BREAKING GLASS with GINA BIRCH

                                                                    

The incessant chirping birds and tiny little MacBook numbers alert me through blurry eyes that it’s 5am here in Northcote, Melbourne. Tangled up in my lace bed canopy, I’ve managed to break my glasses in this brief cross-over to the requiesence of REM. I think I’m also still a little cross-eyed after the Antenna EP launch last night, confirmed by the lingering flavours of garlic and self-flagellation that coat my tongue. Minutes tick by, when at last a smiley and frantic Gina Birch appears on the screen. My nerves subside as we get to chatting about how I know her kid, Honey, from a fated meeting in Berlin last year. She also relates to sitting on her specs at too-frequent an interval… 

If you were born under a rock, The Raincoat’s were one of the most prolific punk groups to emerge out of the London art scene during the late 1970’s. A precursor to Riotgrrrl music and culture, the band fronted a format of self-expression light-years away from any pre-conceived expectations of the sexist atmosphere that stunk out the 60’s and 70’s - both on and off stage. 

Assembled first in art school by Gina and her classmate, Ana De Silver, the pair would go on to cycle through rotation of members before assembling a primary formulation of Birch, De Silver, Vicky Aspinal and Palmolive. A line-up of raggle-taggle women, who put sugar in their hair and wore their clothes inside out. The instruments and the unconventional techniques they were played with formed the resistance to virtuosity that The Raincoat’s built their sound upon. Their blatant authenticity and gigantic contribution to the underground D.I.Y movement continues to entice music enthusiasts like a moth to a flame, beguiled by the band’s lack of interest in what anyone else had done or were doing within the scene. And doesn’t it sound good, what can filter through the happenstance? 

Gina Birch and Ana De Silva

Gina Birch: So sock into me. What’s your first question? *pans computer camera to a poster on wall* Oh there’s my Women in Revolt poster! Have you seen it?

Farmdog: I wasn’t in London to see it unfortunately! But that kind of draws in to my first question, all the things you’re doing right now, between your involvement in the Women in Revolt exhibition, and your new album, do you have any time for cups of tea?

GB: Well, i’d like to, but I make them and then they go cold! I do make them, but I get up and walk around the room and I forget to drink them. But yes, I do. Honey’s the same actually - there’s nearly always a cold cup of tea around Honey. 

FD: At least the thought’s there?

GB: [Laughs] It’s funny, there’s a lot of similarities between Honey and I’s behaviour without any planning…

FD: When I would tell my relatively conservative parents that I listen to punk music, I think records like Odyshape would be the very last thing that they would consider. I wanted to ask you, what do you think are the most and least punk elements about The Raincoats?

GB: Well it depends what you mean by “punk”, everyone’s got their own idea really. For us, it was about having courage to do something at a time where there was a movement called punk. A lot of us felt that we didn’t want to be cookie cutter punk, and then the punk that kind of emerged was tourist punk, a bit like fast food restaurants or something, lowest common denominator. We wanted to make something that was our own…

-

For me it was when I came to art school in London, and punk just seemed to be revolutionary in so many ways. Things like Vic Goddard from Subway Sect reading his lyrics, you got the feeling he’d written the song a couple of hours before they came on stage. There was a freshness to it and it felt un-tutored. This was good for all the young women, we didn’t have to be brilliant at what we did, we just had to have some ideas and some courage. For me, that’s what punk was at that time. It was about not necessarily following traditional song structures, it was about finding our way through things. You could say we were a bit more progressive than we were punk. It’s funny because people say “Oh, you know Gina? She was a punk you know!” And I kind of grin and grit my teeth a bit, because everyones idea of what a punk is something different from what a lot of us who were in that early part of the movement. It was buying clothes in charity shops, sewing them, subverting them, printing on them. Just being creative in any way we could. we would wear our clothes inside out. Ana [da Silva] used to draw lines on her face, We would put sugar in our hair - there was a kind of look. I think you could tell we were affiliated with punk… drainpipe trousers, I had big galoshes - I liked the idea of really skinny legs and big feet.

The Raincoats - photo courtesy of Kevin Cummins

FD: What was the sugar in the hair for?

