Stoke Newington Literary Festival (1st - 3rd June2012) is now in it's third year of existence and has been described as eclectic, inspiring, sometimes audacious and always brilliant. Set up to celebrate the area's radical thinking and literary heritage.
We decided to pick out a few events that are our favorites below but there's plenty more to choose from. The full programme can be seen online here.
Meet two brilliant writers who are obsessive about London. Mark Mason walked the entire London Underground system above ground – all 403 miles of it – uncovering some astonishing insights and a wealth of fascinating trivia along the way. Craig Taylor spent five years listening to the London residents who make the city such a vibrant place to live. With a cast featuring undertakers, plumbers, gardeners, rappers, Mark Twain and Karl Marx, this event will amaze, inform, delight and inspire you to look at the city with fresh eyes.
When George Orwell described his perfect pub – the ‘Moon Under Water’ – he wasn’t thinking of a Wetherspoon’s. Last year Robin Turner travelled the UK in search of Orwell’s vision, visiting pubs and talking to people, including a session with N16 beer scribe Pete Brown in The Jolly Butchers.
Pete’s next book – Shakespeare’s Local – tells the 500-year history of the George Inn in Southwark. So we decided to reunite the pair to compare notes and figure out what characterises London’s best pubs.
Return of the popular music and music-writing panel, hosted by World’s Coolest Librarian(TM) Richard Boon, who invites four renowned writers to each play the track that made them want to write about music, then discuss where serious writing about music is going, or has gone, and whether music and its writing matters in the way it once did. This year, on an NME tip, with its biographer Pat Long and past writers David Quantick, James Brown and Barney Hoskyns. A ‘Hit’ not to ‘Miss.’
Nick Coleman was a music journalist whose world changed overnight when he lost his hearing. His forced rediscovery of sound and the music-scapes that had shaped his identity brought with it some astonishing insight. He discusses ‘taste’ in music, the personal soundtracks to our lives and enormous record collections with fellow music writer Barney Hoskyns.
Tomorrow evening at 7pm (Tuesday 15th May), Rough Trade East will play host of an event entitled Communist Hipsters Meets Hoxtonites. Lida Hujic, author of The First to Know: How Hipsters and Mavericks Shape the Zeitgeist is known as a 'Hoxtonite' trend-setter. But, few realise that she was part of the radical radio station Omladinski Program (1987 - 1992) that turned communism on its head. When Yugoslavia collapsed, this network became the strongest anti-war movement.
Chat and Q & A with Lida and friends. Daft psychometric test, pub style quiz, to measure your hipness level. Discover if you're a 'communist/Eastern Bloc' hipster, 'Hoxtonite/East End' hipster or not hip at all, to win an exceptional goodie bag containing original collector clothing accessories from 1984 Sarajevo Olympics (be retro chic this summer!), T-shirt with the iconic 'Sarajevo' Coke ad-busting image and a signed copy of The First to Know. Live set by Bosnian born, hot DJ/Producer Erol Sabadosh (residencies W Hotel, Ponystep; fashion Vivienne Westwood; PPQ; remixes The Strokes, Lady Gaga) plus Erol's remix of Laibach, who were heavily endorsed by Omladinski Program, to celebrate this radio's legacy.
Erol's remix of Laibach's B Mashina can be downloaded here...
More information on Lida's book 'The First To Know' can be found here
In our East store, in the book section, appropriately nestled between the categories marked Drugs and London, is a small section of titles carefully selected, well-loved and thoroughly recommended by our friends at Caught By The River. But while London, Sex and Rock And Roll all seem self explanatory as category headers, what is this other strange selection that shares its space here? Caught By The River is hard to pin down, I guess. It's a literary website. But it's cooler than just that - it's a literary website with a rural, nature loving bent. But it can be as muscular as it can twee. It features music and art and poetry and essays. It's a publishing house. It's punk and it's libertarian and it's brilliantly, steadfastly democratic. It's also five years old this year, a wonderful achievement for a thing dedicated to beauty, art and nature as opposed to commerce and cynicism. To celebrate this landmark, as well as the launch of the paper-back of their brilliant first book, A Collection Of Words On Water, the Purcell Room in the South Bank Centre will for one night on the 25th of MaybecomeCaught By The River. For one night it will be a physical place, full of words, music, people of a like-mind and probably more than a couple of Barbour jackets... I don't exaggerate when I say that this site, as well as the myriad of books it has both spawned and believed in, is one of the greatest things out there in web-world. But even better, even more exciting than the site, is the prospect of seeing it all unfurl, Chis Yates, John Andrews, Chris Watson, Richard Norris, Robert MacFarlane et al, in the flesh on the 25th.
