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Thanks so much to Simon Parker for the interview! I wrote about the Chichester band Violet Trade on the blog not too long ago, and through Facebook Simon got in touch and offered to answer all my questions! And he did! It has been great to hear that he continues to be involved with music with his record label and that soon there will be a digital reissue of his autobiography. On top of all that, there are many Bandcamp links here that you should check out that have music from many of his different bands. Also check out this link to see some rare photos of the Violet Trade! Very cool! Hope you enjoy this great interview!
++ Hi Simon! Thanks so much for being up for this interview! How are you? Are you still involved with music?
Hello Roque! Thank you for discovering the music of The Violet Trade! Thirty three years after it was first recorded! I feel older but not old! Yes I have always been involved with music one way or another for what seems like all of my life! My current involvement is with NAKED Record Club which is the world’s first eco-record label. We take great indie albums and press them sustainably without harmful chemicals or huge amounts of water and electricity. The process we use is brand new technology and sounds amazing! To date we have released albums by Babybird, Beezewax, Lowgold, The Chesterfields and Stars with our 6th release confirmed as Tahiti 80’s wonderful ‘Ballroom’ album.
Now that NAKED Record Club is up and running I hope to find time to return to my 2 bands
Villareal and Lightning Dept .
Villareal records take a long time to make and usually involves me rounding up string players, brass sections and various talented musicians to add to my studio sketches of songs (listen to https://villareal1.bandcamp.
Lightning Dept are the polar opposite of this and record short, sharp albums only ever using first or second takes. This process takes no longer than 2 days for recording of a whole album and then a further 1 day for mixing. The first album is here: https://lightningdept1.
++ Let’s go back in time. What are your first music memories? Do you remember what your first instrument was? How did you learn to play it? What sort of music did you listen to at home while growing up?
My first musical memory was hearing Marc Bolan/ T.Rex ‘Ride A White Swan’ and watching ‘Top of The Pops’ on TV on a Thursday evening. Musicians looked like they came from other planets! Watching the show was a real family affair although my sisters music tastes were routinely awful. My first instrument would have been the record player because I spent a lot of time listening to my parents record collection (Beach Boys, Electric Light Orchestra and Simon & Garfunkel). Finally I started buying my own records as an eleven year old circa 1979. The Boomtown Rats ‘Fine Art of Surfacing’ and XTC ‘Black Sea’ (1980) were my two favourite albums when I started secondary school. But I was also an avid 7” single collector. I now have over 2500 singles including many punk, new wave and indie gems alongside a lot of not quite so cool 80’s and 90’s howlers. When I was thirteen I started saving for an electric guitar because the tennis racket I was prancing about with didn’t really have the same effect. I think I was 14 when I bought a second-hand Satelite, similar to this but all in black
I was self-taught and gave up about a year later because the guitar neck was so hopelessly warped and unplayable. I invested in the future, which at the time was a Casio PT-50 mono keyboard.
It was the time of the synth becoming very popular (1983) and I liked the fact I didn’t have to actually fret any notes to make a musical sound but I quickly got bored and eventually went back to learning the guitar. This time I persevered with all the major and minor chords and then started writing my own songs in 1985/6. Lyrics always came easy to me as English was the only subject I was good at during my school years. By 1987, I had moved to bass because nobody else wanted to play it in those fledgling bands I formed prior to The Violet Trade. I was already in love with The Cure and in particular, Simon Gallup’s style of bass playing. Ditto Peter Hook from New Order and Mike Mills from R.E.M. He’s very underrated as a bass player, isn’t he?
++ Had you been in other bands before The Violet Trade? What about the other band members? Are there any songs recorded?
My school band in 1982 was called ‘The Wasps’ but this generally involved no more than wearing sunglasses indoors and posing for photographs. My mate Phil Bennett and I had a bedroom band called ‘October Fallen’ in 1986/7 and my first ‘proper’ band (i.e. one that had a drum kit and the need for a rehearsal room) was called ‘Frantic Heads’ (1987/8). This quickly morphed into ‘Onion Johnny’ (1988/89). There are recordings, not many of which are online but the soundtrack to my ‘Road To Nowhere (Mishaps of an Indie Musician)’ biography DOES let the world hear the full horror of a few of these very early recordings https://villareal1.bandcamp.
++ Where were you from originally?
I grew up in Chichester, West Sussex UK. It was a very boring cathedral city which did its best to forget about anybody under the age of 65. Probably still does…
++ How was Chichester at the time of The Violet Trade? Were there any bands that you liked? Were there any good record stores? Or what about the pubs or venues to go check out up and coming bands?
