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Subject: Typical Girls: Women in Punk/Post-Punk/Underground Music (Circa 1975-1980s)

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  • From: maria tessa sciarrino <maria AT plainparade.org>
  • To: typicalgirls AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [TypicalGirls] rough trade
  • Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:15:54 -0500

im not sure if i have my history right, but didnt RT sell off the rights
to a lot of stuff in the 80's? i recall reading an interview with scrawl
where they had to buy their stuff back... this is from an interview
jenny toomey did with sue & marcy:

That was a really interesting time to be on an independent label and
to tour.

Sue: It was.

Can you talk a little bit about it?

Sue: Initially it was great. They gave us money to make a record.

Marcy: We're talking $1,000. We thought it was unbelievable that
someone was going to give us $1,000 to make a record. We ended up
going with Rough Trade, mostly because Steve Connell was just the
best guy in the whole world and struck us as truly sincere. Rough
Trade had this history of being a cooperative kind of label, and kind
of almost socialist. The Smiths were there and the Pixies. In
England, they were a huge independent label and really highly
respected. It was crazy. We made He's Drunk and we toured. It was
very exciting because we got to play in San Francisco all of a
sudden. We did L.A., playing in people's basements on the way there
and on the way back. And Lubbock, Texas.

Sue: Canada. We played Canada.

Marcy: It was completely arm in arm with Nice Strong Arm for the
first year. Thank God, because when there were bad shows, we could
hang out together.

Sue: There were a lot of bad shows. I think we had a rule that if the
crowd outnumbered the band members, we would play. And thank God it
always worked out that there were three people in the audience.

Marcy: We played a lot of six-people shows. Well, then our record got
really good reviews and then Rough Trade became not socialist and not
fun anymore. They were trying to make more money. We felt really,
really pressured after the second record. Like, major label kind of
pressure. It was weird.

Sue: At one point, they wanted us to sign a contract for a third
record. So they Fedexed the last page of the contract to every club
we played in -- because we were on tour -- thinking we would sign it
without reading the rest of the contract.

Marcy: I don't even remember that.

Sue: We didn't sign it. And luckily we didn't, because they went
bankrupt within a year.

"Their Masters' Voice"

Sue: They owned the first three records that we did. They had the
master tapes. So, we're in Columbus. We're just trying to wash our
hands of the whole situation and just move on. And we realized,
thanks to a friend who lived in New York, that they were auctioning
off all of their master tapes like the next day.

Marcy: It was actually Terry Tolkien who started working with us
right before Rough Trade went bankrupt. When Rough Trade went
bankrupt Terry went on to work for Elektra. Well, he called us one
day and said, "Did you know that Rough Trade is having an auction of
their masters tomorrow?" Like, tomorrow. And all of these bands,
they're stuck. Your masters, three records, masters, art work,
everything is up for auction and we didn't even know about it.

Sue: So, we asked a friend, Dan Dow, who owns a record store in
Columbus, if he would lend us $1500 bucks and we wired it to Terry--

Marcy: Under the guise of being from Elektra, he bid on our stuff and
got it back for us. That's how we got the rights back to our first
three records was because he called us the day before and was willing
to go and bid on them for us.

Sue: ...and Dan was willing to shell out $1500.



can anyone clear this up for me?

-m.

Jason Gross wrote:

Sad to say, as much as I love Rough Trade, they're not keen on keeping older items available. I understand that they want to focus
on the new artists that they have but they should be proud of their
history also.




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