Acclaimed French artist FAFI is coming in to Rough Trade East for a signing session this Thursday evening at 7pm to celebrate the launch of her new book The Carmine Vault.
Born and raised in Toulouse France, Fafi's strong presence in the graffiti and fine arts scene was first witnessed on her hometown walls in 1994. Back then, as she was painting and hustling, her sexy, funny, and sometimes aggressive girl characters made the whole world look and help kickstart a new graphic language; by exploring femininity through stereotypes, and using it to her advantage, she drew enormous attention and thus started to travel the world with thousands of Fafinettes in her brushes and paint cans. Europe, USA, Japan, Hong-Kong, the planet is a playground. And it's only started.
Soon enough Sony would ask her to design a six character toy set for the Time Capsules collection, an almost natural move for the three-dimensional measures. other successful figurines would follow, as well as numerous expositions and collaborations with Colette, Adidas, LeSportSac, Coca-Cola, M.A.C cosmetics and countless press stories in the mot prestigious magazines (ie. Vogue, Elle, the Face, XLR8R, Yen, etc...).
The animation world started to eyeblink her vision in Mark Ronson video featuring a Fafi-ed Lily Allen. Her multi-faceted work was all documented in her books GIRLS ROCK (2003) and LOVE AND FAFINESS (2006), both being also successful prints in museum libraries and selected shops.
As for 2007, Fafi entered a new phase. Having become mother and moving to Paris made her introduce a new depth to her creations. Now not only the Fafinettes are fly girls, they also run a whole universe of creatures, homes and vehicles. It's called The Carmine Vault. It's a dreamy and peculiar place. She depicts this world in a graphic novel "The Carmine Vault" and gives her characters a whole new dimension, a tone and a place to evaluate.
Next up on Rough Trade East's art wall is an exhibition presented by Caught By The River entitled 'Our Garden Birds' by Matt Sewell.
Since its first appearance in July 2009, Matt's 'Bird of the Week' feature for the Caught by the River website has quickly become a cult hit. His pop-art watercolours are distinctive and enchanting, as are his innovative descriptions, which see great tits 'bossing the other birds around', the 'playful yet shy buoyancy' of bullfinches and the 'improbable' nature of the waxwing ('like a computer-generated samurai finch').'
Now, for the first time his original drawings and descriptions are compiled in this beautiful volume entitled 'Our Garden Birds'. The perfect read for bird-lovers and art and design fans alike. Rough Trade East will play host to an exhibition for the book displaying framed lifesized giclee prints of the bird watercolours as well as a painted mural. More of the book can be seen in this great little video...
Artist Matt Sewell is an avid ornithologist and regular contributor to the Caught by the River website. He has illustrated/designed for the Guardian, Victoria and Albert Museum, Helly Hansen, Levi's, Crown Paint and painted underpasses for the RSPB, and exhibited in London, Manchester, Tokyo and Paris. This exhibition is on display until 3rd June.
We also have a very special event in conjunction with the exhibition taking place on Saturday 5th May.
Matt will be joining us here at Rough Trade East from 11am for a coffee morning plus live mural painting. He'll also be painting watercolour birds all day so drop in with the kids and paint one with him.
At 11.30am Matt will be joined by Cheryl Tipp, the curator of The Wildlife Sound Archive at The British Library, for a 'Wildlife Sound Quiz', a multiple choice quiz with sounds chosen by Cheryl from the archive. A fun morning for the whole family!
