C86 (music)

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C86
Compilation album by Various
Released	1986
Recorded	1985/86
Genre	Indie Pop, Post-punk
Label	Rough Trade New Musical Express
Compiled by	Neil Taylor, Adrian Thrills, Roy Carr
Various chronology
	C86 (1986)	Holiday Romance"' (1986)

C86 is the name of a cassette compilation released by the British music magazine New Musical Express (NME) in 1986, and later the name of a musical genre. Almost a term of abuse on release, and criticised for its associations with tweeness and underachievement many now argue that it was a pivotal moment for independent music in the UK.^[1]

Contents 1 The C86 Cassette 1.1 Follow Ups 1.2 Legacy 1.3 Tracklisting 1.3.1 Side one 1.3.2 Side two 2 The C86 Genre 2.1 Influences 2.2 Today 3 See also 4 Notes 5 References 5.1 Articles and books 5.2 External links

[edit] The C86 Cassette

The tape was a belated follow up to C81, a more diverse collection of new bands, released by NME in 1981 in conjunction with the label Rough Trade. C86 was similarly designed to reflect the new music scene of the time and compiled by NME writers; Roy Carr, Neil Taylor and Adrian Thrills who licenced tracks from labels such as Creation, Pink, and Ron Johnson. Readers had to pay for the tape via mail order although an LP was subsequently released on Rough Trade in 1987. The UK music press, in this period, was extremely competitive with 3 weekly papers documenting new bands and trends and the grouping of bands, often artificially, with an overarching label to heighten interest or sell copies was commonplace. NME journalists of the period now agree that C86 was a typical example but also a byproduct of NME's "hip hop wars";^[2] a schism on the paper (and amongst readers) between enthusiasts of the contemporary progressive black music such as Public Enemy and Mantronix and the fans of traditional white rock.

This was the 23rd NME tape although its catalogue number was NME022, C81 had been dubbed COPY001. The rest of the tapes were compilations promoting labels' back catalogues and dedicated to R&B, Northern Soul, Jazz or Reggae. C86 was followed up with, of all things, a Billie Holiday compilation; Holiday Romance.^[3]

The C86 tape, despite its subsequent association with a genre of the same name, had a much harder punkier shambling sound featuring early tracks from as many as 5 bands from the Ron Johnson label; The Shrubs, A Witness, Stump, bIG fLAME and The Mackenzies. Their loud quirkiness was completely at odds with the Byrdsy guitars and fey melodies of what came to be known as 'C86' bands. NME promoted it in conjunction with London's Institute of Contemporary Arts, who staged a week of gigs in July 1986 which featured most of the acts on the compilation.

[edit] Follow Ups

In 1996 NME continued the tradition of compiling a new band album (this time a CD) by releasing C96. Yet this time it had little impact and has been almost forgotten.^[4]

The 20th anniversary of the tape in 2006, saw several tributes. A download-only compilation, C06, of contemporary bands inspired by those on the original C86 cassette was put together by the indie-mp3 site in July 2006. A double CD compilation; CD86,^[5] compiled by Bob Stanley, was released by Sanctuary Records and the ICA hosted "C86 - Still Doing It For Fun",^[6] an exhibition and 2 nights of gigs celebrating the rise of British Independent music.

A documentary film marking the period; Hungry Beat; is in production directed by Paul Kelly.^[7]

[edit] Legacy

Ex NME staffer Andrew Collins summed up C86 by dubbing it "the most indie thing to have ever existed".^[8] Bob Stanley; a Melody Maker journalist in the late 1980s and band member of Saint Etienne similarly claimed in a 2006 interview^[9] that C86 represented the

"beginning of indie music...It's hard to remember how underground guitar music and fanzines were in the mid 80s; DIY ethics and any residual punk attitudes were in isolated pockets around the country and the C86 comp and gigs brought them together in an explosion of new groups".

