In honor of this lovely weather we're having here in LA, I'm going to blog about the so-called Raincoat scene. Before Goth -- for that matter, before New Grave, Dark Wave, Cold Wave or any of those other Ren Fair-reeking or overly categorized scenes, the British music press took to lumping together a bunch of bands and their fans and calling them "raincoats." Why? Because since their invention in the 1850s, nothing has silently and eloquently conveyed, "I'm dark, brooding and Romantic" like slouching in a trench coat. OK, it could also convey, "I'm stealing porn and not wearing clothes underneath." That's a different sort of Raincoat Brigade.

The earliest usage of "raincoat" in this sense that I've found is in an edition of NME. "1982 was also a year of recession in the U.K. A broken economy, you could argue, enabled both genres to flourish: sleek synth-pop helped people transcend national gloom, glowering raincoat-rock authorised them to wallow in it." 

In the 1950s, Britiain's teenagers were exposed to a lot more American culture than they were perhaps previously used to. Disparate strains of American culture including beatniks, teenage rebellion, rock 'n' roll and coffee all got mashed up in one slightly confused and frothy concoction. Leather-favoring motorcycle enthusiasts who embraced the scene were labeled coffee bar cowboys. For the aspiring juvenile delinquents and those just out for kicks, alcohol was suddenly the choice of squares and java joe was the way to go, dad! Soon, the English were brewing their own strain of rock 'n' roll in Soho "caffs" (most famously, The 2 i's). Of course, as with any proper youth movement, exploitation films inevitably followed.

The Tommy Steele Story (1957)


"He traveled the world listening to the musical heartbeat of people everywhere and he came home with his head and heart full of songs that captivate all who hear."

The Golden Disc (1958)