GB: You melt the sugar in water, then you put it in your hair and it dries out. You end up with some kind of weird hairdo.

FD: I might have to take that one on board…

GB: It was all about what that movement was at that time, there were people that used to jump on that bandwagon that were already rockstars, doing garage rock who kind of turned to punk. They weren’t what I considered to be the real deal, because they were already doing something else, the thing we were fighting against, and then they starting singing about Peaches on the Beaches - you know, it’s like “Oh fuck off!”. There was lots of good girl energy. There were a lot of young women who started playing instruments then because they didn’t have to be brilliant, in fact, part of the charm of punk was, you let everything show. The rawness, the edges and the seams was part of the aesthetic in a way. No one wanted virtuosity really, at that time. Obviously theres nothing wrong with virtuosity but it excludes an energy and a creativity of people. We didn’t have to be virtuosos, just had to have a bit of an idea and a will to do it.

The Raincoats

FD: And big hair!

GB: [Laughs] Big hair was quite important, yeah. 

FD: Why do you think the allusive nature of the underground music scene is still so sought after? Do you think we’re all hard-wired to want to be “cool”, or do you think it’s something more significant? 

GB: Again, it kind of refers to the virtuosity. The underground is kind of its own little club isn’t it? It’s like, people trying to create something that isn’t immediately exploited by the mainstream media. The mainstream media tends to take things on, and kind of either put them too high on a pedestal or put them down, it interferes, in something thats quite nascent, it’s beginning, burgeoning. When the riot grrrls were doing their thing, they did a media blackout - they wouldn't speak to the press. They knew once the press got hold of it, they would destroy it somehow. The underground is cool because it’s less exploited, it’s more about the people that are making, rather than what other people are writing about it [laughs]. Well, I don’t know what the papers are like there but outlets like the Daily Mail [writing about] The Sex Pistols, people were outraged! I think the thing with Malcom McClaren was he was trying to play at that game of underground and intervention into culture, then pulling back. It’s a dangerous game. A lot of [punk bands] signed to major labels, and were seen as sellouts. I think the Gang Of Four used to say it was better to get the heart of the beast. The underground is cool because its often got its heart in the right place. It has a passion and it's often unexploited. 

FD: I think it’s interesting to see bands today that are really trying to eschew social media, and media in general. Bands like Bar Italia, who have this cult following with barely any presence in the media - they only just did their editorial debut with Crack Magazine after a few years on the scene. 

GB: There’s something about word of mouth. When Raincoats started, we were like, “We don’t want any advertising!” But you know, I think it’s good for people to explore things in different ways. People don’t have to be cookie cutter in their approach into their careers. We never thought of it as a career, we just thought we were doing it for a while… and here were are! 

FD: Here we are. I was listening to the interview you did for the Women in Revolt podcast, and you articulate the feeling of liberation you first experienced as a young woman in the punk movement, and you said that you felt like you could stand on your own two feet, without any need for extra artillery like boyfriends or the likes to secure yourself in a traditionally macho space. Can you recall any defining moments of feeling this independence?

GB: I think the thing is, when I came to London, I left home, I left any boyfriends I had in Nottingham. I realised that I could choose my own music, play my own records and be my own person. I know it sounds naive, but I was naive! We didn’t have the internet, I wasn’t a very worldly person when I came to London. It was just art school, and living in a squat, really. When we started the band, to be able to write a song, that was the most liberating thing. I could create something and it was my story… “I don’t wanna be in your family tree” and “no one’s little girl” and blah blah blah. It wasn’t that long prior to us doing this that the world was incredibly and intensely misogynist. When we started the band, women “Shouldn’t be doing this”, we wrote our own songs, we organised ourselves, made our own artwork. We were in control of our lives that was quite unusual at that time. We just got on with it really! The moment seeing The Slits play meant that we started the band, because we’d seen lot’s of bands play, [but] a lot of the women who were fronting had male band members. We weren’t surrounded by all girl bands. Seeing The Slits was a revelation - you definitely felt that they were writing songs from their own perspective. They weren’t writing Cherry Bomb or something, or songs that felt they were appealing to a female sexual identity… going on to stage to be admired or lusted after, which I suppose is every Rock ’N’ Rollers dream [laughs], male or female! Girls were expected to have this kind of sexy appeal, which were weren’t really aiming for. We wanted to look nice to please ourselves! We weren’t aiming to look terrible, but we shocked people. We were really believing in it - feeling that we were part of a change - all though we weren’t very much appreciated. It was like cutting through a rock or thorns and nettles - you get stung and spiked and all that - but it’s satisfying as well!