Martin Whitehead, who ran the Subway label in the late 80s (whose first release was from The Shop Assistants) confirms this view^[10] believing it to have had a political influence. "Before C86, women could only be eye-candy in a band, I think C86 changed that - there were women promoting gigs, writing fanzines and running labels".

Some writers however regret the influence the tape had over the music scene of the time and subsequently. Everett True, a writer for NME in 1986 under the name "The Legend!"^[11] called it "unrepresentative of its times (as opposed to the brilliant C81 comp) and even unrepresentative of the small narrow strata of music it thought it was representing." Alastair Fitchett, editor of the long running music site Tangents goes further, despite being a fan of many of the bands on the tape.^[12]

'"(The NME) laid the foundations for the desolate wastelands of what we came to know by that vile term 'Indie'. What more reason do you need to hate it ?"'

[edit] Tracklisting

The full tracklisting for the C86 compilation was:

[edit] Side one

1. Primal Scream - Velocity Girl
2. The Mighty Lemon Drops - Happy Head
3. The Soup Dragons - Pleasantly Surprised
4. The Wolfhounds - Feeling So Strange Again
5. The Bodines - Therese
6. Mighty Mighty - Law
7. Stump - Buffalo
8. Bogshed - Run To The Temple
9. A Witness - Sharpened Sticks
10. The Pastels - Breaking Lines
11. Age of Chance - From Now On, This Will Be Your God

[edit] Side two

1. The Shop Assistants - It's Up To You
2. Close Lobsters - Firestation Towers
3. Miaow - Sport Most Royal
4. Half Man Half Biscuit - I Hate Nerys Hughes (From The Heart)
5. The Servants - Transparent
6. The Mackenzies - Big Jim (There's no pubs in Heaven)
7. bIG fLAME - New Way (Quick Wash And Brush Up With Liberation Theology)
8. Fuzzbox - Console Me
9. McCarthy - Celestial City
10. The Shrubs - Bullfighter's Bones
11. The Wedding Present - This Boy Can Wait

[edit] The C86 Genre

Over time C86 became a shorthand for a movement within the British indie scene, often derided for its twee or "cuteness", jangly guitars, the bowl haircuts of its singers and asexual looks of its followers. This was applied to bands whether they had been on the tape or not such as The June Brides and Biff Bang Pow!. Some later became associated with the sound but had yet to emerge such as Talulah Gosh, Razorcuts or the BMX Bandits who in 1990 released an album called C86. The entire Sarah Records roster was dogged with associations with C86 and later as "Sarah bands" although the label's first release wasn't until 1987.

A link between the genre and the C86 tape is often disputed by journalists and the bands on the tape. Everett True has argued that "C86 didn't actually exist as a sound, or style. I find it weird, bordering on surreal, that people are starting to use it as a description again".^[13] Geoff Taylor from Age of Chance agreed. "We never considered ourselves part of any scene.I’m not sure that the public at large did either, to be honest. We were just an independent band around at that same time as the others."^[14]. Bob Stanley acknowledges that participants at the time reacted against lazy labelling but insists they shared an approach;

"Of course the "scene", like any scene, barely existed. Like squabbling Marxist factions, groups who had much in common built up petty rivalries. The June Brides and the Jasmine Minks were the biggest names at Alan McGee's Living Room Club and couldn't stand the sight of each other. Only when the Jesus and Mary Chain exploded and stole their two headed crown did they realise they were basically soulmates."^[15]

Nicky Wire remembers that it was the bands' very independence that gave the scene coherence; "People were doing everything themselves: making their own records, doing the artwork, gluing the sleeves together, releasing them and sending them out, writing fanzines because the music press lost interest really quickly."^[16]

[edit] Influences

Simon Reynolds in Melody Maker (September 27, 1986), talking about the political/cultural aspect of the scene, referred to a "revolt into childhood" and against 1980s values of Thatcherism and Americanisation, claiming that these had become so much the British mainstream that a return to older values had become as rebellious, even "unpatriotic", as a desire for Americanisation had been at the dawn of rock and roll. Style magazine i-D in an article from 1986 similarly concluded that the followers of the genre had an ingenuous devotion.

