20 years on from C86

(xpost)

I know there's a few people on this board who 'were there' so to speak, I'd be interested to read more about how C86 was received.

Yes, and I still don't understand it.

Maybe because C81 showed style and diversity, whereas C86, by suggesting a hivemind, attracted a lot of bees.

or something.

I think also everybody agreed that C81 was a Good Thing - it's very rare for people to say "Stylistic diversity! Less of that please!" - whereas C86 was still talked about because it attracted real controversy, tying into (as I understand it) The Hip-Hop Wars etc.

Now any jazz douchebags want to talk about NME 013?

All true. I spent 1986 exchanging mixtapes and twee badges with my penfriend and drinking a lot of milkshakes. I was listening to Hip Hop and House too, but I was totally part of that shambling scene. (which was the last time I ever felt like part of a subcult.)

"Do it the hard wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy...."

I loved that tape, but felt no need to buy any more jazz. So it goes, sometines.

I think I did this kind of thing with pretty much all those NME tapes. Has anyone got a list of them?

on a tangential topic relating to dee's comment: i don't think those black or ethnic influences had evaporated at this point, they were just suppressed or redirected for the most part. but there's the example of the Dog Faced Hermans, who were influenced by the Ron Jonson/Big Flame axis heavily at first then reconstituted those ethnic influences in very interesting way.

And the Wedding Present had very overt ethnic influences at first--mostly from guitarist Pete Solowka, who was mainly responsible for their "Ukrainian sessions" in the late 80's and played on all the good WP records.

There was a really good web page with all the NME cassette details on, but I can't find it.

Links/info on this one.

That said, I've never owned a copy of the tape and think I only listened to it once.

baby bird?

xpost - naturemorte - it was the Cecil Taylor album he was really commenting on - it was a pretty leftfield Cecil Taylor album and one which I didn't play again for about 10 years. Now, of course, up against, say, Merzbow, sounds a bit tame. Although not as tame as C86...

This weren't on C86, but maybe it shoulda been:
Wolfhounds - Anti-Midas Touch

(Was that 'eastern bloc'? Something tells me no.)

I haven't looked at dissensus in a couple of months, TBH. Am I missing owt?

Ha ha Marcello - no, I think that was later, and what a joy that is...

I've searched high and low for a list of NME cassettes...if anyone comes across one can they post the link here?

There was a hardware store in Afflecks Palace?

the Miaow and Lemon Drops tracks are also personal favourites. the Mighty Mighty track hasn't aged well, makes them sound like dirty old men.

c81 listing: NME/Rough Trade C81 (the irony)
c86 listing: http://www.twee.net/misc/release.htm?key=nmec86
c96 listing: http://www.gracenote.com/music/album.html/genblues/b8c3d30f2e0e0ec8d2c19bc0db04c1ed.html

well this was the implication in my crappy post way up there - as most folks of my ongoing constant plugging to get AOC back on the racks via a reissue campaign (ageofchance.com) - or so i thought.

but yes in case i was being too subtle - the AOC track fucking rules it.

Also I think C86 is the only place you can get that version of Breaking Lines - the version on Truck Train Tractor 12" is different.

That's from sometime ILM poster Rhodri Marsden's Ron Johnson page by the way.

that'll be 24 hours per day, rather than 24 hours over 7 years, right?

Either one seems unrealistic really.

ok, 24 hours a week.

...7 weeks a year.

that's why i say don't fuck with ron johnson.

28 years...

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19423-c86/

mine arrived today. someone really needs to add the 72 titles / bandnames into cddb.

"C87 imagines what the NME compilers might have chosen, had they revisited the idea one year later, choosing music from mid-1986 through 1987."

http://louderthanwar.com/cherry-red-announce-line-up-for-c87-box-set-c86-imagined-one-year-later/

could have sworn that in 87 the NME was covering a lot of hip hop ...

a lot of those i have on those melody maker indie top 20 tapes, especially vol2 - http://www.bandplanet.co.uk/Oldsite/indietop20s.htm

OK, so it's Cherry Red so you don't expect much care but anyway, at first glance that is a pretty half-assed compilation. I mean yeah, it doesn't cover what the NME was going on about in '87 in any kind of comprehensive way. They literally never covered some of those bands EVER. One of them appeared on the cover and the editor got sacked. If it was a genuine attempt to do an NME thing from '87 then they'd need things like Trouble Funk, Colourfield, Def Jam, Salt'n'Pepa, That Petrol Emotion, Michel Shocked, Coldcut etc.

But let's put that aside and accept that "C86" has nothing to do with NME or even the C86 cassette anymore.

There was the CD86 from a year or two ago that more or less did the same thing. If this is supposed to supplement that by reviewing the situation from a year later, then they haven't put much thought into it. Some of them ("Poised Over The Pause Button", "Pristine Christine", "I Could Be in Heaven", "Franz Hals", "Ask Johnny Dee", "Golden Shower" others) already appeared on CD86. Others, eg. The Bachelor Pad song are b-sides of songs from CD86 so where is the supposed progression.