... we're in Paris for a couple of weeks. There's a pop-up store for Record Store Day, like there was last year, and like there was in December. The December trip was great, not least because we were joined for two or three days by the gentleman genius that is Josh T Pearson. He was great company and we had a blast. But I can't help feeling like Paris is haunted by this beautiful, ephemeral troubadour. Let me tell you why...
A couple of nights ago, we were taken to a small creperie for dinner. It was the kind of place you would walk past, like so many great places in great cities, unless you knew someone to take you there or tell you about it. Anyway, we sat down and ordered cider and ate bread. We got talking about December and Josh and the proprietor of the place, milling about behind the bar, pulling demis and pouring ciders asks if we're talking about Josh. Yes, we say. He lived here for two years, the owner tells us in perfect English, we were fans and we had him stay and try and get his thing together. He ate a lot of crepes. The owners wife walks round to the bar. I make my own caramel and salt butter every day, she said (it's insanely good), and every night Josh would ask if I needed any 'cleaning up'. I had an image of Josh with that beard of his licking a caramel bowl clean.
We hung out talking about music with the owners, who put on little shows - Neal Casal, Micah P Hinson... shows that were started by Josh when he lived there, and they have carried them on. The owner pulled out a record sleeve and handed it to me. It was an album recorded in that very place featuring one night's picking and singing with Josh, Bosque Brown, H Burns and Thousand.
The owner recorded and produced the session and it sounded great when he played us a few songs. They just put mics up in the little bar and hammered it out over homemade apple digestifs and whiskey. The way a record like that should be made in a place like that... if you're going to make records in tiny Parisian creperies.
He played us a couple of tracks off the second record he's got planned and half recorded with She Keeps Bees, which sounded great as well.
If you're in Paris I recommend a crepe with vanilla ice cream and homemade caramel with salt butter at West Country Girl. If you're into good music, I recommend getting hold of their records, too which will soon be available at Rough Trade...
We have a new exhibition adorning the wall in Rough Trade East by poster designer Sophie Lo.
Sophie has a range of posters on sale in the shop all priced at £12.99 each. She has also created a special one-off design for Record Store Day 2012 too, pre-orders are being taken now.
We've got loads of great film screenings coming up over the next 4 weeks here at Rough Trade East. I thought I'd put all the information about each screening in one place below...
BLANK CITY tells the long-overdue tale of the motley crew of renegade filmmakers that emerged from an economically bankrupt and dangerous period of New York history and crossed over with the East Village Art Scene and thriving music scene. It's a fascinating look at the way this misfit cinema used the deserted, bombed-out Lower East Side landscapes to craft daring works that would go on to profoundly influence Independent Film today. Unlike the much-celebrated punk music scene, this era's thrilling and confrontational underground film movement has never before been documented.
Directed by French newcomer Celine Danhier, BLANK CITY weaves together an oral history of the "No Wave Cinema" and "Cinema of Transgression" movements through compelling interviews with the luminaries who began it all. Featured players include acclaimed directors Jim Jarmusch and John Waters, actor-writer-director Steve Buscemi, Blondie's Debbie Harry, Hip Hop legend Fab 5 Freddy, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Lydia Lunch, artist James Nares, photographer Richard Kern as well as Amos Poe, Eric Mitchell, Susan Seidelman, Beth B, Scott B, Charlie Ahearn and Nick Zedd. The soundtrack includes: Patti Smith, Television, Richard Hell &The Voidoids, Sonic Youth, James Chance, The Contortions, and many more.
BUY GRAHAM COXON'S NEW ALBUM 'A+E' FROM MONDAY 2ND APRIL IN-STORE AT ROUGH TRADE EAST AND COLLECT YOUR WRISTBAND AT THE SAME TIME, ANY REMAINING WRISTBANDS WILL BE GIVEN OUT 1 HOUR PRIOR TO THE STAGE TIME...
Q Magazine 4/5 Uncut 8/10 Clash 8/10 Fake DIY 9/10 'Album of The Month' Total Guitar 'Album of The Month'
Graham Coxon returns to Parlophone for his new album titled A+E, which will be released on 2nd April. A+E is Coxon's first release since the acclaimed, acoustic-driven The Spinning Top.
