by Roni Sarig
Within the year, though, the Slits had perfected punk’s standard fast riffing style and worked up enough material to record for radio DJ/producer John Peel. By the time they signed a record contract in late 1978 the group had moved beyond punk and developed a more rhythmic, reggae-inflected style, with surprisingly complex vocal parts and song structures. When Sex Pistols impresario Malcolm McLaren attempted to assume management of the group, Palmolive’s opposition to McLaren – as well as other artistic differences – led to her departure. Months later, she reappeared as the Raincoats’ drummer. In the midst of recording an album, the Slits called in their friend Budgie (Peter Clark) to sit in on drums.
Though it was their first record, 1979’s Cut documents the band at a rather late stage in its evolution. By then, the group had fully come into its own as a strong – and distinctly female – post-punk voice. The provocative album featured the young women posed against the backdrop of a pleasant English garden, but topless and covered in mud. The photo confounded notions of sexuality and civility, and positioned the group as modern primitive feminist rebels – girls not afraid to be natural, sexual, and formidable.
Even more powerful than the photo was the music, which reinvented punk rock as a forum for young women. In opposition to the driving aggression of male-oriented punk, Cut was more rhythmic and textural, while the lyrics to songs like Spend, Spend, Spend, Shoplifting, and the single Typical Girls, alternatively celebrated the liberation of girl delinquency and confronted consumer culture’s manipulation of female self-esteem. A post-punk classic, Cut set the standard for all female-oriented punk to come.
Jean Smith, Mecca Normal:
I went out and bought Cut and tried to figure out what the hell they were trying to do. It was my first close look at really wondering about a band, because the whole focus was on the women in an inviting way. It seemed much more open. And I felt I had the go-ahead to see what came out of me in much the same way that these people seemed very genuine in their own noisemaking.
As Budgie left to join Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Pop Group’s Bruce Smith took over as fill-in drummer, the Slits continued to incorporate reggae music and consciousness into their music. Between Cut and the 1981 follow-up, The Return of the Giant Slits, the group released a series of singles such as In the Beginning There Was Rhythm that explored their growing interest in rhythm as a sort of life force. Songs like Earthbeat on The Return took their richly drawn primitivism and mother earth vibe even further with more subtle and organic music. The record was a worthy successor to Cut, but its foray into esoteric structure alienated fans of Cut’s more pop-oriented music, and the album failed to earn much attention. By the end of 1981, the Slits had called it quits.
Ari Up has continued her involvement in reggae music with Adrian Sherwood’s New Age Steppers and Prince Far-I & the Arabs. She now lives in Jamaica with her family (and remains John Lydon’s stepdaughter). Viv Albertine also appeared in the New Age Steppers, and was more recently involved in the Courtney Love-directed soundtrack to the film Tank Girl.
DISCOGRAPHY
Cut (Island, 1979); a debut album that came fairly late in the band’s development, it is nevertheless the ultimate document of female punk.
Untitled (Retrospective) (Y / Rough Trade, 1980); this “official bootleg” collects the group’s earliest music, which never appeared on a studio album.
The Return of the Giant Slits (CBS UK, 1981); unreleased in the U.S., this studio follow-up to Cut shows the band developing a more dub, rhythm-oriented sound.
The Peel Sessions (Strange Fruit, 1989); a collection from two Peel studio sessions in 1977 and 1978, featuring earlier versions of some songs later on Cut.
THE RAINCOATS
Kurt Cobain, Nirvana [from the liner notes to The Raincoats CD reissue]:
The Raincoats were not very well known in the States – I don’t know about the U.K. or Europe. In fact, I really don’t know anything about the Raincoats except that they recorded some music that has affected me so much that whenever I hear it I’m reminded of a particular time in my life when I was (shall we say) extremely unhappy, lonely, and bored. If it weren’t for the luxury of putting on that scratchy copy of the Raincoats first record, I would have had very few moments of peace.