In Chichester you had to make your own entertainment. The Violet Trade started rehearsing at the end of 1989. By February 1990 we were playing live locally in youth clubs and leisure centres(!) because the pubs didn’t want bands playing original material. I spent most of my life looking for places to play or hanging out in record stores. I recall that ‘Shattered Records’ in Chichester and ‘Domino’ in Portsmouth were treasure troves of great indie releases.
Other than that I religiously scoured the bargains bins of Our Price, WH Smiths and Woolworths like many other devoted but hard-up record collectors did.
Violet Trade were heavily influenced by the growing indie scene (Charlatans, House of Love, Wedding Present, Pixies, Cure, REM etc) and at this time there was nowhere to go to hear this sort of music in Chichester. So myself and Violet Trade manager Mark Mason took our lives into our own hands and went to a biker pub on the outskirts of town. This place was called the Coach and Horses in Westhampnett and they only ever put on heavy rock or covers bands. But we convinced the pub manager to give us a mid-week shot on the proviso if we bring a decent crowd he would give us a monthly weekend residency. We filled the venue and kick-started an indie scene in our hometown, even though the pub was a good couple of miles outside of the town centre! We had our own DJ’s (Pete Wood and Tim Kelly AKA ‘DiscoSexHeaven’) and we chose our own support bands from a small but perfectly formed scene of like-minded indie kids.
++ Were there any other good bands in your area?
We loved Amazing Windmills from Portsmouth, who later went on to become ‘Velcro’ but shout out’s must also go to: Secondhand Daylight, Pyramid of Johnny, The Green Ray, Squelch, The Daniel Grade and The Helicopter Spies.
++ How was the band put together? How was the recruiting process?
The singer and I shared the same Christian name but no, we were not brothers!! The band was certainly like a dysfunctional family unit though, especially after we all started sharing a house in Chichester! I came from Onion Johnny who had played a handful of ragged shows in 1988-89. I met Simon McKay (vocals, guitar) who wanted to start a band after seeing us play live in the summer of 1989. We started hanging out together and it just became a natural evolution for us to form a band. We never auditioned anybody in the usual way, but you did have to pledge a lifelong allegiance to Talk Talk’s ‘Spirit Of Eden’ album which was only a couple of years old at this point and on the verge of being written off forever as a work of folly that ended their career! How times change! To become a member of The Violet Trade you also needed to like drinking and getting very stoned. Nothing heavier than spliff when we started though, and the band quickly got known for putting on great parties in it’s large, detached rental abode! It helped we lived with a drug dealer and were situated just across the driveway from a local pub who sold us cheap kegs of (slightly out-of-date) beer.
++ On Bandcamp some of you appear as Si, Si, Greg & Gaz. Who do these names correspond to?
Simon McKay (vocals, guitar)
Simon Parker (Bass)
Greg Saunders (keyboards, backing vocals)
Gary Capelin (Drums)
++ Was there any lineup changes?
Yes, we added a fifth member Ted Tedman in the summer of 1992. Ted was a very talented musician who played second guitar, trombone, percussion and just about anything else you threw at him. Sometimes literally…
++ How was the creative process for you? Where did you usually practice?
All the Violet Trade songs were written by either Simon McKay or myself. We had adjoining bedrooms for a while and would literally throw comments out to each other when we heard each other playing in our own rooms! It was a very easy process and we wrote songs very quickly. The outlines of these songs were then kicked around in the front room of our rented house because we set up the drums and a full PA down one end of the lounge. VERY handy for those exciting world cup matches of the 1990 tournament.
++ What’s the story behind the band’s name?
Simon McKay and I chose one word each that we liked the sound of. ‘Violet’ was mine and ‘Trade’ was Simon’s. A band called ‘The Violet Hour’ got signed around the same time but they were nothing like us.
++ When it comes to compilations I believe you appeared on a cassette called “All Fun and Games” where you contributed the songs “Pseudo” and “Elegy”. Curious how did you end up on this tape released by a label called Asylum. Did they approach you? How did it happen?
Unfortunately this was not our Violet Trade! It’s news to me that anybody else ever took that name, even more so that they did it around the same time! The pre-internet world was a state of blissful ignorance for most of us!
++ So, the songs you recorded, were they available in any way at the time? Perhaps as demo tapes?
Violet Trade mainly recorded on 4-track and 6-track portable studios and only released their music on cassette! How indie is that?!