Aptly named not only for the sense of scratchy, frantic urgency that suffuses its 10 songs, A+E finds Graham continuing with his singular vision as a truly eclectic artist. Playing all the instruments and improvising in the studio, Coxon found himself preoccupied with lyrical themes around the effects of weekend hedonism in modern Britain, on which A+E shines an outsider's light, albeit with a mordant, sharp wit.
Produced by Ben Hillier, A+E features Coxon's distinctive, visceral garage-punk-pop and is inspired by the experimental genres of Krautrock and the black & white, post-punk era - bringing to mind artists such as Neu! ('City Hall'), Can and Kraftwerk ('What'll It Take'), as well as Peter Hamill, Joy Division ('Knife In The Cast') and Monochrome Set - with hypnotic, driving grooves ('The Truth'). This may be the closet Graham has ever come to making, in a skewed sense of the word, 'dance' music. Coxon describes the album as, "Improvisations, experiments in beats, rhythms. A chance to uninhibitedly make some sort of perversely sad, danceable and funny and despondent songs." Adding "I didn't want to get caught up in my usual struggle with trying to make things sound really posh. I didn't want lovely 60s-sounding drums and valves."
Graham will be signing copies of 'A+E' exclusively for Rough Trade.
BUY CHEMICAL BROTHER'S 'DON"T THINK' ON DVD OR BLU-RAY DISC FROM MONDAY 26th MARCH AT ROUGH TRADE EAST AND COLLECT YOUR WRISTBAND AT THE SAME TIME, ANY REMAINING WRISTBANDS WILL BE GIVEN OUT 1 HOUR PRIOR TO THE STAGE TIME...ONE PER PERSON
"...One of the best films about dance music ever made." The Guardian
"An astonishing, celluloid rush of blood to the head." The Sunday Telegraph
"The most intense music film ever" The Times
"You literally feel the noise. Without saying a word, Don't Think speaks volumes." Empire *****
"The cinematic event of the decade" Mixmag *****
"A psychedelic classic" Mojo ****
"Phenomenally exciting...could well be the most thrilling live movie ever" The Word
The Chemical Brothers; Don't Think directed by Adam Smith, has since reached legendary status. Unlike any other movie release Don't Think catalysed rave-like cinema scenes compelling elated viewers in 30 territories across the world to abandon their cinema seats, dance in the aisles and chant along with the on-screen Fuji Rocks festival crowd. From London to LA to Buenos Aires for one night only, fans across the globe were empowered and intoxicated by Don't Think, which has come to re-define the cinematic experience. The verdict from fans and critics has been unanimous... this was a one of a kind experience, definitely not to be missed!
The life and work of cult writer W. G. Sebald has been brought to the big screen for the first time by a Grammy nominated filmmaker. With previous work including music videos for Radiohead and Blur and the music film Joy Division, director Grant Gee has created an appropriately hypnotic film for Sebald's distinctive, evocative prose.
The film loosely retraces the east Anglian journey that Sebald took in his most influential book, The Rings Of Saturn. Interspersed with contributions from filmmakers, artists and writers - such as Tacita Dean and Andrew Motion - and extracts from his novel voiced by Jonathan Pryce, Patience (After Sebald) presents a multilayered exploration into his work.
Born in Germany in 1944, Sebald settled in England in 1970 and became Professor of European Literature at the University of East Anglia in 1987. In the subsequent period of stunning creativity, he achieved great success with seven works of prose fiction published, including Vertigo (1990), The Rings Of Saturn (1995) and Austerlitz (2001). His tragic death in a car crash at 57 was described as "an unspeakable loss to literature" in The Guardian obituary and his work maintains a phenomenal international following.
A Q&A will follow the screening. Guests TBC very soon.
In "Vinylmania" the director guides us through the grooves of an object that has never lost its soul. He investigates what makes it so legendary in a world dominated by liquid music: Nostalgia? Possession? The search for an identity?