In their amazing ability to apply punk’s freedom to create an equally strong and feminine sound, the Raincoats took what the Slits started to an even more sublime level. Unlike any “girl groups” of the past, the power of the Raincoats’ music came from its emotional fearlessness. They could be striking without flaunting sexuality, and experimental without alienating listeners. As a key early ‘80s post-punk group, the Raincoats inspired bands like Throwing Muses and Sonic Youth. By the time they reappeared in the ‘90s, they’d become important mother figures for bands like Sleater-Kinney, Hole (who covered the Raincoats’ The Void), even Nirvana. In fact, Kurt Cobain felt such an emotional debt to the Raincoats, he convinced his record company to reissue the Raincoats’ catalogue.
Kristin Hersh, Throwing Muses:
I did listen to the Raincoats, and it was wild to hear a band more fragile and feminine than we were. I don’t mean girlie, I mean shooting off in all directions and paying more attention to details. And they were purely unconscious. They made such beautiful sounds that we thought what we were doing was okay. We were pretty much in a boy’s club at the time.
Inspired by female punk bands like the Slits and X-Ray Spex that had cropped up in the wake of the British punk explosion, two recent arrivals to London – Gina Birch from northern England and Ana Da Silva from Portugal – formed the Raincoats in 1977. Though they debuted in November of that year with a male guitarist and drummer, the group went through a number of lineup changes before they started gigging regularly. When they recruited former Slits drummer Palmolive (Paloma Romero) and found violinist Vicky Aspinall (they placed an ad for someone who played an unusual instrument), the Raincoats – with Birch on bass, Ana on guitar, and all of them sharing vocals – became a focused and steady musical unit.
With the exception of Aspinall, none of the women were trained on their instruments. Growing together as musicians enabled the group to develop a shared musical language, one that was not necessarily connected to any prior rules or conventions. “It was a great period for learning and achieving the surprises that were our songs and our sound,” Da Silva writes in the notes to The Raincoats CD reissue. “The punk idea that you just needed to know three chords to start something was a very encouraging concept, and I think it still stands.”
Amy Rigby:
The Raincoats were really important to me. I love the way they just created their own kind of music. It was personal in a way that the other punk groups I loved didn’t speak to me. Fairytale in the Supermarket was a big revelation to me when I first heard it. I loved what they did with their voices. They took their musical limitations and made them work for them. I found that inspiring. And they couldn’t have made that music if they hadn’t been women.
After attracting the interest of influential London label Rough Trade, in 1979 the Raincoats released their first single, Fairytale in the Supermarket. Despite subtle lyrics that were unrhymed and unstructured, the song soars on its screeching violin and rocks along to the rumble and thrash of the drums and guitar. Six months later, the group followed with a self-titled debut album. Produced by Mayo Thompson of the Red Krayola and featuring former X-Ray Spex saxophonist Lora Logic, The Raincoats established the band as one of the most distinct voices in post-punk. Even when the songs sounded familiar – such as with their cover of the Kinks’ ode to sexual ambiguity Lola, or with their reworking of Palmolive-penned Slits song Adventures Close to Home – the Raincoats seemed completely original-incapable of either copying anyone else or of being copied.
As the group began writing its second album, Palmolive quit in search of a more spiritual existence (she traveled to India, and has since become a born-again Christian), and the band was left temporarily without a d
rummer. The songs on Odyshape (the title is an amalgamation of “oddly-shaped” and “body shape”) are less rhythmic, accented by percussion more than driven by it (though almost an afterthought, drums were contributed by Richard Dudanski, who’d been one of the group’s earlier members, as well as Robert Wyatt and Palmolive’s short-lived replacement, Ingrid Weiss).
Carrie Brownstein, Sieater-Kinney
I can listen to a Raincoats album and I don’t know how they were able to do it. It’s such an incredible mix of musicianship and melody. The voices are amazing too. The first time I heard the Raincoats I was definitely amazed. It seemed like classical music, except it was punk. It had the complexity and hugeness of a symphony, except it was being performed by three women.
