NME's 'C86 Compilation'.... C&D, S&D, Say Something Interesting About, etc etc etc...

(although maybe i am nostalgic for the names rather than the actual music)

Gerald, yes, your attitude to the whole thing is roughly the opposite of mine.

I can see that it isn't in fact a single pop sound (as legend has misleadingly suggested) and I tend to wish it was, because the other sounds are mostly ones I don't like.

thinking about ron johnson etc makes me wish there was an online archive for 'underground' magazine somewhere. maybe there is?

oh look i did find this:

http://graphicnothing.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/underground-magazine-by-rod-clark-1987.html

Tim - why, what happened?

Pinefox - I love that sound as well; I am all-in with The Bodines, Shop Assistants, Close Lobsters, Fuzzbox, McCarthy and The Wedding Present. Later I came to love Stump, A Witness, and bits of Big Flame (who get too cacophonous for even me). You'd do well to check out the C87 and C88 comps. As mentioned, they focus on the poppier side and have very few duds.

Further down the indiepop compilation road is also the "Scared To Get Happy" box.

Close Lobsters (to a degree) and (more so) Fuzzbox and Wedding Present are not really jangly or sweet enough for me.

But I take the general point and I do sense that the 87 and 88 compilations might be closer to what I like.

It's apples and oranges innit. C86 was a compilation of brand-new artists while the others are retrospective genre compilations.

The connection is the use of "C86" for marketing purposes.

twas called "shambling bands" not "jangling bands" at the time iirc; a jaggedness that might be clumsy and/or willed was one of the hallmarks at least as much as velvets/shangrilas indiepop template, or something.

Stump were magnificent.

"It's apples and oranges innit. C86 was a compilation of brand-new artists while the others are retrospective genre compilations."

Well the Cherry Red C86 box is both. But the songs it includes that were not on the tape include (esp CD2) stuff that's like what's on the tape. It's not that everything not on the original tape is a different aesthetic.

"The connection is the use of "C86" for marketing purposes."

But ... given that the original C86 was a particular thing (some pop, some noise, some Fall, etc), why did it become potent for marketing something else? That's the puzzle maybe.

For me the whole thing is to some extent a case study of how culture is reimagined, re-streamlined, etc, retrospectively for the needs of a later time. Though it's not entirely that, as some of what came to be casually thought of as C86 is present in the original.

There's a great Stump thread on here

... and why did the later time have those needs?

And what time was it?

I'm inclined to pin it on the www-driven indiepop revival of c.2008-. I feel like it was around that time and subsequent years that I especially heard a lot of 'C86' as a category for indie discos, influences, etc, not particularly meaning the actual 'C86'. I feel like that was the time that the reinvention / relabelling process really took place. A clear-cut example is the idea (c.2008-) that The Pains of Being Pure at Heart drew on C86, though it would be harder really to point to a Pains record that sounds like what's on C86.

But maybe it was earlier too. Maybe all this was around by eg: the early days of Camera Obscura.

And maybe, even, by say the end of the 1980s, once some kind of idea of indie pop had been more streamlined and solidified (cf. the 87 and 88 compilations which draw on this), it was already tempting to look back and think of this in terms of C86? I can remember reviews of The Primitives in maybe 1989 putting them in this sort of context (ie: saying they were successors to Shop Assistants & Talulah Gosh, who at the time were exotic mysterious bands I had never heard).

I'm sure I don't need to remind you all that the first BMX Bandits album, released in '89 or '90(?), was called 'C86'! This seemed kind of hilarious at the time because C86 was like the uncoolest thing imaginable by 1989. I don't know why the BMX Bandits called the album that but it seemed to me they were saying, "Yeah yeah, we know you think it's crap but we still like it".

... they might have just thought it was funny though.

Yes, I did need you to remind me of that.

BMX Bandits are on CD2 of the Cherry Red version with a song from 1986 itself.

I agree that releasing a record called C86 in 1990 is odd.

I don't think I have ever really heard a song by that band that I liked, but I might not have heard enough.

I bought the C86 tape in a second hand shop in 1997, and I was surprised by all the Fall-influenced bands because I was expecting it all to be jangly indiepop, because that's what C86 meant at the time.

C86 became a millstone for bands included on the album and also for some bands that weren't. BMX Bandits' C86 album is because they were one of the bands cast as and archetypal C86 band yet having nothing to do with it. And possibly because it had taken them almost 5 years to get an album out and some of the songs were from the C86 period. The cover has their skeleton mascot rising from the dead with associated iconography - just like Iron Maiden's Live After Death.

But maybe Duglas will show up on this thread to sort it out.

Stevie T pointed out to me that MIAOW was CATH CARROLL so I listened to this with new ears.

Previously I had heard or misheard it as some kind of Scritti Politti pastiche.

I also keep playing THE SERVANTS.

Despite my doubts, there is something about this compilation that responds to a lot of listening.

The Servants is Luke Haines's original band iirc?

It was but he hadn’t joined by the time of C86.

Stevie T pointed out to me that MIAOW was CATH CARROLL so I listened to this with new ears.

Check out the Miaow compilation When It All Comes Down that LTM put out; great stuff!

Yes, that sounds like a good idea.

I have just started on the Cherry Red C87 compilation. It's very good! Better than C86!

