Discogs Bargain Bin: #2 Rough Trade

Music

Every fortnight, Nathan Gregory Wilkins and myself (Ivan Smagghe), will provide you with a piece of our 'Discogs Bargain Bin'.

There is a cult of the rare expensive 12" or LP, that's fine (meeeeeh). But there is a much more intense pleasure in the cheap pleasure of an unknown tuppence (this is not a metaphor). These are great records in all cases, at least we think so and propose in our NTS show, Channeling.

This week, Nathan chats to Ivan about Rough Trade's 'I Want To Live'

Nathan: Lets start with you telling me how you came across this little beauty?

Ivan: I sadly do not remember. I probably bought it a long time ago when I was an indie kid and thought it had something to do with the uber-cool London record shop. To my surprise, it was really gay and kind of disco. I immediately discarded it. But who needs Harvey and beards when you have Yougoslavian luminaries like Vladimir Ivkovic who recently played it at Plastic People. I found back my copy then broke it on the way to the radio. Bought it again.

Nathan: Would you say it's Balearic? Or is that a dirty word in your book?

Ivan: Certainly not and almost yet. This record smells of butt sweat and skin under leather not of sunsets and sand. Rough Trade being gay slang for shennanigans (not that I know exactly what happens) and I doubt Canadians were big on the white island in the early eighties. May be with sombreros. My issue is with "balearism" is also the beauty of it: it is like a vague fascism. Or as my friend Leon says: "one man's balearic is another man's bollocks).This record could be an example of one of my favorite genres: frozen balearic though (it was released on a label called TRUE NORTH).

N: This kind of sounds like Gang Of Four with a sexy lady (I've seen a picture, she isn't, unless you like butch Barbara Dickson types) singing on it to me, would you agree?

I: I would agree to the first part. I have just checked, ROUGH TRADE were an embryo in…1968 and died in 1984. They manage to survive prog-rock, west coast horrifying stuff and did this hedonistic romp in 1982. The singer is called Carole Pope and was in the band during the whole span. she is definetely weird looking, like a feathered glam synthetic bird whilst K.Staples (the musician) looks like a musician.