Like the Slits, the Raincoats moved away from punk-away from even post-punk – with their second record, toward a sound more reminiscent of dub reggae (particularly Birch’s bass) and British folk music (particularly Aspinal’s violin). While Odyshape contained fewer memorable songs than the debut, it showed the group developing as a tightly woven musical unit. Though not as overtly female-centered as the Slits, Odyshape expressed feminine creativity even more eloquently – so much so, in fact, that it made little sense in the context of the current rock scene.
Kim Gordon, Sonic Youth:
I loved the Slits but it was the Raincoats I related to most. They seemed like ordinary people playing extraordinary music. Music that was natural that made room for cohesion of personalities. They had enough confidence to be vulnerable and to be themselves without having to take on the mantle of male rock / punk rock aggression, [from the liner notes to the Odyshape CD reissue]
While the group maintained a core of Birch, Da Silva, and Aspinall, the early ‘80s saw the addition of a number of drummers, percussionists, and multi-instrumentalists, including This Heat’s Charles Hayward. Despite the polish of their third record, 1984’s Moving, it shows the Raincoats in search of a clear direction, lacking focus; they split up following the album’s release. As Aspinall wrote later in the liner notes, “The title of this album describes the process it encapsulated for us as individuals, and by the time it was recorded we had all moved on to some other place... ”
The Raincoats’ members remained artistically active, though out of the public eye, for nearly a decade until longtime fan Kurt Cobain initiated the reissue of the Raincoats’ three studio albums. This renewed interest spurred the women back into action in 1993, and with a lineup of Birch, Da Silva, and new violinist Anne Wood, the band began touring again. Though plans to open for Nirvana did not materialize (Cobain committed suicide), the Raincoats continued to develop strong new material and went on to record an EP (with Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley) and an album (with Tiger Trap’s Heather Dunn).
With Birch now fronting a new band called the Hangovers, the Raincoats’ future is uncertain. The band, though, seems well aware of their place in the history of women’s rock. As Da Silva wrote, “The efforts to open doors for women have been fruitful (though painfully slow) and we hope that... our three albums can still inspire those who want to voice their feelings, ideas, opinions, etc. through music and otherwise.”
DISCOGRAPHY
The Raincoats (Rough Trade, 1979; DGC, 1993); the low-fi and amateurish punk classic debut.
Odyshape (Rough Trade, 1981; DGC, 1993); a quieter, but equally eccentric, follow-up.
The Kitchen Tapes (ROIR, 1983); a live recording from the group’s 1982 U.S. tour, including stronger versions of many songs from Moving.
Moving (Rough Trade, 1984; DGC, 1994); the group’s most eclectic work, recorded as they were on the verge of breaking up.
Extended Play EP (Smells Like, 1994); a four-track live in-studio release taken from the John Peel radio show, with the group’s first new songs in a decade.
Fairytales (Tim/Kerr, 1995); a limited edition release featuring tracks from three Rough Trade albums and pressed on blue vinyl.
Looking in the Shadows (DGC, 1996); a new full-length that showed the women still capable of creating captivating music.
AMERICAN HARDCORE
Punk rock may have had its roots in American bands like the Stooges and the Ramones, but by 1978 punk’s most recognizable face was undeniably British. The Sex Pistols had exploded, and London became the place where tourists from around the world came to take souvenir photos of purple-haired teens with safety-pinned cheeks and spray-painted leather jackets.
At first, most U.S. punk kids – particularly in California – gladly adopted England’s made-to-shock styles. But inevitably, a more distinctly American expression of punk rock began to reappear. Rather than the punk of London kids with grim economic prospects, this punk was made by predominantly suburban Americans who had grown up in relative comfort and faced the boredom of continued prosperity. In places like the beach communities surrounding L.A., kids raised on arena rock and consumer culture wanted music that would excite them, music that was louder, faster, harder than anything before.
And so by the early ‘80s, Americans had reclaimed punk’s cutting edge. The music of bands like Black Flag in Southern California, Hüsker Dü in Minnesota, and Minor Threat in Washington, D.C. became known as hardcore punk, or simply hardcore. While hardcore’s first concern was making high-energy rock, the band stock an additional step by turning punk’s rejectionist stance into something constructive. Where British punk’s best-known bands worked within the same business structure in place for years, American hardcore (like British post-punk) placed a high value on the do-it-yourself (D-I-Y) ethic. These bands wanted to set up an entirely new system where groups served as their own record label, manager, and booking agent; they wanted the punk scene to form entirely new distribution networks and tour circuits.
