As part of the Nuits Sonores festival in Lyon, The Raincoats were hosted by the Chicks on Speed on Friday, May 18th, promoting their “Girl Monster” compilation. Babes in Boyland and Opaque met the post-punk heroines Ana and Gina from The Raincoats, probably the greatest Girl Monsters, thank you again!




Can you introduce yourself?

G: Hi! We’re Gina and Ana from The Raincoats.
A: Hello! This is Ana. You can now recognize my voice when we’re talking.

How do you feel about being hosted by the Girls Monster event in Lyon?

A: We’re very flattered and very thankful to the Chicks On Speed.. We are very happy to be here. And Lyon is a very beautiful city.

Did you have time to visit Lyon?

A: A little bit this morning because we had a little walk around.

Were you in touch with The Chicks On Speed before ?

A: I’m on their label and also they invited the Raincoats once when the 99 cents album came out. They had a launch party kind of thing and they asked us to go and play in Berlin for that event. And I’m on their label also.
G: I played with them at Ladyfest in London. We were on the same bill. I had another project, a solo project.

How do feel about being introduced to young people going on with their music?

G: Well, it’s funny because for years and years after the Raincoats finished, there was not a great deal of feedbacks. And when the Riot Girl thing happened in London, we met a lot of young women who were really into it, into what we’ve done ten years previously. This is kind of a revisit of that and it’s been great these last ten, fifteen or more years that so many people have connected with what we did so long ago. It is really an honour for us to be involved with all these people getting into it.


Is it more like people stole something from you?

A: Not at all, it’s not stolen. You’re just inspirational that’s the word.
G: Yeah, having role models is really important. Sometimes it seems really difficult to do something if somebody hasn’t done it before. We’re very luck being around in the punk times when there were women and just everybody was just getting up on stage with a guitar and making a racket, saying what was on their mind. We happened to be lucky enough to be amongst the few women who were able to do that. For us, that time was incredibly inspiring. And other people inspired us like Patti Smith, The Slits who are just a bit ahead of us. Without them, perhaps we wouldn’t have thought the label to put out records ourselves. And then feeling this incredible desire to do the same you know like “wow we can do that, it’s so brilliant”, we just got together and almost pretrend we had a band. And before we knew it, we did. It was just from pretending to reality, there wasn’t such a big step as we first thought.
A: We felt so strongly about those people and women who did these things. It feels very good when you can do the same, when you can be as inspirational as they were to us.
G: We didn’t know that we were going to be or that we would be. We’re happy.

Who are the people inspiring you now?

A: I don’t think there’s anybody in particular that inspires us anymore. There’s a phase in your life when you get very inspired by one person or two people or a group of people. You hear things, see things and maybe take a little bit here, a little bit there. There isn’t really a big force kind of thing. We’ve got our own thing so we don’t need too much of looking around.
G: But we do look around and we enjoy lots of different things from the art world and the music world. I really like a lot of the female artists in london like Tracy Emin, Sarah Lucas, Sander, the filmmaker woman.. Then, there are musician people who are inspiring people like Beth Ditto, people who have a lot to say and really feel very strongly and passionately about what’s right and how to break down barriers for people who are having perhaps a hard time or something. Those people who are inspiring have just kind of broken through. They always make me feel like “Yes, that’s really a great thing”. There’s some people who seem to have it more easy. I‘m not saying I’m against them and I’m pleased for them. But they don’t make me feel as uplifted as the ones who break through that barrier.


You mentioned Patti Smith. She’s playing in Lyon quite soon.

G: And she played in London last night.

Who inspired you when you first started the Raincoats?

