Hello! This is Rough Trade ...

March 20, 2018 4:58 AM

Melvyn Bragg's South Bank Show profiles Rough Trade Records in 1979. Includes live footage of and interviews with Stiff Little Fingers, Lora Logic and Essential Logic, The Raincoats, Robert Rental and The Normal, and Geoff Travis and various Rough Traders.
posted by carter (6 comments total)

Love me some Stiff Little Fingers. Thanks for posting!
posted by wires at 6:53 AM on March 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

Everybody loves Stiff Little Fingers (man, those first chords of "Alternative Ulster" get my blood racing every time), but what thrilled me was seeing footage of Lora Logic and her band. I was mesmerized by her sax on "Oh Bondage, Up Yours" and then by her playing and singing on Red Krayola's Kangaroo?, and I started scouring NYC record stores in the early '80s for Essential Logic records and amassed quite a little collection. It's great to see her on stage and discussing her career; thanks for the post!
posted by languagehat at 7:07 AM on March 20, 2018

Oh man, is this amazing. Melvyn Bragg! Rough Trade!
posted by tftio at 7:49 AM on March 20, 2018

Not to well-actually, but I believe Lora Logic left X-Ray Spex before they recorded Germ Free Adolescents?
posted by pxe2000 at 9:15 AM on March 20, 2018

In 1979 my friends and I went upstairs in the Rough Trade shop and played Geoff Travis a tape we'd made. He not only agreed to distribute our EP but paid us in advance for a box of copies, which is how we got the money to press the vinyl. I should mention that we were a bunch of 15 year old school boys who could barely play.
posted by w0mbat at 10:35 AM on March 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

> Not to well-actually, but I believe Lora Logic left X-Ray Spex before they recorded Germ Free Adolescents?

She left before the record came out, but that's her sax on that tune. (I don't think she was credited on the record cover.)
posted by languagehat at 11:52 AM on March 20, 2018 [1 favorite]