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| BACK ON THIS DAY 30 YEARS AGO ....SUNDAY 27TH 1977 |
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| White Stuff
first issue February 1977 (Scotland) "The first issue had a major portion devoted to Patti Smith and the magazine is named after a line in one of her songs...Patti Smith is the single most important artist to emerge this decade." - Sandy Robertson - (24) Sandy Robertson "In 1968 I met the other weirdo in town, Alex Fergusson, and we swapped discoveries. I must have been the only guy in Glasgow who bought Stooges Elektra LPs when they first came out, and I had a copy of the Fugs' 'It Crawled Into My Hand', Honest. Rejected by the then-UK version of Rolling Stone as a regional hack for having the wrong "background", but encouragaged by correspondence with Pete Frame of ZigZag, Robertson managed to get paid for a late-night special on the Velvet Underground for Radio Clyde. He was tired of travelling hundreds of miles to see gigs. "I went to the Isle of Wight fest in 1970 alone at 17 to see Jim Morrison," he remembers. Rightly thinking the punk upsurge would open a window of opportunity in the biz, in January 1977 he left his flat in Espedair Street, Paisley. Robertson took the manuscript of his artsy Patti Smith fanzine White Stuff and Fergie his axe. "Within weeks he (Fergie) was in Alternative TV, Mark Perry's band, and I'd been headhunted by Sounds". Robertson continued putting out White Stuff while writing for Sounds. After leaving Sounds some years later, he become associate editor and film critic at Penthouse. His articles, errata or correspondence have appeared in NME, Record Mirror and many other music magazines. His books are Sleeping Stars ('75), Names Of Angels ('76), Phenomenology of Excess ('81), Bryan Adams ('86), Aleister Crowley Scrapbook ('88), Classic 1000 Videos ('99), Top 1000 Videos ('00), and he contributed to the Wallflower Contemporary Film Directors Guides. Robertson hopes to present a more balanced account of his misbehaviour in the autobiography he plans, to be called Born Left-Handed. |
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| ROUGH TRADE RECORDS |
| GEOFF TRAVIS must feel like Dr. Frankenstein sometimes. Geoff is tall and lanky, with a fuzzy afro of light brown hair and a grin guaranteed to melt the snowcap at the top of Mount Everest. He opened up Rough Trade Records a year ago to a simple recipe: lots of excellent new and second-hand records, covering rock ‘n’ roll, soul, jazz, punk, funk, reggae, everything except for M.O.R., you-name-it-they-stock-it ("We integrate everything with everything," says Geoff,); lots of green plants in the window; a table-full of mags for the customers to leaf through whilst they drink mugs of tea; nice things on the walls, (more a pad than a shop); lots of good sounds and lots of good vibes. Geoff is open, friendly, and a True Fan. So is his sidekick, rangy redhead Steve. Between them they offer the kind of thoughtful, informative personal assistance Virgin shops used to be famous for. It’s a traditional California New Wave consumer concept, but since the Alternative Society wheezed into terminal breakdown, nobody’s succeeded in reviving that relaxed ambience — in London at any rate. Geoff must feel like ol’Doc Frankestein when he sees how that simple recipe has blossomed a hole-in-the-wall shop into a nerve-centre, Energy Transmission H.Q. Rough Trade is located at 202, Kensington Park Road, London W.11, running behind Portobello Road market at the Ladbroke Grove end, right in the heart of the two ghettos — white hippie and black. In general, the twain never meet, except during Carnival time. We all know what happened last time [rioting — RBP Ed], but Rough Trade’s plate-glass window remained unscathed, since the yout' formed a spontaneous sentry outpost. Only in Rough Trade do you get the welcome sight of breddas with locks mingling with brothers with safety-pins. It’s a safety zone where the two parallel living forces in contemporary British music culture converge in the flesh — punk meets reggae, and they shake hands amiably before diverging to the Roxy and the Metro, their respective roots hangouts. Everyone wants to know about these there fanzines. Mark P’s the man to blame, since he encouraged all and sundry to produce their own answers to the sprightly Sniffin’ Glue (now based at Rough Trade, by the by). Jon Savage started the fashion for adopting Rough Trade into the fanzine family when he asked if he could use their address on his London’s Outrage. The shop quickly became a centre for the first spasms of alternative publishing to spatter London since the glorious days of Ink, Black Dwarf, and it seems like every time you walk in there’s a new cluster of fans clutching embryo ‘zines — yesterday it was Sandy and Alex with the master copy of White Stuff, a special Patti smasheroonie which looks great. R.T. even stock languorous John Ingham’s massive Clash collagerama, London’s Burning. The R.T./fanzine marriage began with the indefatigable Stewart Joseph’s brainwave; importing the classy New York mag Punk and selling it in the shops. Now Stewart’s become an unofficial Mr. Fanzine-Fixit, helping to organise printing and distribution for key New Wave publications via his Rough Trade Promotions (same address). The shop’s status as a vital data processing bank was triumphantly confirmed when Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye dropped in on their last trip. They read the customer’s Playlist stuck on the walls (inspired by SOUNDS, of course,) admired Mick Rock’s framed Lou Reed pix, bought the special edition Lou Reed EPs and lots of Jamaican sounds, signed copies of Punk Number Two with the Patti cover, and Geoff turned them on to the Abysinnians. Patti still writes to Rough Trade, and the latest word is: she and Lenny still love the Abysinnians, and they still love Rough Trade. Sensible folk. A-be-seein’-ya — Veedge P.S. For them that’s too sweetly innocent to know, ‘Rough Trade’ is gayspeak for a sexual contact with threatening, menacing, or generally violent tendencies. © Vivien Goldman 1977 Vivien Goldman, Sounds, 29th January 1977 |
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