++ The first collection is called “…Give me the Happy” which encompasses recordings from 1990 and 1991. Where were these songs recorded? At different recording studios? Did you use a producer perhaps?
“…Give Me The Happy’ was basically a collection of studio and home demos. Tracks 1-5 were recorded at Crystal Studio’s in Southsea where The Cranes did a lot of recording. We used the studio engineer and had a lot of fun on this session but when we came out we realised those songs sounded nothing like us! So we quickly borrowed a friends 4-track and started recording in our front room. And that was tracks 6-18 on ‘Give Me…’. When we self-released a slightly-shorter version of this in 1991 I recall we gave 40 tapes to the Chichester branch of ‘Our Price’ thinking we would get most of them back. The next day they phoned up and asked for another batch!! We also sold a lot at live shows. I kept all the money in a shoe box under my bed and amassed a huge collection of £1 coins which we used to buy various ‘comestibles’. And to manufacture these cassettes I had to sit there and make the tape to tape copies in real time. Very laborious!
The song ‘Headstrong’ from the Crystal studio session has picked up some internet traction over the years as someone said it basically sounded like Slowdive before Slowdive were formed…which was nice because I really like that band! And ‘Salvation’ has often been cited because people are convinced it was the blueprint for Oasis and everything post 1994! The only problem was we wrote and recorded it in 1990/1 when Britpop had not yet been invented. It was definitely informed by The Stone Roses and to a lesser extent Flowered Up whom we all loved. That era was magical and indie music had a real power to it. That horrible put down ‘indie landfill’ would not be coined for at least another ten years.
++ The second collections dates from 1992 and 1995. It is titled “Sold to the Man with no Ears +” and has 19 tracks. One thing that caught my attention is that it has a release date for June 19, 1996. Was this released in any way at that time?
OK, I have to admit to a typo here! I actually digitized these files during covid and uploaded to Bandcamp because the original cassette masters are all steadily degenerating. You can hear this on some of the recordings here! All Violet Trade recordings were actually made between 1990-1993 although the original 4-piece re-grouped twice post 1995. I think I was trying to get the date to be as close to those re-union dates as I could but they don’t really make any sense to the lineage! So I’ve now changed them all to 2020. The original demo tapes came out in 1991 and 1992 with a smattering of that Crystal studio session appearing just before this in 1990.
‘Sold To The Man..’ was really an extension of how we recorded ’…Give Me The Happy’ although we had progressed to a 6-track machine and often recorded in my Dad’s small workspace where he restored books! The original ‘Sold To The Man..’ was a 6 song cassette (tracks 1-6) and was very popular when first released. It was number one in a respected fanzine (‘The Word’) for a good few months and sold really well at gigs. The writer at The Word called it our ‘Screamadelica’ which was nice. Wrong, but nice! It showed off the many musical sides of the band at a time when this was not the thing to be doing.
++ This one has a song that caught my curiosity, “Salvation (Flat Records Version)”. I am curious if there was a Flat Records. Perhaps they were set to release you?
Yes, we had some record company attention. In 1991 it was Chrysalis Records but this turned out to be a bit of a mad one as an A&R scout started turning up at our band house for months and months telling us we were about to be signed to a big deal. Obviously this never happened and she lost her job! ‘Flat Records’ was run by Dick Crippen ex Tenpole Tudor and he wanted to put out ‘Salvation’ as a 12” single. We recorded it at his place in Surrey (the only Violet Trade song were recorded 3 times!) but the deal fell through. I don’t like the keyboards on the Flat version, far too jazzy and trying to show off. Stick with the earlier demo’s for the intended vibe!
++ The last collection is a live recordings album from 1990 to 1993 called “Doing the Upside Down”. Curious about where were these recorded? Was it all over the UK? From which venues do these recordings come from?
So, many people will tell you that seeing Violet Trade live was the best way to witness our music. As I’ve mentioned earlier we put on some great parties, took over a local pub and created a bit of an indie scene between 1990-1993 in Chichester. Live recordings show our band to the best of its abilities and as I had accumulated lots of live recordings from across the south coast of England I thought it would be a good way for people to hear the true essence of Violet Trade. Many of these live takes are better than the demo’s in my opinion! We covered The Cure, R.E.M. and Camper Van Beethoven which neatly sums up our disparate influences.
++ I was asking myself, looking at the dates of the songs of these live recordings, that none of them were from 1993. All from 1990 to 1992. Wondering if there are any missing perhaps? Or it was just a mistake?
