Shouting Out Loud: Lives of the Raincoats
by Audrey Golden
Many thanks to Grand Central Publishing, Da Capo, and
NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of Audrey Golden’s
comprehensive and insightful Shouting Out Loud: The Lives of the Raincoats.
This was a fascinating book about a band that I’ve heard of, but never really
listened to. I’m glad that Golden’s interviews and archival work with the
members of the band have prompted me to seek out The Raincoats’ work and learn
more about their influence on many bands in the 90s and beyond. Like The Raincoats,
Shouting Out Loud is hard to categorize as a specific genre of music
writing. Golden has a great introduction in which she lays out her methodology
for gathering the artifacts and interviews and organizing and analyzing them.
Furthermore, members of the band, particularly Ana da Silva, had a rich archive
of material from the band’s formation and initial run of shows and recordings
from the late 70s and early 80s. Da Silva’s artifacts, along with those of
other members and fans, provide excellent visual documentation that Golden also
includes in her book. Golden explains that this synthesis of oral history and
archival work allows for a rich layering that blends the various perspectives
that memory brings with the artifacts that remain from that time-period. I also
loved that Golden references Bakhtin in the book’s introduction to identify
that The Raincoats’ music is part of its own unique chronotope, that is both
shaped by the specific time and space of its time and has gone on to further
influence other artists, particularly Kurt Cobain, Tobi Vail, and Kathleen Hanna
among others. This is a really fascinating way to approach music scholarship, to
show both how music is influenced by and further influences others.
The book is organized into 3 sections that examine different
stages of the lives of The Raincoats. The first section examines how Gina and
Ana met in the late 70s in London. Golden provides considerable context to different
factors that led Ana and Gina to meet. I grew to appreciate some of these deep
dives that provide a fuller context. For example, Golden details some of the
history of Hornsey College of Art and how it was the center of leftist protest
in the 60s and 70s. She also dives into squat life in 70s London, and how houses
abandoned after WWII led to a creative scene in art and music that helped lead
to British punk’s birth. This was cool to see as The Raincoats early years
intertwined with not just the more well-known bands like The Clash (and the 101ers,
Joe Strummer’s pre-Clash band), but also bands like The Slits, who seemed to
influence Gina and Ana to form The Raincoats, X-Ray Specs, and This Heat. Not
only does Golden’s research and archival work provide a richer context, but it
helped to show how some of these other bands were more influential on the sound
and spirit of The Raincoats and other bands of the time. Sometimes British punk’s
origins are simplified and distilled to explain how The Ramones played England
in the mid-70s, and that led to bands like The Clash and The Sex Pistols
forming in order to play faster and louder than The Ramones. However, Golden’s
analysis shows that British punk was not only tied to music, but also visual and
performance arts, and was much more nuanced and expressive, providing voices to
female artists who have often been pushed to the back of these short-sighted
histories of British punk.
In addition to documenting The Raincoats’ formation, the first
life of the band also examines their travels to other countries, in particular being
the first punk band to play in Communist Poland, where music and expression
were limited and regulated by the government. Again, Golden’s deep dive into
the context of this time period provides an important layer to the story of The
Raincoats to explore not only the kind of values they had exploring free expression
and art, but also the kinds of artistic risks they took. This section of the
book also examines their relationship with Rough Trade, the record store/label
that recorded and put out their records, and their efforts to work with a
drummer, which seemed to be a recurring theme throughout the book. Throughout
this section, I also learned much about the process of recording songs and
developing the art for their records. Although Rough Trade was an artist
friendly organization that ultimately split profits with their bands, the band was
still challenged with recording their work and maintaining their distinct sound
and vision when working with engineers and producers who didn’t always share
the same vision and values. Again, Golden’s contextualization of the music scene
and industry in the late 70s and early 80s helps to show how both the need for
a kind of commercial audience and the kinds of patriarchal influences in the
engineering and production aspects of the music industry presented unique
challenges to The Raincoats.