"My mother used to wake me up with a vinyl record. It's the first thing I remember about life. Many years have passed but vinyl records have never abandoned me. And you? Have you ever listened to a vinyl record? With its unique sound and crackling that gives you butterflies. Have you ever plunged into the colours of the sleeves artwork? Have you smelled it? Music captures a unique taste, seductive." In "Vinylmania" the director guides us through the grooves of an object that has never lost its soul. He investigates what makes it so legendary in a world dominated by liquid music: Simple nostalgia? Possession? The search for an identity? A cry against the fast food music? The digital river that has no heart or soul, just ones and zeros...
From Tokyo to New York, London, Paris and Prague we meet a tribe of collectors, Djs, musicians and artists. We explore the stores where passion is transformed into fever and the factories that have resumed stamping millions of copies. Vinyl records are back!
So how on earth does a band like Black Mountain end up writing music in the name of the world's sunniest sport?
Understand, Year Zero is nothing like your ordinary bro-time surfer flick. Shot around the world on 16mm film, Year Zero is set in a near-ish future where the world as we know it has ended. Director Joe G. places the survivors in a damaged but stunningly beautiful place, a world where the reset button has been hit, where we hold onto the vestiges of the things we love, but those things become weightless, and the ensuing freedom is as exhilarating as it is scary. To simply call it postapocalyptic is to undermine the imagination that Joe G. brings to the world's remains, and Year Zero is ultimately as much a "surf movie" as it is a movie about Earth illustrated through surfing.
Given the new world set forth in Year Zero, it's as if Black Mountain have been set free of the boundaries that "making a record" impose. Much of the new material is driven by expansive, synth-driven swirls and a dangerous, rumbling low end. Outlaw vibes, to be sure. Black Mountain's psychedelia has never been anchored to any one style, time, or genre. But withYear Zero, Black Mountain go to a place that is intergalactic and downright ruthless, with a sound big enough to stand up to the vastness of the ocean, the bigness of the sun, and the lives of the people left living. Which is fucked up and heavy, no question, but so goes Joe G.'s vision, and thanks to Year Zero, now we know: Black Mountain could actually pull off being the last band on earth.
A very special limited edition book from Faber & Faber of Will Oldham on Bonnie Prince Billy is due for publication on 5th April. Each copy will be signed and numbered, and encased in a beautiful chocolate and silver Solander box. In every box there will be two 10" vinyls with six exclusive and (as yet) unreleased tracks, recorded in January 2012. Each box set will also be individually numbered and labelled.
Will Oldham's idiosyncratic exploration, through conversations with Alan Licht of the psyche and processes that have created one of the most compelling and beautiful bodies of work in American music. The closest thing to an auto-biography as we're going to get!
Pre-Orders are being taken here now. Limited to only 300 copies.
British Sea Power will premiere a powerful new soundtrack performed by Yan and Noble of British Sea Power in the CERN Globe of Science and Innovation, in association with Branchage Soundtrack to OUT OF THE PRESENT.
Formed in 2000, British Sea Power have built a reputation of both being a blistering live band with a Mercury nomination for their 2007 release Do You Like Rock Music? alongside championing alternative performances in unusual locations from seaforts to caverns to village halls. In 2008 they were commissioned by the British Film Institute to create a new soundtrack to the 1934 silent documentary Man of Aran, which they’ve toured extensively to music and film festivals, including the Branchage Jersey Film Festival in 2009.
Out of the Present is a new challenge for the band, with the film firmly rooted in the futuristic world of space travel mixed with the historical aspects of the Cold War and the fall of Communism. In bringing this to the very location which is at the forefront of science and technology, to perform at at CERN, we can expect a completely new experience in sound and vision from this exciting band.
Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev is the focus of this documentary chronicle of life on the Russian space station Mir, for 10 months in 1991 and 1992 Mir. While he carries out routine day-to-day activities of eating, exercising, and conducting experiments in weightlessness, he is also a bystander to the collapse of the Soviet Union happening on earth below…
Commissioned by the 2012 Cineglobe International Film Festival at the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland tickets are FREE but are to be reserved here.
Great looking show coming up at the Dalston Victoria courtesy of our friends Gilded Gutter... Underground legend Zarjaz playing material from both Tronics and Freakapuss. And in Dalston.
We're returning to Paris with our spring collection this April to coincide with the 5th anniversary celebration of Record Store Day, Le Disquaire Day, taking place on Saturday 21st April.
