Picture of The Raincoats by Kevin Cummings, I believe, stolen from https://sheshreds.com/40-years-fairytales-retrospective-raincoats/ without permissionI've been a casual fan of the Raincoats for forty years or more (I bought their first EP when it came out; always enjoyed Moving and the 'No-one's Little Girl' single; for some bizarre reason never owned Odyshape; currently own the debut LP but for another or the same bizarre reason am not presently completely 'on top of' it and have the original version of Moving which I like a lot - gripe regarding this LP below). So - always aware of, often greatly enjoyed. I'm now about half-way through Audrey Golden's book about/with them. I was keen to read Golden's previous (first?) book, about the women who worked at Factory records, but only got about a third of the way through it because even though I loved the way it was done it soon reinforced for me how little I care about Factory records, aside from 'It's Hard to be an Egg'.
Golden writes carefully and well about the minutiae of the Raincoats' late 70s London world, and seems to capture a slightly (or very) fractious, always engaged group of people (three main women, many guests, some of whom did not realise they were guests) producing work under The Raincoats banner. It seems the core group were very, very involved in the writing of this book which is presumably why so much is not explained (drummers keep getting thrown out of the band for meagrely outlined or just meagre reasons, for instance, and I have to assume the unexplainedness is something to do with either differing memories or disagreements leading to the tactical decision to just pump a bit of cloud into the room so no-one has to deal with mucky detail).
Here is an example: when Golden explains the decision to drop three important songs from the third album, Moving, for the CD reissue the explanation is hazy, once again surely through the Raincoats' own hedging or eliding or something - ?! One of the removed songs is by Vicky Aspinall and she was, we are told, unwilling to see it perpetuate; the other two were by, and sung by, the original-incarnation-of-the-group's last drummer, Richard Dudanski, and he was not consulted about whether they would stay or go. This is very strange, and although we are told (I mean come on!) that the cover artwork was altered to fit only three women in silhouette rather than three women and a man as 'a design necessity in shifting from LP to CD' - someone better tell the people responsible for the 55 million album covers shrunk to CD size with no design change! - it must surely overall have been a decision calculated to present the Raincoats as a band of women rather than women and men. (In the book, Ana da Silva says that Dudanski's two songs 'didn't feel like The Raincoats' which is in one sense fair but in another sense, that's the record.) The weirdest part perhaps is Golden's editorial note: 'there's no digital whiteout for the past'. (pp. 193-4). Because firstly, remaking the album with one song added and three subtracted is using 'whiteout' - I suppose since it was a CD, that was 'digital whiteout'. Even if we take the group's explanation on face value, still surely the fact is that a Raincoats record including two songs with a man singing is not the kind of Raincoats record most people want to hear - and that's why they were dropped. The Dudanski songs are so 'digitally whiteout'-ed, that even an unofficial youtube sequence of songs ostensibly from the 'original vinyl' (using the CD cover art) eliminates them. OK I know it looks like I'm making a fuss because a man didn't get to be acknowledged for work with a women's band, so perhaps I should have picked another issue to get thingy about, but I do get a strong sense that - probably very justifiably - the last Raincoats standing, Ana da Silva and Gina Birch, are forever problem-solving the way they present or protect their historical decisions and their present existence. It is their story and they have the right to tell it, obviously, as they see fit. I am glad that Golden is in there to be referee and/or interpreter.
There's a lot of pages spent on the revival of the group's fortunes/reputation by (particularly) Kurt Cobain claiming them as a personal favourite and also by the Riot Grrl movement (John Lydon has also said that their first album was the only real punk album and/or the only punk album he can tolerate - things like that). I know I have indulged in a bit of that kind of 'Blah Blah, a person millions adore and respect, adores and respects Thing X, therefore aiding the legitimising of Thing X' and I don't think AG goes there completely, though it's easy for the reader to drop into that mindset. As it transpired, a mooted Nirvana tour with the Raincoats as support didn't happen because of KC's suicide, but I can only imagine if it had happened it would have been a bit like when Tiny Tim went on tour with the Hoodoo Gurus - great for some in a IYKYK way, but awful for the support act whose fans were predominantly idiots out for a rockin' good time. I'm up to the bit where they're making their reunion album which for some reason Geffen continued to be committed to even though they no longer needed to curry favour with KC.
So, so far, interesting enough book and certainly a band that deserves a careful, sensitive writer like AG who isn't prone to lazy hack writing and who puts in the work. I think I have about a hundred pages to go.
