Rough Trade:1970s

Rough Trade:"offering a diverse alternative to mainstream music"

How did Rough Trade start?

Rough Trade started with Geoff Travis taking a trip to Canada where he purchased some records; he realised that there was nowhere in London where he liked to buy records and so paid for some records to be sent over from Canada and opened a shop in West London.

The original Rough Trade shop in West London (70s) 

Which music trends were popular?

Three of the main music trends, which were extremely popular during the 1970s, were: Hippy music, Reggae and Punk.

What was the ethos of Rough Trade at this time?

Rough Trade stood for the ‘intellectual political wing of punk’; Communism and Marxism heavily influenced them. (Marxism-the political and economic theories of Karl Marx, predicting the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat and the eventual attainment of a classless communist society. -. stg.brown.edu)

How was Rough Trade different to large corporations?

Rough Trade was an independent company, therefore were separate to the large commercial companies of the time. Companies such as EMI and CBS, the larger companies which often over shadowed smaller independent companies.

What techniques were used to expand the independent music scene?

Due to the fact that Rough Trade was an independent company, they did not have the same technical or financial advances as the larger commercial companies. Rough Trade resulted to the home made musical products by doing their own pressing and marketing, many artists thought this was a benefit as they did not have to spend lots of money and could decide on how many records they wished to produce. The band ‘Desperate Bicycles’ had the idea of turning record sleeves into instructions of how to make records. ‘Scritti Polliti’ carried on this trend as they printed the production budget on the record cover, showing just how cheap producing a record with Rough Trade could be. The larger companies often frowned this upon, Rough Trade had become ‘the headquarters of a revolt’ against the commercialised music industry.

How did this lead to Rough Trades expansion?

It had been shown to those interested in music that it was easier to get into the industry through an independent company rather than going straight to the bug companies. The original Rough Trade shop was set up in an area, which was cheap to live in; therefore it was a place where musicians would have lived-increasing the shops popularity. Originally Geoff Travis’ idea was to have a shop where people could just buy records, however, the discovery that they could produce and distribute records for a cheap cost led to the Rough Trade Distribution company.

Explain the successes of the distribution department and record label

'Stiff Little Fingers'

The distribution department was developed in 1977; it brought in more money than the record label as they distributed records to other small record shops around the country, which made it an extremely busy part of the company. As for the record label they had decided they did not want to be similar to the commercial record labels, Rough Trade had two simple clauses in their record contract. The first being that when the partnership between the company and artist was no longer working they would end the deal; the second clause was that any profit which was made from the record sales-once all the production and distribution costs had been taken away-was split equally between the artist and Rough Trade.

' The Raincoats'

“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. Such was the label’s recognised importance that a television programme the South Bank Show was devoted to it. 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 14.”