Building upon the success of last year’s visits, which saw a hugely successful Record Store Day and a Christmas Store featuring live performances from the likes of Jarvis Cocker, Josh T Pearson, We Have Band and Ed Banger, Rough Trade Shops will again open a temporary (10 day-only) Paris store from Wednesday 11th April until Saturday 21st April, located in the woman's agnès b. store, 6 rue du Jour, Paris, 75001.
Rough Trade on Tour - Spring Collection 2012 will offer a typical Rough Trade edit of only the very best music, vinyl and cd, much of which will be especially released for Le Disquaire Day meaning many rarities that are sure to sell out immediately. Those Rough Trade exclusives will also be crossing the channel and some very intimate in-store events and DJ sets will be taking place from the best acts around.
Just as the Rough Trade Shops in London are much more than simply places to buy music, but are also spaces in which you can see and hear the newest, most exciting bands up close, Rough Trade On Tour will feature live performances and signing sessions. A taste for Parisians of just what a great record store experience adds to a city’s cultural richness.
The full programme will be announced very soon but I can announce that so far appearances from Laura Gibson, The Oscillation and Sea Of Bees will be taking place.
Rough Trade On Tour chez agnès b is kindly supported by FRIEND. FRIEND collaborates with agencies, clients, and like-minded artists for a bold, international, creative-led take on production. With a diverse range of directors and huge experience in the delivery of TV commercials, online content and music videos, FRIEND’s roster offers both well-established and fresh, new talent. FRIEND are teaming up with Rough Trade Shops On Tour chez agnès b and will be showcasing the distinctive, cutting edge creative aesthetic that makes FRIEND and Rough Trade perfect partners.
To some, The Modern Ovens might be known as-that-Jonathan-Richman-covers-band-side-project-of-British Sea Power. And while this would be correct, we are also refined enough in our tastes to acknowledge the talent that members of Brakes, The Tenderfoot and of course the legendary Actress Hands bring to this unique ensemble.
The concept is as simple as it sounds. The songs of Jonathan Richman played by a brilliant Brighton supergroup in the spirit of fun, positivity and child-like wonder that the great man was so adept at channeling. As the man himself says, "They sound like a pretty hot band". So get down to Club Kamikaze The Waiting Room, Newington High St on the 25th of April and have some fun...
This isn't about music. But then, to paraphrase CLR James, what do they know of music who only music know? And that brings me neatly to the actual topic of this post. Cricket. We're fans of cricket here, and always have been. It seems to me that cricket speaks to the artistic soul in a way that other sports can never do. Perhaps it is the pace of the game, contemplative and thoughtful where rugby and football are aggressive and adrenal. Anyway, that pace has never been better personified by one player than by the Indian batsman Rahul Dravid. A careful accumulator of runs, The Wall was the implacable pragmatist of a sumptuous Indian middle order, surrounded by the dash and verve of Sachin and Sourav and the muscular hitting of Sehwag. Dravid announced his retirement today, leaving behind the small matter of 13,288 test runs, putting him second on the all-time list behind Tendulkar, so here's to The Wall. No Pink Floyd here, please..
Stav Sherez is an acclaimed crime writer. The author of The Devil's Playground, The Black Monastery and his newest work A Dark Redemption. That's cool enough, we're big fans of crime writing here at Rough Trade - from Conan Doyle, Ross MacDonald and Dashiell Hammet to Kinky Friedman and Elmore Leonard, but Stav was also one of the standout writers on the much missed music magazine Comes With A Smile, writing articulate, smart reviews and conducting interviews that genuinely illuminated their subjects in a way that the fossil poking monthlys had neither the brains or balls to. We remember an interview with Richard Buckner that was a particular highlight, the pair speaking about books, films, music, people, places... Anyway, Stav's a big music lover, a long-time customer, and a damn fine prose stylist, so we recommend you get down here and check him out in conversation with The Telegraph's crime fiction critic Jake Kerridge.
Stav Sherez in conversation with Jake Kerridge at Rough Trade East on Thursday 15th March 7pm More information can be found here...