CD2 of C87 is even better than CD1.

One song on it that I never really knew is LAUGH's 'Paul McCartney'. I find this tune quite compelling. Does anyone else remember and like this band?

They are on the Video comp "Gimme Shelter" put out by the NME.

I know and like Laugh - our friend Dan Pantry was a big fan, PF. My favourite of their material is when they went a little dancier on SubAqua ("Good To Feel Good" off their only LP is tremendous, though I think a little less up your street.

They evolved into Intastella, who you may also remember?

Thanks TH! Somehow I associated you with Laugh but could not find any specific evidence of this.

I do remember the name Intastella but not, just now, the music.

The song 'Paul McCartney' - apart from its perhaps appealing title - has a kind of rhetorical and emotional urgency that I find fits well with its melody and music.

Bad news update: CD3 seems to be where the bad, gurning, wacky, tuneless sub-Fall would-be-avant-garde bands have been stowed in this compilation. I had hoped that it might be almost free of them. It's quite a disappointment after the heights of CD2.

I'd keep going, the first 8 or so bands might be along those lines but I'd be surprised if you view e.g. Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes or the Siddeleys as tuneless sub-Fall (of course I like all the supposedly bad bands at the beginning of disc 3, especially the Dog Faced Hermans and A Witness)

Yes, A Witness in particular has some great moments.

The next box, "C89", is coming out in a couple of weeks!

I agree, Jesse Garon and (even more) Siddeleys are definitely not in that bad genre. (Though there is a Jesse Garon track somewhere that seems to have some kind of Mark E. Smith pastiche on it?) So yes I will keep going, thanks.

As a friend says, it's good that they put all that stuff together and maybe I can skip past it in future.

I like the idea of C89 but I will need to get to C88 first.

So C89 came out and it was solid if starting to drift into territory that I never liked, and I just listened to C90 and I'm definitely out - never was a fan of the baggy sound and there's way too many weak indie rock bands with poor singers. I was chatting with a mate about it and he said, "The action in the US was much better than the UK at the time." Which made me wonder if there's any US equivalent compilations of the 86-90 period. You'd have to have Guided By Voices, Yo La Tengo, Superchunk, Camper Van Beethoven, Sebadoh, Throwing Muses... who else?

There were scene-specific comps like NY Eye & Ear Control, and random things like Magic Ribbons (Sebadoh, Unrest, others) — but nothing else I can think of, that early, which would have brought together a bunch of disparate bands like those you mention.

feels like there were a lot of major label samplers with a real mixed bag that weren't memorable as compilations (I remember a Capitol sampler cassette that had the Cocteau Twins and Motorhead on it)

This Shimmy Disc comp is another (very) rough analogue.

It was all very scene/city/label–specific.

Yes, in the United States compilations are going to be mostly label-specific in this era. Sub Pop 200 and The Wailing Ultimate capture a good segment of it.

So why not a slight backtrack?

https://www.cherryred.co.uk/product/c85-3cd-clamshell-box-set/

They should give the C86-era stuff a rest and do C81

Not that I'm not grateful, mind, I'll buy this eventually. I think I've gone off box sets for a while because I've found going through Grapefruit's psych/prog-pop boxes exhausting and I just want things to arrive in smaller chunks :(

They definitely have a model they follow it's true.

I put on C96 the other day, some good stuff on there, also some not so good stuff.

Thought the revive would be about this new book by some bloke who's tracked down all the members of the C86 bands and what they're doing now:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/aug/08/reel-lives-how-i-tracked-down-the-class-of-nmes-c86-album

There appear to be two current C86 threads. Unlikely as that must seem.

Giving C85 a spin, a LOT of this got airplay at my college radio station at the time. As with all of these comps, some I still rate, some I've moved on from, and hopefully some I passed over grab me now. I'll settle for one revelation, really.

I've been listening to C87 (3CD), CD3, a lot. The first 8 tracks on the disc are experimental / noisy garbage that I have to skip. But then there's a quite strong run of tracks including Jesse Garon & the Desperadoes, the always good Siddeleys, and others.

The thought that strikes me and I wish to relay is: we all know of an association between 'C86' and 'twee', implying things like androgyny that have been talked to death already. What I hear in most of these bands, especially the ones with male singers, is something else. Defiance. A shaky swagger. A precarious pomp. There's a note of almost macho, certainly male, confidence, but one that's also undercut by the smallness of the whole enterprise.

> The first 8 tracks on the disc are experimental / noisy garbage

1. DOG FACED HERMANS – Catbrain Walk
2. STUMP – Tupperware Stripper
3. GAYE BYKERS ON ACID – Everything’s Groovy
4. BOG-SHED – Tried And Tested Public Speaker
5. A WITNESS – Red Snake
6. MACKENZIES – New Breed
7. THE SHRUBS – Edith
8. STITCHED-BACK FOOT AIRMAN – Tears In The Gutter

there's a great compilation that focuses on this kind of stuff (and a book) - Death to Trad Rock (although oddly it also includes the wedding present).

i'd also like the ron jonson stuff to be more wildly availably (maybe it is, but last time i looked there was one compilation, lp only, not re-pressed)

It does seem like a neglected area of music but then I suppose it wasn't exactly popular!