The middle section focuses on the 2nd life of The
Raincoats, and not only examines what the members were up to after they
disbanded around 1984, but also how their albums and music eventually made its
way to the US and ended up in Olympia, WA, home of Evergreen State, whose
students included Bruce Pavitt, Slim Moon, Kathleen Hanna, Corin Tucker, and
Carrie Brownstein, among others. It was at Evergreen where Pavitt eventually
discovered The Raincoats and began playing them on his radio show. It was so interesting
to see how a band’s influence spread over analog methods pre-internet, and how
a band could have such an influence on others. Eventually, Kurt Cobain came to
discover The Raincoats, and his story documenting his meeting Ana da Silva in
London was included in the liner notes for Incesticide. This 2nd
life of The Raincoats was also fascinating since Kurt’s proclamations about the
band helped to renew interest and eventually led to new distribution deals and
tour plans with Nirvana, that sadly never materialized after Cobain’s death. Furthermore,
it was interesting to learn more about the record industry as DGC signed The Raincoats,
but the band again were challenged by the commercial aims of a major label like
DGC who were looking for the next Nirvana. In addition to the influence on Nirvana,
Golden also examines how The Raincoats influenced other bands from the 80s and
90s, including Sonic Youth and bands from Kill Rock Stars. While sonically
there may be differences, it was more the ethos and spirit of The Raincoats, making
music and art in their own distinct voices and challenging the dominant systems
of the music industry, that appealed to so many artists and fans in the 90s. Although
their initial plans for touring ended after Cobain’s death, The reformed Raincoats
were able to tour later in the 90s and create new music while also re-releasing
their original albums with new distribution deals. I also found it interesting
to learn how democratic they remained in decision making for their original
albums, keeping in contact with other musicians who contributed to their earliest
albums.
The last section focuses on the 3rd life of The
Raincoats, which seems to take place within the last 25 years or so. This
section also focuses on the band’s legacy, but also how the current members
have continued to keep active in the art world and continue to produce and
record art and music. It also examines their influence on more recent musicians,
and how much of their work has become collaborative with other bands and
artists, especially as they seem to continually be in search of drummers. There’s
a fascinating story about their quest for a producer for a new album, that
eventually leads them to John Cale. Given the similarities with some of the
earlier Velvet Underground work and Cale’s unique artistic vision, I was a little
surprised to hear about his production requirements. Yet, I think it also
showed how The Raincoats continually faced challenges from producers and engineers
to try to record their unique sound. Furthermore, it seemed like this anecdote reinforced
the strength and intuition of the band to maintain their vision and voice. Furthermore,
it’s interesting to see the band’s inclusion in art retrospectives in galleries
and museums that capture not only the birth of punk, but also clearly emphasize
women’s unique roles in this art and cultural movement. Golden emphasizes here
that these elements are not separate strands, but rather intertwined threads
within punk, clearly demonstrating how The Raincoats strengthened those bonds between
art, culture, and music. I loved learning more about how Gina and Ana continued
to make music on their own, frequently learning new instruments and using new
technology. There’s a quote from one of Gina’s daughters towards the end of the
book where she summarizes her mom’s ethos as “there’s never been a question of,
‘Could I do it?’ The mantra is always, ‘You’re trying to do something you’ve
never done before? Well, why not!’…Because of my mum and dad, my brain has been
wired not to question whether I could do something, but to try to figure
out how to do it. And that’s super punk.” I loved this quote since it
provides a great way to think not only the spirit of punk rock, but more
importantly the influence of The Raincoats that helped to shape much of the
music from the 90s and beyond. To paraphrase Q-Tip, it’s like this book is
about your favorite band’s favorite band. I highly recommend this look at the
influence of The Raincoats, and I’m so grateful to Golden for her layered and detailed
look at not just the band but the various influences both on and from the band.
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