LeeFest started in Lee Denny’s back garden when he was 16 years old and his parents went away on holiday. Banned from having a house party, Lee and a few friends decided to try their luck with a festival in the back garden. Seven years on, from Lee’s garden to Highams Hill Farm in Kent, the festival is a 2000 capacity event, offering an eclectic mix of emerging music and mixed arts.
LeeFest is a non-profit show and donates proceeds to Kids Company, a charity in London working to empower vulnerable young people to successfully overcome the devastating effects of neglect and abuse. It takes place on a beautiful farm just 30 minutes from central London and accessible on an oyster card!
The first names announced for this year include Mystery Jets, Raf Daddy (The Two Bears), Summer Camp, We Were Evergreen, and BIGkids.
Today is International Women's Day. A day that feels appropriate to celebrate the huge impact that women have had on the music we love here at Rough Trade. From the obvious touchstones like The Raincoats and The Slits, to perhaps less obvious artists we love like Dolly Parton (the greatest singer-songwriter of all time?) the influence of women on the music associated with Rough Trade has been incalculable.
But there are also wider and more profound socio-poltical ideas at play here that feel pertinent to raise today. Rough Trade was started as a means of expressing, channeling and promoting a pro-feminist, anti-homophobic, anti-racist aesthetic that has always been, and still remains, at the forefront of our values. As the world has changed so have we, but it remains increasingly important to my mind to re-dress what has become a boorish and cynical modern trend towards de-valuying the word feminism and to re-claim it as a self-evident truth - inherently positive and essential to our growth as a community of human beings, equal and free.
Green Man has just unveiled Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, tUnE-yArDs, of Montreal and King Creosote & Jon Hopkins as the latest additions to his most exciting and eclectic line-up yet!
The quality quartet lead the latest wave of 30 amazing acts heading to Wales’ beautiful Black Mountains for Green Man’s 10th birthday celebrations from August 16-19.
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks follow-up their brilliant Beck-produced fifth album Mirror Traffic with a UK exclusive festival appearance at Green Man 2012. As lead singer with Pavement, Stephen needs little introduction: expect a slew of slanted and enchanted guitar wig-outs from the godfather of lo-fi indie.
It’s been a momentous 12 months for New England native Merrill Garbus – aka tUnE-yArDs. Backed by bassist Nate Brenner, Garbus uses loop pedals, drums and ukulele to create a jaw-dropping live spectacle, with second album whokill drawing comparisons to the likes of Aretha Franklin, Bjork and Sonic Youth.
Led by flamboyant frontman Kevin Barnes, of Montreal are musical magpies whose sound has evolved from the psychedelic twee pop of 2005 breakthrough The Sunlandelic Twins into a heady mix of Prince and Bowie-inspired electronica, funk, glam, and afrobeat. Miss this spectacular Far Out headline slot at your peril!
Green Man legend King Creosote returns in the form of his life with long-time collaborator Jon Hopkins and the Mercury-nominated Diamond Mine - one of the most unashamedly heart-warming albums of 2011. The duo’s much-requested appearance at Green Man 2012 is guaranteed to be one to savour…
Green Man still has TWO great top-secret main stage headliners up his sleeve for his big 10th birthday bash. In the meantime, confirmed acts and artists for 2012 can be found here...
An email just went round here at Rough Trade. It said Happy Birthday Rough Trade Shops - 36 today. I looked at the date and saw that it was indeed the 23rd, and so yeah, it is the venerable old girl's birthday. 36... is that old? For a fast bowler? Yes. For a writer? No. For a rock star? Probably. But let's not labour that point. It might offend a few people.
Is it old for a record shop? Sadly in this day and age, it seems ancient. It's getting on for a whole life.
But in reality that is what this place is. It's life. Record shops offer an idea of life. A bit of life for all those albums and 7"s and 12"s. A bit life for the customers who come in. And a bit of life for those of us who work here. It's all life, real and in full colour. With spilt coffee and power cuts. Arguments and love affairs. Drink and drugs and clothes and books and people. Real people.
So don't download some shitty piece of code masquerading as art when you next want some music. Go to a shop. Interact with a human. Take home the artifact. The thing. A person made it. A real one.
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