Victoria "Vicky" Aspinall is a British musician. She was the violinist in the English

post-punk Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad music genre, genre of Punk Music, punk music that emerged in the late 1970s as musicians departed from punk's traditional elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a variety of avant-garde s ...

band

The Raincoats The Raincoats are a British experimental post-punk band. Ana da Silva (vocals, guitar) and Gina Birch (vocals, bass) formed the group in 1977 while they were students at Hornsey College of Art in London. Signed to the label Rough Trade, the ...

from 1978 to 1984. In 1992 she and Dave Morgan founded the

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

dance label Fresh Records (not the post-punk label of the same name) initially for releases of their own

Lovestation Lovestation are a British electronic dance music group formed by Vicky Aspinall in 1989, who subsequently worked with co-producer David Morgan. Gospel singer-songwriter Lisa Hunt has also appeared on several Lovestation records. Active througho ...

project.

Biography

Aspinall is a classically trained violinist, having graduated from the

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including performanc ...

, London, in the late 1970s. She was a member of Jam Today, a part of the Women's Music Movement that developed in the late 1970s, playing a hybrid of jazz and rock similar in approach to groups like

Henry Cow Henry Cow were an English experimental rock group, founded at the University of Cambridge in 1968 by multi-instrumentalists Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson. Henry Cow's personnel fluctuated over their decade together, but drummer Chris Cutler, b ...

. She joined the Raincoats after she noticed an advertisement which read "female musician wanted -strength not style" in a radical bookshop Compendium in Camden Town. She has been credited, by

Gina Birch Gina Birch is an English musician and filmmaker, best known as a founding member of post-punk rock band, the Raincoats. Born in Nottingham, Birch attended Nottingham High School for Girls, and later the Hornsey School of Art, where she form ...

of The Raincoats, with making the band more aware of feminist ideas.''The Lost Women of Rock Music: Female Musicians of the Punk Era'' by Helen Reddington. Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2007. p.142, Aspinall and Birch later formed the band Dorothy which was subsequently signed by

Geoff Travis Geoff Travis (born 2 February 1952) is the founder of both Rough Trade Records and the Rough Trade chain of record shops. A former drama teacher and owner of a punk record shop, Travis founded the Rough Trade label in 1978. Biography Travis was ...

to Chrysalis Records.

References

1950s births Living people English violinists English punk rock musicians Alumni of the Royal College of Music The Raincoats members Women in punk {{violinist-stub