Rough Trade
The Red Crayola
Released
See also: Records produced by Mayo Thompson
| Date | Release | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 5, 1979 |  Micro-Chips & Fish
|
12" single | Originally recorded for Radar |
| July 25, 1980 |  Born in Flames
|
7" single | |
| May 1981 |  Kangaroo?
|
LP album | |
| 1981 |  An Old Man's Dream
|
7" single |
Cancelled releases
| Release | Notes | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1980? | Portrait of V. I. Lenin in the Style of Jackson Pollock | 7" single | Never released |
| 1980? | Red Crayola retrospective | LP album | Never released |
| 1981? |  Rattenmensch/Gewichtswächter
|
7" single | Released by |
| 1983? |  Black Snakes
|
LP album | Released by RecRec |
Background
Mayo Thompson, 1980[1]
I read about [Rough Trade] little bit, heard about it. Went down there and saw what kind of records that they had. And the first time I went into the shop I was standing there and Geoff Travis — and I didn't know Geoff at the time — came in and he was talking to some people from San Francisco and they were talking about a band called "Crime" or somebody like that. And at the time there was a strike in the United States or there had been a strike. And this band had refused to play a benefit for the miners or something like that. Had refused to become involved in the politics of this strike. I overheard Geoff say he thought that was impossible for those people to refuse to do it, y'know, given the state of the world and the place of this music — and the possible place of this music. I'm not suggesting that Geoff was saying that he thought, y'know, like the workers and the musicians should unite. Because nobody should be surprised if they go down to a picket line and the workers tell them to fuck off. But I think he was just saying that it's not possible to remain, y'know, politically ignorant, or naïve, if you like, in the world today. If you're making music particularly because you gotta see how that strike and everything else relates to the posited conditions in which we all work. So I thought that was pretty good.
So I started talking to Geoff bit by bit, and just started going there and getting a few records and talking to him and so on. And just became really friendly with everyone there and then met some people who, because I was involved and when I was involved, wanted me to produce a record for them. That was The Monochrome Set. In the evening, it was proposed to me — I stand there listening to the tapes and Geoff was there — and I said, 'well, Geoff and I can do it together'. 'Cause I was confident that I could handle the technical side of it but Geoff is one of the people who had been there — as they say, 'he had been there since the beginning'. He just had a real grip on what was going on [...]. So we agreed that we would do this thing with him. And then Stiff Little Fingers, who was on Rough Trade, wanted Geoff to produce their album and he said, 'well, Mayo and I can do it'. So we've been a production team ever since. And we've done lots of things: we've done The Monochrome Set's first single, we did Stiff Little Fingers' album and their third single, and did The Raincoats' single and part of their album with them. We've done a lot of stuff, y'know.
[...] I like the projects I've been involved in. And Rough Trade is a very sort of realistic place. It's not — well I suppose it could be — but at the moment it's not really a breeding ground for careers. Some people come and go; some bands use it as a stepping stone. Stiff Little Fingers ultimately went to Chrysalis. But I think there's something else going on there which supervenes a lot of that sort of stuff.