Robert Wyatt

condition (record/cover): EX- (light surface noise at the very beginning of both sides) / VG+ (ring wear)

An unofficial Italian compilation LP, released 1981 on the Base Record label as RT 0007 (the catalog number deliberately mimicking the Rough Trade numbering scheme of the period, which is what the Wyatt singles being compiled here had actually been issued on). The album pulls together Robert Wyatt's 1980-81 Rough Trade singles (including covers of Carlos Puebla's "Caimanera", Victor Jara's "Arauco", Willie Johnson's "Stalin Wasn't Stallin'", Ivor Cutler's "Grass", Lewis Allan's "Strange Fruit", Chic's "At Last I Am Free", a Trade Union song, and the Peter Blackman poem "Stalingrad") into a single LP one year before Rough Trade itself issued the same material as the official Nothing Can Stop Us compilation (March 1982, ROUGH 35).

Wyatt's 1980-81 singles for Rough Trade represented a turning point in his career: a politically engaged, multi-tradition cover-versions practice (Cuban revolutionary song, Chilean nueva canción, African-American spiritual, English absurdist song) that would shape the rest of his solo work. Mogotsi Mothle on double bass and Frank Roberts on keyboards appear across multiple tracks.

The pressing on offer is the Base Record edition (RT 0007), an Italian 1981 compilation that pre-empts the official Rough Trade Nothing Can Stop Us (1982) by a year, gathering the 1980-81 Rough Trade singles. The official Rough Trade compilation is the alternative format for the same body of material.