Different Every Time by Marcus O'Dair

Author:Marcus O'Dair [O’Dair, Marcus; Wyatt, Robert; Coe, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781619026766
Publisher: Soft Skull Press

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FOREIGN ACCENTS

The Rough Trade singles

‘The whole point about Rough Trade’, explains label founder Geoff Travis, ‘was that it was set up as a cooperative, and it was done on a socialist model. Everybody had the same wages and it wasn’t meant to be the classic hierarchical situation. In our minds, we never thought: “We want to be like Richard Branson.” It wasn’t about making ourselves rich. It was more like a kibbutz, if you like.’

The archetypal indie label, Rough Trade really was the alternative, cottage industry that Virgin had resembled only in its early days. And its roster was enormously diverse: from the French punk of Metal Urbain to the oddball poems of Ivor Cutler, via the industrial strains of Cabaret Voltaire and the free jazz of James Blood Ulmer. The company had begun as a record shop in west London, around the corner from where Wyatt had lived in his Matching Mole days. By the time they made contact with Robert, they had grown into both a record label and a distributor, facilitating as well as epitomising the DIY ethos of punk.

Geoff Travis, who still regards The Soft Machine as one of the best groups of all time, was delighted to sign Robert (or, rather, Robert and Alfie: ‘both of them are great artists, and I see them together’) to the label, and suggested beginning with a single. Last time he had encountered the world of 45s, Wyatt had bolted – yet his new label didn’t share Virgin’s interest in commercial hits. ‘A whole new kind of record company had been set up,’ enthuses Robert. ‘They didn’t look down on musicians or up to musicians, they were just equal people. An egalitarian organisation: it didn’t seem possible before I met Geoff Travis. That was enormously important to us.’

Though Robert had listened to a lot of records since Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard, from calypso to Bulgarian folk to Soviet jazz, he hadn’t composed a note of original music. The solution was a return to cover versions: ‘Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra’, it dawned on him, ‘never wrote a tune between them’. Rather than Neil Diamond and Chris Andrews, however, this time Robert would rework records that reflected both his panoramic musical interests and his increasingly robust political beliefs. Though some distance from The End of an Ear, or the John Cage numbers he had recorded for Brian Eno, these tunes were still avant-garde by Robert’s own definition: searching for beauty in unexpected places.

‘I look for the beautiful in people we are told to hate,’ Wyatt explained to Time Out, ‘whether it’s the Russians or the Chinese or the Arabs. I look for the potential friend in the enemy. That’s how I got into what’s now called world music. It’s nothing worthy or moral, it’s just a continuation of the avant-garde aesthetic. Looking for the beauty in what I’m told is ugly.’ And, while Little Red Record had only flirted with Maoist imagery, the Rough Trade singles really were as red as rhubarb.

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