On the eve of her debut solo album, the founder of the feminist punk band explains why she never wore stilettos (you couldn’t run away from Teds in them) and how she fell in love with painting
I Play My Bass Loud, the debut solo record by film-maker, painter and punk musician Gina Birch, is an album of manifestos. The title track is a Walk on the Wild Side-esque ode to taking up space with an instrument usually seen as auxiliary. There are songs raging against injustice and about proudly branding yourself a feminist. And then there’s I Will Never Wear Stilettos, an anarchic, tongue-in-cheek dub song about the virtues of comfortable footwear. “In punk, shoes seemed to be quite important. We wore brothel creepers and the Teds didn’t like that – they used to chase the punks,” says Birch, laughing. A founder of seminal feminist punk band the Raincoats, much of her youth was spent running from undesirables – hence the no stilettos rule. “At least you could run in brothel creepers!”
Today, 67-year-old Birch has gone sans footwear. We’re sitting on blue couches in her chaotic and charming north London home, Birch resting her tea on an amp as she discusses why, 44 years after she laid a DIY rock blueprint with the Raincoats’ eponymous 1979 debut, she is finally releasing a solo record. In the early 2000s, Birch got the music production software Logic Pro 9, thought “Oh, I’ll give that a crack”, and over the next two decades built up a catalogue of demos filled with samples and AutoTune and allusions to political flashpoints such as Occupy and Pussy Riot.