We played our very last show in January 1993, so most of the recordings are 1990-1992. We played a LOT of live shows in this time. I recall at our last ever show (at that Biker pub in Westhampnett, but of course) we went offstage and came back dressed in each other’s clothes and started playing each other’s instruments! We finished the encore with ‘Take The Skinheads Bowling’ and I was the one singing and playing guitar. Something I had never wanted to do but would have to get used to as the 1990’s progressed…but that’s another story!
I wish I had a recording of that last show but it was all a bit sad really. We never fell out with each other so the last gig was quite upsetting for me. Basically Grunge had come along and blown away bands like Violet Trade. But within a year of us splitting up Britpop would be rearing it’s inquisitive little head and people were saying ‘oh I keep hearing bands that sound like Violet Trade on the radio’. Out of time and out of place. That was Violet Trade!
++ As mentioned, on Bandcamp there are many many songs. So I wonder why were there no proper releases by the band?
I think the fact we were based in Chichester and didn’t really enjoy playing in London probably hampered our chances of success. Everything was much more difficult to achieve pre mobile phones and the internet if you were a tiny band from a backwater town. We enjoyed our own local notoriety and lived for writing new songs and playing live. Who knows, maybe we can put these out on vinyl one day…
++ Was there any interest from labels at any point?
Yes and no. Lots of rejection letters from office juniors but some great comments when A&R scouts actually saw our band live (usually by mistake when awaiting the main band when we played at places like London’s Rock Garden, Islington Powerhaus, Harlesden Mean Fiddler etc). Chrysalis and Flat records were our two biggest chances I guess, but both floundered on that rocky indie coastline.
++ Are there more songs recorded by the band? Other songs that are not on Bandcamp?
Yes there were others but these are now all lost in action. Mainly due to the disintegration on those old cassette tapes. I threw some rehearsal tapes out in the early 00’s and then realised they had some undiscovered songs on them such as ‘Tunnel Walking’ which was great. Simon McKay might still have the odd tape kicking around but it’s unlikely. But there’s enough up on Bandcamp to paint a decent picture of a band doing its own thing and writing some great pop tunes!
++ My favourite song of yours is “Nightmare Ride”, wondering if you could tell me what inspired this song? What’s the story behind it?
Well, you are in luck because it was one I wrote! Thank you! ‘Nightmare Ride’ started life as a two chord riff that I attached a half-decent bass line to. This was called ‘I Dream of You’ and was rehearsed in 1988/89 by Onion Johnny. Then, late one summer night in 1989 I was busy falling asleep at the wheel and lost control of my car whilst travelling back from my girlfriends place in East Sussex. I remember swerving to avoid an injured dog in the road and nearly ended up in a lake. My car hit a kerb and somehow avoided flipping over and sending me into the water at seventy miles an hour! I came home wrote some new lyrics and a completely different chorus, changed the title to ‘Nightmare Ride’ and presented it to The Violet Trade a few weeks later. It was always meant to sound more like The Wedding Present (circa ‘George Best’) but our drummer made it more indie dance because he’d never heard the Wedding Present but didn’t like to admit it!
++ If you were to choose your favorite The Violet Trade song, which one would that be and why?
That’s a difficult one because so many of them have great memories attached! But I hate people copping out and not having favourites so I’m going to say that the best song I wrote for the band was ‘Twelfth of Never’ because it’s the nearest I got to writing a perfect pop song. If I was to choose one of Simon McKay’s songs I would go for ‘Peggy Bottles’ ‘cos it’s just so fab. But most people say the best Violet Trade song was ‘Salvation’ because it always rocked live.
++ What about gigs? Did you play many?
We probably played around 150-200 live shows between 1990-1993. I loved playing gigs but as time wore on some band members would prefer to stay at home with the bong instead. Good drugs turn to bad drugs. It’s always just a matter of time.
++ And what were the best gigs in general that you remember? Any anecdotes you can share?
The best shows would have been at The Coach & Horses pub in Westhampnett when we had our own club night which ran once a month for 2 years on and off. Honestly, people couldn’t wait to get up on the dancefloor and join in with the singing! It was as if we were a much bigger band than we actually were. I recall we played a stormer of a live date at Islington Powerhaus in the summer of 1991 with a great band from the Midlands called ‘Steam’. This one turned into a totally unplanned stage invasion and was viewed by an A&R scout at Island Records called James Dewar if memory serves. Just googled him. He’s still in the music business!
++ And were there any bad ones?