Kins Coffey, Butthole Surfers:
Hardcore brought the message home that Brits don’t have sole property over punk rock. In fact, nobody did it as fiercely and with as much intensity and meaning as early ‘80s American hardcore. It was through the bands I saw back then, and the records coming out on local and regional labels, that we had a sense of community – that we were truly the counterculture. I have never been so excited about any music, ever, as I was back then. It was really mind blowing – mind expanding – maybe parallel to what it would’ve been like when hippies first realized they had their own subculture going. I will forever view the world through punk rock eyes.
Of course, for every kid attracted by hardcore’s constructive elements there were probably ten impressionable followers drawn to its nihilistic and violent tendencies. In the end, the bands with the most commitment and self-respect left the most important legacy. While the bands determined to maintain autonomy from the record industry had little hope of achieving commercial success, their styles and ideals greatly influenced a younger generation of punk fans. The hard/fast innovations of American hardcore set the stage for ‘90s groups like Nirvana and Green Day, while the early punk labels made today’s highly developed indie music scene – with labels like Kill Rock Stars and D-I-Y artists such as Ani DiFranco – a feasible alternative to the corporate record industry.
Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth:
It’s funny, when those rock documentaries on PBS last year did punk rock, they couldn’t deal with the ‘80s. They were like, “Oh, the Pretenders and reggae became a big influence on the new wave. And not much happened until later, there were some bands in Seattle.” And Steve [Shelley, Sonic Youth’s drummer] turned to me and said, “The ‘80s are still a secret.” Nobody knows what happened. We know, we were there. And all those people like Kurt [Cobain] and Krist [Novoselic, Nirvana’s bassist], they were the kids in the fucking audience.
THE GERMS
Pat Smear, the Germs / Nirvana / Foo Fighters [from liner notes to A Small Circle of Friends]:
I can’t believe anyone’s even interested anymore. I haven’t been bothered by it for years myself, but sometimes these famous guitarists will come up and tell me I’m the reason they started playing g
uitar... I never even owned a guitar the whole time I was in the band, I bought my first guitar for the reunion gig.
While the Germs weren’t the first L.A. punk band, they were certainly one of the most celebrated – and the first to leave an undeniable legacy on subsequent punk music. Too shortlived and erratic to ever reach their potential, the Germs nevertheless played a crucial role in translating British-style punk back into American terms. By making the look, attitude, and energy of punk American, the Germs opened the doors for the hardcore bands that would soon develop nearby. From there, a definitively American style of punk would spread – east to Washington, north to Seattle, and everywhere in between.
Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth:
At first, we thought the LA. scene was completely copying British bands, like dress-up punk, and New Yorkers thought that was silly. But at some point L.A. developed its own identity. They weren’t singing about the death of their social system like in England, it was mostly, “I don’t wanna grow up and be a rich banker like my daddy, because that’s boring.” It was a whole American thing New Yorkers didn’t even think about, and it related much more to middle America. That’s why hardcore was more influenced by the Germs than by [New York band] 8 Eyed Spy.
Jan Paul Beahm and George Ruthenberg formed their first band while attending an experimental high school for troubled kids. Called Sophistifuck and the Revlon Spam Queens, it was more a concept than actual group since neither played nor owned an instrument. In early 1977, Jan (who’d take the punk name Darby Crash) and George (who became Pat Smear) met two young ladies while waiting in a hotel for the chance to the meet the members of Queen. The four – Darby, Pat, and the equally inexperienced bass player Lorna Doom and drummer Dottie Danger – decided to form a band, which they named the Germs. Despite their lack of musical ability, they soon debuted at the Orpheum Theater, opening for the Weirdos and the Zeros. (By then, Dottie had been replaced by her friend Donna Rhia; the following year Dottie reclaimed her given name, Belinda Carlisle, and formed the Go-Gos.)