04-2000 / The Wire / Stephen Pastel's Epiphany to Swell Maps and Rough Trade

With hindsight I can't help but wonder if my geek credentials were maybe a little lightweight for this column. But dutifully I will record that at the age of 16, in the summer of 1979, I was not only ok at football, tennis and most sports, but had even inveigled my way into a seeming acceptance from the bad kids, the school neds. Of course this meant dumbing down, and like a bad method actor sometimes I'd get caught out; like the time in Oral French, when an eagerness to match my teacher's pronunciation led to a deflating year-long nick-name of 'Bourbon', like Louis Bourbon, although that wasn't the punch-line of course. But mostly my relationship with the neds was quite satisfactory and I was happy to be their friend at a time when they held sway, ruling the school with their teenage mug humour as yet undimmed by bad exam results, and ultimately a lack of imagination. In the last couple of years at school of course, a seismic power change takes place and the neds drop out of the picture, making way for a new hierarchy of straight-laced smart kids and high-achieving former geeks. I realised it was time to make some new friends, and as I was starting to get into music, naively thought that was my best option. At the time I already had records by The Beatles, The Buzzcocks, The Ramones and Roxy Music which to me seemed quite promising, although I was humble enough to know I needed a little assistance to develop my tastes. I'd start hitting on fellow pupils if I saw them reading the NME in the common-room: 'I see The Buzzcocks have got a new single out.' Potential pal: 'Who cares. Don't you know The Buzzcocks have sucked since Devoto left.?' I'd try to up the ante: 'What do you think of the new Wire LP?' 'Really bad. Look like a bunch of geography teachers.' To my horror I was discovering that the former geeks had gone power mad, drunk on their own new-found hipness, and were actually a nasty bunch of little fascists without even the redeeming good-fun guarantee of the neds. By now the remaining pupils in my year were predominantly middle-class and I soon realised that the most popular band with the posh kids was Crass, as I'd see them smugly carrying around Anarchy stencils for spray-painting grave-yards and the like. Fortunately the first step to salvation was not that far away and eventually I managed to team up with an outsider kid two years younger than me. Grant and his older brother had amassed an incredible collection of independent and freak
music which they'd blast at awesome levels through a guitar amplifier. This was my introduction to The Residents and Throbbing Gristle. I started to notice that a lot of the records I liked best were on a label called Rough Trade, and after reading an old Paul Morley review, I decided to take the plunge with the fantastic sounding Swell Maps, one of the few groups that my new friend didn't have any records by. 'A Trip To Marineville' was such a jolt to my senses that even now when I hold it in my hands and look at the front cover of a suburban house spontaneously combusting, I can't help but feel slightly nostalgic for my 16 year old self, just about to play it for the first time. There I am, glazed then captivated, playing it over and over, notching the volume a little more each time, trying to squeeze a little more out of it. I wanted to rationalize it like Paul Morley or something, and I thought, well, this sounds pretty wild, but I have heard wilder music. But I hadn't heard wilder pop music and that was Swell Maps' trump-card; joyous, uplifting, full-on destructo-pop, abstracting
unexpectedly into real moments of beauty. I was faced with a dilemma; should I share it with my wee pal or was this just meant to be my thing? I thought of all the little pricks back in the common-room and decided I didn't want to be elitist; I would be a Swell Maps crusader. First I needed to buy everything I could by Swell Maps which at the time was only three singles, though fortunately there were side-projects too. Next I felt I needed to start thinking like a Map by getting into other music they cited, like Rough Trade label-mates The Raincoats and Television Personalities, and their influences: Faust, Can and This Heat. After a while I'd gone hardcore and was getting my music direct from Rough Trade shop in Ladbroke Grove where Swell Maps sometimes worked. Occasionally there'd be a friendly note in alongside the crazy amounts of records and fanzines I was now buying. Back then Rough Trade just seemed to have all bases covered; every aspect of a music culture I craved, and their mail came to me part Red Cross parcel, part Open University correspondence. Researching this piece I started to re-read these fanzines with names like Let's Be Adult About This, Real Shocks and Station Alien. Immediately I was reminded of the high-quality graphics, the warmth of the writing and the spirit of adventure. These qualities inevitably reflect the parent culture; mostly the stance that Rough Trade had taken in building on punk's nihilism to foster an educated, inquisitive fanbase that for a while dismantled the by then bloated punk star system, and shifted the emphasis back onto music and a new community. I will never forget the thrill of following a label whose uncontrived eclecticism introduced me to everything from Metal Urbain to Robert Wyatt, and from Augustus Pablo to Cabaret Voltaire. I always tried to remember the lessons I'd taken from that era of Rough Trade as I left school and started to learn how to make music for myself. Soon I found I was making contact with people who'd been similarly drawn to the label, like my friend David who was obsessed with building a fuzzbox that would simultaneously emulate the two great treble sounds of The Raincoats; their rhythm guitar and violin. By then Swell Maps had split, but their music never really left my life, and it was through them that I met a soul-mate who encouraged me to believe we had it within us to participate in, and add something to the music culture that we loved.