We rarely played bad gigs but I recall we did have a bit of a bad night in Worthing once when the audience were really only there to watch another (much more serious) local band. Try as we might we could not win them over no matter what we did. It was like an audience of Leonard Cohen fans coming to a Madness concert. But that was a very rare occurrence and even when we played to complete strangers we always got people up and dancing! Even grumpy sound engineers at various flea-bitten London venues were known to smile at our shows-and that was no mean feat.
++ When and why did The Violet Trade stop making music? Were any of you involved with other bands afterwards?
Gary (the drummer) and I really wanted to make a career in music and decided we had to get out of Chichester. The town was stifling AND the Coach and Horses pub shut down around the time we decided to leave. The Violet Trade was going nowhere but the rest of the band seemed dis-interested to say the least. As I’ve mentioned above the musical climate had changed dramatically from the ‘indie dance’ period to the Grunge rock explosion and there was just no way we could re-invent ourselves and not look pathetic. So Gary and I moved to Brighton and put together Colourburst who had 4 distinct phases (and 2 different singers 1993-4), before I eventually found myself providing lead vocals from the end of 1994 until we disbanded for good in 1997.
This is always a good video to share: Colourburst (with me singing a punked up version of Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’) which got shown on late night ITV twice over the yuletide of 1995. We never did get permission to cover this, but I reckon George and Andrew would have liked it!).
Colourburst put out 2 vinyl singles (one good one bad) and then fragmented into Fruit Machine, fronted by Jennie Cruse (Fisher-Z) and Rachel Bor (Dolly Mixture).
Gary left Fruit Machine who were then signed to producer Steve Lovell (Blur, Julian Cope) . The remnants of this band then morphed into Lumina but bad luck and industry dogma thwarted these projects and eventually saw me take a break from music before returning a year or so later with Villareal.
I remained in Brighton and started the very popular indie bands night ‘Cable Club’ in 2002. Bands such as The Cribs, Kooks, The Bees, Bat For Lashes, Fujiya and Miyagi, The Maccabees, Kasabian and many, many more play a Cable Club gig between 2002-2014.
++ Was there any interest from the radio? TV?
Back in the early 90’s it was very difficult to get indie bands exposure on anything! I think local radio may have played some Violet Trade but the most bizarre mention on radio was by the esteemed Chesney Hawkes during our association with the crazy Chrysalis A&R department. Apparently (none of the band ever witnessed the radio show in question) Chez told a reporter that Violet Trade was his fave new band of the moment in 1991. How nice of him!
We never appeared on TV but there were several live video’s which did the rounds of our friends VCR recorders over the years. None of these survived to get digitized!
++ What about the press? Did they give you any attention?
Try as me might to get NME & MM interested, we never managed to crack this nut. I don’t think we had the right image and we definitely had the wrong manager! NEVER employ your mate(s) to manage your band! We needed someone with contacts and connections, ours had neither.
++ What about fanzines?
Yes, as detailed above fanzines did feature us quite a bit. ‘The Word’ (a Sussex based fanzine) certainly loved what we were doing for a while. There were others, some in London, various good live reviews but nothing that has stood the transition to the digital age.
++ Looking back in retrospect, what would you say was the biggest highlight for the band?
I think the biggest highlight for the band was being given the keys to our own large house in the early summer of 1990! From here we wrote, rehearsed, partied and avoided the real world for about one whole year! During this time the band’s songwriting took flight and our lives were unsullied by outside forces. Looking back, this was a truly magical time and it was a bloody miracle nobody ever died or got arrested!
++ Aside from music, what other hobbies do you have?
Music is still my guiding passion but my partner and I have a dog called Treacle who is quite a character and takes up a lot of our time. Southern France is a stunning area with amazing landscapes and breath-taking walks over red-earth terrain. We are very lucky to call this home. The wine is good, too! I love films and books and want to explore more of the planet but without having to use aeroplanes to get everywhere. I’d like to visit the beautiful Scottish coastlines and maybe go coast to coast across the USA in a car. But it doesn’t feel right to be jetting off anywhere right now. Corruption and corporate bullying is destroying the planet. Thanks to the right-wing press this is a very scary moment in time and it is frustrating to see that so many people are still in complete denial about why rain forests are burning, cities are flooding and only the share-holders prosper. PEOPLE WAKE UP! You’re not getting the truth about your planet!
Getting off my soap-box, I still adore and collect vinyl records and I also consume a lot of music documentaries and magazines. I love old and new bands and have never lost that spirit of being ‘indie’.
