The World of The Smiths and Morrissey by Angie J Cooke nee Lewis

THE RECESSION: A COMPANY IN PROFILE THE ROUGH TRADE GROUP It's a right Rough Trade, is the entertainment business! For the Final Year Project of my A Level equivalent course ( BTEC National Certificate in Business and Finance ) which I completed at what was then Huddersfield Technical College (now Kirklees College Huddersfield Centre ), I submitted an assignment entitled: "The Recession and Rough Trade" , which involved me investigating and examining the impact of the economic decline of the time in 1991 on an iconic record label.  I was required to relay my findings by means of a presentation, which I was able to achieve with the aid of some significant props.  These were vinyl releases (from my personal collection) by The Smiths , by a considerable distance the biggest success story in the "indie" music scene in which the label founder Geoff Travis , who signed the band to Rough Trade  before they split in 1987, played a huge part. The lege...

THE ORIGINAL 8 FROM NINETEEN EIGHTY HATE THE SMITHS: MY BELOVED CASSETTES As it's now 30 years since I went from loathing to loving  Morrissey and becoming a full-on devoted disciple of The Smiths , I got my hubster ( Mr Jason Edward ("Entertainment") Cooke esquire, aka The Almighty Spacelord of Ashton-under-Lyne! ) to take piccies of me with each of the original 8 cassettes that I purchased for the first time in Huddersfield at the age of 16 back in Nineteen Eighty Hate by my favourite band in the whole wide world! Note the carefully placed Salford Lads Club painting in the background! #Curator :-) The Original 8 from Nineteen Eighty Hate Part 1: Rank, purchased on 16th September 1988 The Original 8 from Nineteen Eighty Hate Part 2: The Queen Is Dead, purchased on 12th October 1988   The Original 8 from Nineteen Eighty Hate Part 3: The World Won't Listen, purchased  on 19th October 1988 The Original 8 from Nineteen Eighty Hate Pa...

HOW I CAME TO ACQUIRE  THE SMITHS ROUGH TRADE DISCOGRAPHY So then, how did I come, in 1990, to have in my possession a full Rough Trade Discography covering the entire back catalogue of The Smiths, provided to me by no less a luminary figure than the legend that is Geoff Travis ? Well, back when I was an ambitious teen, I’d decided that I wanted to write a book about my most favourite band in the whole world, and I was determined that accuracy would be key.  So, this is where good old Geoff came in. My copy of The Smiths Discography from Geoff Travis and Envelope Back page of discography with post-it note from Geoff As well as Mr T, I also wrote to  Mike Joyce, London Weekend Television, the BBC, Channel 4, EMI and John Peel , all of whom responded in some fashion or other. Needless to say, I dillied and dallied for far too long, and a couple of years down the line the seminal, not to mention infamous  “Morrissey and Marr – The Se...