I don't have any problem with endless genre comps but c'mon, you have to find new tracks and preferably stuff that fits the concept of the comp.

it doesn't cover what the NME was going on about in '87 in any kind of comprehensive way.

exactly my point.

as proven by :

http://www.nme.com/bestalbumsandtracksoftheyear/1987

in 1987 the nme was my fucking bible for music with beats and noise, and this compilation is the worst kind of revisionism.

Revisionism is right. It's telling that they have picked more retro songs from bands that were moving from indie to beats that year. ie. "Sweet Sweet Pie" instead of something from "Box Frenzy", or "Young Till Yesterday" rather than "Christopher Mayhew Says". Even "Hang Ten!" (1986) rather than the more sophisticated "Head Gone Astray". Or the Mackenzies "New Breed" rather than the much more futuristic "Mealy Mouths" from the same year (1986 btw so fuck this concept we invented for the comp).

Fact is the likes of the Shamen or PWEI would have gone nowhere if they had continued doing indie/60s/punk influenced stuff and they had few fans till they switched that up. Everyone, especially the NME, knew that style was moribund.

You could pick holes in this all day.

Still a great jam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37TO9Dmaoz0

"C87 imagines what the NME compilers might have chosen, had they revisited the idea one year later, choosing music from mid-1986 through 1987."

Jesus Christ Almighty, wtf?!?!?

By the way, re-reading this thread:

it was an artificial attempt to mimic the 1981 NME/Rough Trade cassette - which was borne out of a real movement

What movement were Robert Wyatt, Linx and Cabaret Voltaire (to name but three) a part of?

Don't agree with that post in any way but think it's refering to DIY cassette culture - the C81 cassette as a product, rather than it's contents?

now, if they had included the baby amphetamine 12", then maybe, just maybe i would have been interested.

nme vs 1987 summed up here :

http://www.creation-records.com/classic-interviews1-baby-amphetamine/

Don't agree with that post in any way but think it's refering to DIY cassette culture - the C81 cassette as a product, rather than it's contents?

Oh right, well in that case maybe the Door and the Window or 49 Americans (or whoever) should have taken preference over James Blood Ulmer. As far as I can see, the movement in question seemed to be the movement of artists involved with Rough Trade in some capacity or other.

haha-yeah. Particularly since Linx and the Specials were replaced by Panther Burns and TV Personalities in the reissue.

An interesting theory about C86 is that it was part of the "hip-hop wars" at the NME. A handful of their writers who mostly were into post-punk indie guitar stuff wanted to try to carve out a scene separate from where the general editorial direction of the paper. So that would have precluded Baby Amphetamine presumably.

An interesting theory about C86 is that it was part of the "hip-hop wars" at the NME. A handful of their writers who mostly were into post-punk indie guitar stuff wanted to try to carve out a scene separate from where the general editorial direction of the paper.

i would suggest that this was the core of the hip hop wars.
at the time, i was a young country boy with no access to NYC 12" records,
but somehow, the nme made me excited and connected to the scene, and i loved their coverage of this new world.
that and the electro/street sounds compilations.
hence why this boxset is fucked up.
if the compilers genuinely believe that this is the natural conclusion to c86.
i mean, and yes, i have to do this, look at age of chance.
in 86, they were clearly part of the c86 scene with their shambolic early releases.
whereas by 87, they along with others, had moved on, and were making music that reflected the new era with record label stretching demands.
but this boxset does little to reflect that change.
(and yeah, the presence of a brilliantly bonkers GBOA track does not count !)

yes, there's a few great, under-appreciated songs/bands on here: GBOA, Bachelor Pad, Great Leap Forward. There's also a lot of stuff that I'm fine with but totally over-compiled.We need a moritorium on any rerelease of "Ask Johnny Dee", "Get Out of My Dream", "Pristine Christine" and the like.

Then there's so much stuff that's just terrible LOL.

Feels like the idea that this stuff never went anywhere and doesn't matter has turned around since this thread was started. Not the Ron Jonson/Bogshed stuff but the indie/60s/punk hybrids. So many of the young local bands here talk about that stuff, and emulate the sound and aesthetics. The music is now accessible and festivals like indietracks and Popfest are giving the original bands motivation to reform.

There's dozens of undiscovered gems waiting to be compiled (plus lots of trash of course). I wish someone would do more crate digging and compiling from the 1984-1988 period.

Are you aware of the excellent Cherry Red box sets: C86 (3CD), C87 (3CD) and the forthcoming C88 (3CD)? Also, there's a 5 disc set called "Scared To Get Happy" which really digs deeply into this area.