++ Tell me a bit more about the NAKED record club. From what I understand it is the first eco-friendly vinyl record!
My job at NAKED Record Club is an extension of what I love and is concerned with sustainability in vinyl record manufacturing. I am always on the look-out for great indie albums that we can eco-press. Obviously this is not easy because major labels control their catalogues like jealous lovers! But NAKED’s aim is to get a high profile artist such as The Cure, R.E.M, The National, Radiohead or Kate Bush to grant us a licence to manufacture one of their records using a sustainable factory. Indie isn’t just about scratchy guitars it’s a state of mind and we feel these artists share the same pioneering spirit as NAKED. We’ve already done it with a handful of great bands but now it’s time to take it to the next level because green issues are being buried by governments and those bloody corporations. We have the solution but time is running out.
++ And what is Vinyl Revolution?
Vinyl Revolution is at the heart of everything we do! It was actually the name of the two record shops that my partner and I set up and ran between 2016-2019. It was a dream come true for me to own my own record store and we had locations in Tunbridge Wells and Brighton. But running a shop is very difficult these days due to dodgy landlords and extortionate business rates and the rise of Amazon etc. But despite this, Vinyl Revolution was very popular and got a lot of great press, including a brilliant feature in The Independent which said we were the best record shop in Brighton!
But when Brexit came along, Rachel and I headed for France and started looking into ways to make vinyl records more sustainable. The product of this all work is NAKED Record Club and we are out there doing it right now!
++ You also wrote an autobiography called “Road to NowhereL Mishaps of an Indie Musician“. I’d love to read it someday. What inspired you to write it and where can people find copies of it?
‘Road to Nowhere (Mishaps of an Indie Musician)’ was the extended story of everything you’ve read in this article! I was approached by a friend who runs a small publishing company about detailing my musical career. He knew there were heart-breaking moments and funny stories connected to my life in indie bands, and thought people might like to share in these highs and lows! The music industry was in the process of changing during my tenure in bands and by the early 2000’s it was virtually unrecognisable to the one I had started out in during the nineties. The A&R world that I had tried so hard to infiltrate was utterly decimated by the arrival of online music. The book was a lot of fun to write but I also found it quite poignant too.
Apart from my own music (which is only of interest to a very small proportion of the world’s population!) I also wanted to include some of the hundreds of fantastic indie artists and records that have been a huge part of my life since the mid-eighties. I got to do this in ‘Road To Nowhere’ by including lots of ‘Top Ten’ lists and by namechecking indie artists from the last four decades. For instance I got to write about my love of Edwyn Collins, Mark Eitzel, XTC, Trashcan Sinatra’s, The Cure, Talk Talk and many, many more by weaving my own story throughout an already existing indie narrative.
Although the original paperback has long since sold out there is a new updated ten year anniversary digital edition due in 2024 (possibly even sooner if I can get around to editing the last couple of post-band chapters!). I’m not sure what platform this will be issued on but anybody interested should email info@nakedrecordclub.com to get added to the mailing list for Road To Nowhere V2.0!
++ Of course now you are living in France and I wonder when and why did you go there. Whereabouts in France are you and what do you like of this location. And if there is anything you miss about the UK, Chichester in particular?
As I’ve mentioned previously my partner and I now live in a small town in Southern France not far from Montpellier. We are both British by birth and saw how badly the Conservative government was treating its citizens so we just decided to stay here and not come back! We now have French residency and enjoy a different pace of lifestyle. It is a challenge for us to set up NAKED in a foreign country (especially as our French speaking is still very rudimentary) but we have met a lot of great people who are interested in our idea of sustainable vinyl records. And the French government still invests in culture and green issues, so being in France is a no-brainer for us.
But I do miss England for its great pubs, record fairs and countryside walks in winter. And of course I miss friends, family and band members too. It’s funny, as I get older I also find myself missing my hometown and try to return to Chichester at least once a year. Of course it is virtually unrecognisable from the town I left all those years ago but there are still indelible memories attached to everything I see and hear in that crotchety old town.
++ Anything else you’d like to add?
Thank you Roque and Cloudberry for discovering the music of The Violet Trade, many years after it was first made. How did you ever stumble across it?! Surely by mistake or maybe it was divine intervention?! I’m still in touch with the original band members (although sadly Ted Tedman is no longer with us to share in this moment) but I will be sure to tell them about this interview!).
To anyone who listens to the band after reading this interview and who likes what they hear, The Violet Trade salutes you.
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