FD: I think that leads on to the next one, what advice would you give to a gig-goer who is feeling the weight of machoism, or the constrictions of being female in a boys club. 

GB: Well I don’t know what gig they’re at, if they’re at a Bikini Kill gig they’ll be laughing because there’s not much machoism there! When you hear Kathleen Hanna talk, she was going to a lot go gigs and finding a lot of male macho posturing and fights. So she decided to start her own band. She got a lot of heckling and verbal assaults [because] she would try to make it a safe space for women. The only other thing is to gather a gaggle of girls to go too! I wouldn’t go to a macho gig alone as a girl, it can be dangerous I think, unless you cover yourself in horse shit! [laughs]. I haven’t been to a punk gig on my own in a macho room in a long time. I think just walking down the street sometimes at night, you can feel the dangers of being a young woman in the city. I always advise walk near to the curbs, not near the gates because I just think someone could pull you into a gateway with a plastic bag over your head or something. I’m always wary - best to be safe! This has all been a really ridiculous answer, but I would just advise people to be as safe as they can because it's tricky out there! We don’t live in a utopia, we live in a pretty shitty world. Don’t get too out of it, unless you’ve got friends with you to look after you!

FD: I have been to many punk gigs by myself before, and I think its definitely such a better experience when you’ve got your mates by your side.

GB: I think it’s interesting, Kim Gordon has written about male bonding - boys in bands - if you took a sociological approach to male behaviour, rather than being a victim of it, you can be an observer of it, taking a cool, collected attitude towards their interesting and sometimes absurd rituals and behaviour. Just as long as you know where you are. 

FD: Yeah, absolutely! Do you see any connections in your role as a punk musician and as a mother? Are there any values that interject with each other? 

GB: I always try to make life creative and fun. I feel like I was as good a mum as I could be. We did lots of singing and dancing and making films and drawing, I hope I gave them confidence! We had further complications, a trans, racial adoption, its not an easy thing, more for the kids side than mine. I love being a mum so much, I found it one of the best things I’ve ever done, it’s just amazing. Kids are so, my kids particularly, they’re just so smart and interesting, I went with that. I tried to bring that out and expand it, explore it. 

FD: What’s been the least conventional addition to a Raincoat’s song that you can recall? 

GB: I think basically we always tried to find different approaches, not on every song, but we tried to make things different. We did buy some different instruments like the kalimba and the balofon and the strittibox. Now with samples it’s a bit redundant in a way. The way music was created, and the way I create music now is just so different. I think Only Loved At Night is a pretty fine example of us going off piece a bit and making something beautiful! 

FD: How do you feel about making music now, with samples?

GB: I really like it. It’s a predominant way of working, with a computer but getting other musicians to come in, record them, send samples backwards, having the same approach but with different instruments. It’s also nice being in a room with other people. I don’t know about you, but it feels like a lot of people I know are going out a quarter as much as they did before the pandemic. We’re all more kind of hunkering down. Do you feel you’re less going out? It doesn’t sound like it to me.

FD: Not last night anyway! I think in Melbourne in particular, there’s a gig on every single night of the week. I think my circumstance is a little unique, but I do see an inclination to wanna stay home amongst my mates. People just got comfortable!

GB: Yes! You haven’t got a band?

FD: No, but it’s something I really want to do. I’m very inspired and I’m excited to start something - one of these days… 

GB: You will! Lovely to meet you, Sorry I was late! 

FD: No worries! Thanks so much for your time! I really appreciate it. Have a lovely evening. 

GB: Thank you - have a lovely day! 30 degrees. Yum! Bye!

                                                        (interview took place in March, 2024)

                                                                (I have since joined a band)