Yes, I trashed them upthread LOL. No, I'm actually okay with them other than the repetition of bands and tracks. It's like if the Pretty Things and the Standells had to be included on every Nuggets/Pebbles etc compilation. No, they're on the first one and after that it's one-off releases by bands you've never heard of. The compilers compete to find tracks that haven't been comped. With this stuff it's as if there's only two CDs worth of good stuff and after that you have to move on to the post-Sarah Records era.

Also more digging into unreleased stuff by the well-known bands. With the difficulty of producing and releasing records back then there's tons of recordings that have never seen the light of day. I know there's mid-80s stuff from the prehistory of Teenage Fanclub, Vaselines, Bachelor Pad, etc or radio sessions and the like that aren't available.

Ah, good point, especially radio sessions. I imagine the legalities are an issue there, but looking at the "Keeping It Peel" site there's TONS of one-off band sessions that I'm sure have a killer cut contained within them.

New book on C86 coming out on 18th August, preceded by a Guardian interview with the author.

Reel lives: how I tracked down the class of NME’s C86 album

The book's a fun read. Cool to read retrospective article of the sort that Mojo etc do for more major artists but obviously would never touch 90% of this lot. He interviews at least one person, usually more, from each band. It's a bit like the tape - some chapters are stand-outs, some are forgettable. The more successful artists tend to be a bit boring while the ones who never went anywhere have their own story to tell. The Stump chapter is very good, Bogshed and Miaow also. I enjoyed the McCarthy, Close Lobsters & Wolfhounds chapters too, since these are the records that stand up nowadays in my opinion, plus the interviewees are interesting. If you have any interest in these bands you have to read this.

The Pastels chapter is a favourite, not because of Stephen Pastel, who's life has the appearance of being completely uneventful and static for three decades. It's because of their former drummer Berniece Simpson effortlessly skewering Pastel (who we find out fired the original band via a lawyer's letter) by having a very successful and happy non-musical career and family, and very pointedly defining her decade as an indie musician as a young person's game.

pricing an Eton Crop record from 1987 (Yes, Please Bob) and in their Discogs bio they call them a "pre-C86" band and lump them in with the Membranes and The Three Johns and it all makes sense i guess but i don't think i'd ever heard of a group of bands being called that. not exactly arbitrary. all people with the Mekons in their veins.

mekons very much relevant to all three - langford played on a couple of membranes ablums and i think did the sleeve to the eton crop record

i think i want to like those kind of bands more than i do. they are missing that langford je nais se quois despite his input. but maybe i just haven't found the right one for me. i never play membranes records when i get them in.

yeah i've never been totally into their stuff tbh. veeing off at a tangent but that eton crop album always make me think of this album by the welsh band fflaps (both covers reference the same long-running uk tv quiz show, blockbusters):
https://www.discogs.com/release/2060127-Fflaps-Malltod

more of a dog-faced hermans vibe though and it totally rules:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghiTVUTlDvA

wow love that! that name is totally ringing a bell. totally get the DFH vibe too. i love DFH beyond reason.

not really connected, but THIS is an album i really fell for and played 5 times in a row and i'd never heard it until this week! from 1980. where's it been all my life?? they just didn't make it over here. i only remember the later "I'm In Love With A German Film Star" single.

https://i.discogs.com/wxWgUbhbHJ7Ir7sPRPq-unlMBMR4grvkCaTEHw81KO8/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTU3MzIy/MC0xMzUyOTIwODc0/LTg1NDAuanBlZw.jpeg

fantastic band whose records you can still buy for buttons pretty much. the album with 'german film star' is also great

yeah, i need the other LPs.

'Oh No, It's You' is the standout for me. I think I bought this album for about a pound in the early 90s. Isn't Robert Smith on it on somewhere on backing vocals?

boom, just pulled this out to price. there is your "pre-c86" in a nutshell, no?

https://i.discogs.com/ZeyoMktHl2CY6kPBnE4jZEJykj0gKYPQ7SvQz-JLVyg/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTE3NDE3/MzItMTMwMzczNzM4/NS5qcGVn.jpeg

Love Fflaps!

Trying to get my head around this - so like post-punk or proto-indie/jangle pop? I love a ton of that stuff but sometimes the venn diagram circles are almost perfectly overlapping when trying to mentally categorize...

I've been deep diving a lot of 80s early indiepop kind of stuff, was jamming to The Dentists last night for instance.

xp underrated band on that comp - Rote Kapelle

Did Fflaps have a female singer who was going out with Mark the singer from Dandelion Adventure. I think anyway since they were from Preston and Fflaps somewhere in Wales.
Just remembering hitching tours in the late 80s and meeting them along the way.

Was looking for clarification BTW

They were part of the scene that included the Membranees and the bands John Robb writes about in Death To Trad Rock. The one track by them on Spotify is on the compilation cd that tied in with the book. Or at least one of the 2 instances of the same track is.
So I think they were in the rockier side of indie and probably had direct roots to punk, though I think they may have been a bit late in the decade for the term post-punk which would possibly fit otherwise.
Venn overlap between several different subgenres.