A: Her! The thing is: I went to see Patti Smith that was... Probably... It’s difficult to say the most important moment of your life. I don’t think it was, but nearly. But it doesn’t mean I felt I could do the same because she was so powerful that I couldn’t never think that I could do the same. So in that way, it’s not like you see a girl and “ Oh, I’m gonna be like her”, not at all. But it sort of made me feel that a woman had her place, shouted out, say what she wanted, with such a strong presence on stage. To me, it was a big revelation. And then the rest slowly started building up. I didn’t think “I wanna start a band” because of this gig.
G: For me, I saw like the first Sex Pistols’gig, I was just visiting London. I saw it at the artschool, they just played about 5 songs, and I just thought they were amazing. And then, I saw The clash and all those people. We used to go the Roxy, I don’t know how many times a week. We would always go to these little clubs. We’d wear a mohair jumper, stripy trousers and our big boots, with sugar in our hair. It was just a real amazing time.The whole of different bands played there and started out. It was really like there was a revolution happening. It was a little mini revolution and it turned around and it revivaled and then it disappeared for a while after that.
A: It seemed to disappear, I think the influence of that era is still happening now in lots of fields. Those people are probably having jobs in certain places where that kind of filters through. A lot of the music people are playing now, they still call it punk. It was inspired by that era. It much sounds very different to the bands of that times. But it is still very energetic, people think a lot about what they are saying and they like to call it punk.




Do you believe in an electro revolution in 2007?

G: As Technolgy advances, you get hands on all sort of stuffs. Perhaps, I’m not answering the right question. There’s so much more access to technology and different ways of making music. It’s fantastic. Everybody’s walking round with their i-pods, or photographing and making videos. You can make this incredible mixture of media...

What I meant is that there are loads of bands including both of you with your respective solo projects including electronic music.

A: It’s more a medium really rather than an end in itself and it’s how it should be. Also, it’s due to what people have to say with that medium without way of doing things. But also, technology of it has allowed a lot of people and a lot of women. A lot of women are doing electronic music because you can do it on your own, and you learn by yourself, you do it with your computer or out of bits and pieces that you collect.
G: And then you get it right, then you put on a nice dress and then you go out. And you dress up and it is perfect!
A: In a way, it has become a revolution because it has allowed a lot of people and a lot of women to create a lot of new music. That’s the revolutionary side of it, not necessarily the sound of it. The fact in the hands of a lot of women, it’s not just music, it’s also cameras, videos, you can create incredible pieces of work either complex or very simple involving technolgy. I think that’s the good thing.

Let’s talk about your solo projects: How did it come out?


A: Basically, we kind of stopped The Raincoats. Seperately we wanted to do some music. In my case, I just got hold of very simple equipment and started working with it and I made a whole album with just a simple piece of equiment this size.

What is it?

A :Yamaha QY70. It is a sequencer with a little mini keyboard. It’s got loads of sounds. On my album, some people think that I used guitars whereas I didn’t use anything, it’s just the QY70. This is what I thought, this is how I want to do it! I don’t want anything else. I want to keep this simplicity which is the punk ethic, which is as simple as that. It costs about £ 300.
G: In my case, this is quite different I suppose because just after the release of the last Raincoats record, I made music videos for bands. The two people I worked with, were two performance artists and they wanted me to do music for shows. They were doing shows for theaters. They asked me to produce the music for their shows I’d just started writing. Songs and pieces of music kept coming to me. We got show sat the RSCA, at the Royal Hall. I just kept on writing. I thought I was indie and DIY. DIY means do-it-Yourself. In my case, I haven’t actually done it myself! Somebody else did it for me when we were kind of independent. So I thought it would be very interesting to release these things on my own label. I did everything myself in the Uk and in Europe. It was an amazing experience: being on the phone to Norway and Sweden, Germany, even France. I played for The Inrockuptibles. And then Kill Rock Stars in Olympia, Washington, asked me if they could release it in America. I got a relationship with them, I did a bit of touring in America. That was shortly after the Raincoats. Ana did it more recently. In the meantime, I adopted two girls. I’ve got two daughters from China. I haven’t had the same time to do a lot more. Because mostly I make films and videos for music for other people’s so I have a bit of money. The luxury of sitting home and writing a song isn’t available to me. I’ve got a new record written but I just haven’t got the means to do it. And I need to get myself some little help. That’s interesting to think about.

Have you decided whether you’re gonna play the Raincoats songs or more like Gina and Ana’s songs?

A: The Raincoats!!
G: We might just go on stage and say “Ana” or “Gina”!!


THE RAINCOATS website | myspace

ANA DA SILVA myspace

GINA BIRCH myspace

And don't forget our she-rrrriot-fellows who did the interview with us Babes in Boyland on air in Montpellier.