"Childlike innocence and assumed naivety permeate the Cutie scene – their clothes are asexual, their haircuts are fringes, their colours are pastel. Cuties like Penguin modern classics, sweets, ginger beer, vegetables and anoraks. Heroes include Christopher Robin…Buzzcocks and The Undertones.”^[17]

Making a similar point rather more caustically, David Stubbs, in a derogatory Melody Maker review of the C86 tape (September 20, 1986), claimed that these were bands "for whom Camberwick Green is a sort of Palestine".

Musically in his book Time Travel, pop historian Jon Savage traced the origins of C86 and Indie Pop to the Velvet Underground's eponymous third album but perhaps a more obvious musical influence however was the pop side of post punk rock: bands such as Television Personalities, the Swell Maps and Dolly Mixture and the quirky childlike lyrics of Jonathan Richman. C86 was also rooted in the Scottish post-punk bands of the early 1980s on the independent Postcard label: Orange Juice, Aztec Camera, The Fire Engines and Josef K (although those bands soul/funk/disco influences were usually forgotten). Other influences were the DIY punk ethic represented by fanzines from the period such as The Legend!, Are you Scared to get Happy? and Hungry Beat! who often featured flexis of bands who then became associated with C86. The movement continued to hold sway into the 1990s with many bands citing C86 as an influence and finally reached a commercial peak with the success of Belle & Sebastian.

[edit] Today

In 2004 the Rough Trade Shops compilation Indiepop Vol 1 effectively documented the history of the sound acknowledging that it pre- and post-dated 1986. Labels such as Matinee, Siesta and websites like Indiepages, Twee.net and Indie-MP3: Keeping C86 Alive continue to be influenced by the C86/Indiepop sound. As well as releasing or showcasing tracks from new bands, they have reissued and repackaged much of the material produced at the time. British clubs such as How Does it Feel to be Loved^[18] continue to air tracks from the tape and is dedicated to indiepop from 20 years ago and today. It is however Sweden where the sound has most taken hold with a raft of labels and new bands claiming C86 and Sarah records as their inspiration.^[19]

[edit] See also

• Twee pop
• Riot Grrrl
• DIY punk ethic
• Fanzine
• Indie rock
• Sarah Records
• Indie pop
• Northern Soul

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

[edit] Articles and books

• Bladh, Krister Everything went Pop!, C86 and more, A wave and its rise and wake (pdf) 2005
• Cavanagh, David The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry for the Prize (Virgin Books, 2000) ISBN 1-85227-775-0
• "Fire Escape Talking","Anoraky in the UK,C86, the punk that refuses to die" ("Fire Escape Talking blog", July 7, 2006)
• Fitchett, Alastair, C86 (Tangents Blog, July 25, 2005)
• Hann, Michael Fey City Rollers (The Guardian, 13th October 2004)
• Hasted, Nick "How an NME cassette launched indie music" ("The Independent", October 27, 2006)
• Pearce, Kevin A Different Story; The Ballad of the June Brides(Tangents, March 2001)
• Reynolds, Simon Rip It Up and Start Again: Post Punk 1978-1984 (Faber and Faber, 2005) ISBN 0-571-21569-6
• Stanley, Bob, Where were you in C86? (The Times October 20, 2006)
• True, Everett C86 Q&A(Plan B Blog July 22, 2005)
• Wire, Nicky The Birth of Uncool(The Guardian, October 25, 2006)

[edit] External links

• C86 Profile "Indie MP3-Keeping C86 alive" blog
• Ron Johnson Records - An appreciation
• Rough Trade Indiepop Vol1 Tracklisting
• Creation Records History 1983-2000
• How Does it Feel to be loved ?

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