette would initially be influential in steering some of the bigger successes of late 80-s Rough Trade. Jeannette’s arrival coincided with a new influx of guitar bands that looked set to reinvigorate the label, bands like Galaxie 500 and Mazzy Star.And 1989 the company had a turn over of 22 million.
The Problems
In 1991 they had a un successful year for the label; they made an ill fated move to Finsbury Park and after a series of unfortunate business decisions and issues with their distribution, the parent company, Rough Trade International, went into administration. Rough Trade’s time as an independent label and shop were over as the company’s assets were sold off to pay for its distribution debts. Ruining quite a few smaller record labels to which money was owed. Some have suggested that the label was a victim of its own success. Rob Young argued in Rough Trade, his history of the label, that “personality clashes rotted it away from the inside” and the successful business that had been growing and progressing for the past 15 years had crumbled to nothing, leaving over fifty of the UK’s most prominent independent bands out of pocket and with Rough Trade unable to lift their leftover stock or reimburse them.
The Comeback
It would be the best part of a decade before Geoff Travis and Jeannette Lee could get the rights to the Rough Trade name and begin again as a record company with the help of trading partner Sanctuary. Once again the old Rough Trade ethos came to the fore – an openness of mind, a willingness to be moved and an unswerving belief in the vision of the artists. They were back in west London, too, which has always seemed the spiritual homeland of Rough Trade.
To make Rough Trade a success again, Travis needed a new band, comparable in substance to the Smiths. After many false starts and unsuccessful new beginnings he finally satisfied this ambitious aim. In 2000 he was sent a cassette tape of three songs by an unknown band called the Strokes
In Spring 2001, Geoff and Jeannette DJ’d at the V&A for the 25th anniversary party of the Rough Trade shop and the good faith elicited convinced them that they were absolutely right to re-launch the label. They had already released a trickle of albums and singles but it was an unsolicited tape from New York they had received a few months earlier that would spectacularly give them they ammunition they needed.
The Strokes first release ‘The Modern Age’ – the title almost says it all – galvanised both the revitalised Rough Trade and the British music industry, which was sorely in need of a lift post Brit-Pop. Geoff and Jeannette’s peripatetic foray to a New Jersey bar in search of the band they would bring back and promote before attending to the small detail of signing them to a contract paid off. Subsequent releases by The Strokes through 2001/2 and beyond would give their label its biggest commercial success since The Smiths.
Rough Trade specialised primarily in European post-punk and other alternative rock of the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the late 1980s Rough Trade branched out by issuing an eponymous album by Lucinda Williams. Other early signings included Agitpop, The Raincoats, Young Marble Giants, The Smiths and Scritti Politti (the latter re-signed to the label in the mid 2000s). Geoff Travis later launched Blanco y Negro Records in partnership with Warner Bros. Records.
Rough Trade was an independently owned entity, a partnership between Travis, Jeanette Lee (a former member of Public Image Ltd.), and minority partners Sanctuary Records the last few years the record industry has not escaped the economic downturn and one result of that has been the severing of ways between Rough Trade and Sanctuary in July 2007 when the label entered an equal partnership with the Beggars Group. A perhaps more appropriate fit, the Beggars deal ensured ‘stability, dynamism and expertise to grow on a worldwide basis’. Rough Trade independent once again
Since its re-birth, Rough Trade has released albums by high-charting artists such as The Strokes, The Libertines, Babyshambles, and Belle & Sebastian. A 192-page illustrated history of Rough Trade, written by Rob Young of The Wire, was published in September 2006 by the UK-based company Black Dog Publishing.
Shortlist in 2008 and with groups like The Hold Steady, ‘the band that set out to do nothing’5 finding themselves rising global stars, for the moment Rough Trade heads in the right direction. Important new releases for 2009 by Antony & The Johnsons and The Veils underline the fact that the future is promising. ‘It’s flattering that people are interested in the past,’ Geoff Travis has said, ‘but… the most important thing is what happens now, what happens next.’
In March 2009, BBC 4 began broadcasting another thoroughgoing musical documentary, the 88-minute Do it Yourself: The Story of Rough Trade.
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