Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids?: An Indie Odyssey

Product Information

Very few still make a living from music and the range of jobs they now have is the result of a careers officer having several strong coffees and randomly shouting titles from a work In fairness, "forgotten" is a rather relative and loose term when there is no qualifier as to who the forgetters are.What he said. I’m guessing the book had a fairly niche audience but I found it hugely enjoyable and also it led me to explore some of the bands that I didn’t know so well, with the help of Spotify.

Various Artists: C86 Album Review | Pitchfork Various Artists: C86 Album Review | Pitchfork

I would take issue with the "Forgotten" bit as well. There are some obscure ones on there but a fair few are well-known to many people interested in 'indie' music. I don't know whether they are 'forgotten' but Voice of the Beehive are another one that started out genuinely "indie" Yet, while the pursuit of long-lost musicians can often manifest as earnest hagiography, Tassell's unique, light-hearted approach makes this a very human story of ambition, hope, varying degrees of talent and what happens after you give up on pop - or, more precisely, after pop gives up on you. It's a world populated by bike-shop owners, architecture professors, dance-music producers, record-store proprietors, birdwatchers, solicitors, caricaturists and even a possible Olympic sailor - and let's not forget the musician-turned-actor gainfully employed as Jeremy Irons' body double... In 1986, the NME released a cassette that would shape music for years to come. A collection of twenty-two independently signed guitar-based bands, C86 was the sound and ethos that defined a generation. It was also arguably the point at which ‘indie’ was born. Fire Escape Talking", "Anoraky in the UK,C86, the punk that refuses to die" ("Fire Escape Talking blog", July 7, 2006)

Magnus Crawshaw

I went to see The Flatmates on Saturday night, supported by Helen McCookerybook of proto C86 act The Chefs. Indie never forgets (but The Flatmates have got a different singer since they reformed five or so years ago). The line between C86’s jangly, dreamy representatives and its more distortion-smothered counterparts is blurred by bands like 14 Iced Bears. An oddity both then and now, the group’s song featured here, “Inside”, alchemically combines droning noise, hushed melancholy, and a nearly nauseating aura of discordance that presages My Bloody Valentine’s Isn’t Anything by two years (a time when MBV themselves had barely begun to absorb the influence of C86). But 14 Iced Bears aren’t the only group on the box set that prophesied shoegaze: “Go Ahead, Cry” by 14 Iced Bears’ Sarah Records labelmate, St. Christopher,is underlain with an atmospheric smear of static that might as well be a wormhole to the next three decades of noise-pop.

C86 - The cassette that marked beginning of Indie - Indie is C86 - The cassette that marked beginning of Indie - Indie is

Various Artists (26) - C86". BBC Music. 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-05-13 . Retrieved 2016-07-04. C86 & All That: The Creation of Indie In Difficult Times comprehensively documents the rise of indie during the socially-divisive 1980s, tracing its ancestry out of Post Punk, Neo Psychedelia, Anarcho Punk, Garage, Trash and Goth and on to the landmark compilation C86 in the spring of 1986.It’s really interesting to see the challenges and problems that each band had before, during and after C86, some complain of too much freedom, others of too much control, some sought mainstream, pop success, others were happy to remain obscure. We really get a broad range of personalities too, those who remain proud of their contribution and others who wish to distance themselves from it and are determined not to be defined by it. As eclectic as C86 is, by no means does it try to encompass the entire British indie scene circa 1986. As Taylor recounts in his liner notes, “The aim […] was to take an aural snapshot of the moment. Were these acts representative of the state of a certain kind of indie music at that time? Very much so. Was C86 intended to be the be-all and end-all of independent music at that time? Of course not”. In fact, some bands refused to be included, fearing it would lead to being pigeonholed—like the June Brides, one of the major players in the admittedly loose-knit scene that C86 gathered together. That’s been rectified by the reissue, with the June Brides’ horn-punched, Burt Bacharach-like gem “Just the Same” serving as the first song on the box set’s first bonus disc. And some bands that were surely nowhere near being seriously considered in the first place— such as Happy Mondays, whose undercooked “Freaky Dancin’” is a minor skirmish of the dancefloor havoc they’d go on to wreak— serve more as a historical curiosity than a corrected omission. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. NME have also collaborated with Rough Trade Records to release C09 in 2009 for Record Store Day [24] and with Bose Corporation to release C23 in 2023 for South by Southwest. [25]

C86: how the mixtape became a cornerstone of indie music culture C86: how the mixtape became a cornerstone of indie music culture

Indie music and festivals - C86 review of c86 week". Indie-mp3.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2015-09-08 . Retrieved 2015-06-11.

Yet, while the pursuit of long-lost musicians can often manifest as earnest hagiography, Tassell’s unique, light-hearted approach makes this a very human story of ambition, hope, varying degrees of talent and what happens after you give up on pop – or, more precisely, after pop gives up on you. It’s a world populated by bike-shop owners, architecture professors, dance-music producers, record-store proprietors, birdwatchers, solicitors, caricaturists and even a possible Olympic sailor – and let’s not forget the musician-turned-actor gainfully employed as Jeremy Irons’ body double… You may change or cancel your subscription or trial at any time online. Simply log into Settings & Account and select "Cancel" on the right-hand side. C86 has been much-maligned over the year, a short-hand insult for fey white boys with floppy fringes and over-strenuous strumming playing shambling indie numbers. In truth, it was always waaay more diverse than that. Bogshed and A Witness were probably closer to The Fall and Stump...well they were just Stump! And believe it or not, whilst admittedly outnumbered, females were also present. Seriously, yes, the Slits were my thing, other bands not so much, so that is quite interesting to me. I'm not that much of an indie kid, although I know people from the C86 bands, went to see the Monochrome Set the other night, and was musing yesterday as to who would win in a punch-up between them (C86) and the Pillows and Prayers lot. ( My money would be on P&P). In retrospect, we were probably slightly more established than most of the other bands, even if it didn’t seem like it at the time. We were just honored to be on an NME tape, having read the magazine for years, and perhaps a bit guileless about how it might affect us. But I can understand why, say, the June Brides didn’t want to be on the tape, and how some of the less established bands might be pigeonholed by it, especially when the scene seemed to have run its course.

C86 - UNCUT Various Artists - C86 - UNCUT

NME promoted the tape in conjunction with London's Institute of Contemporary Arts, who staged a week of gigs, [7] in July 1986 which featured most of the acts on the compilation. Finally, former NME journalist Neil Taylor is about to release his in-depth book about C86 and the true story of the indie underground. The book is an in-depth exploration of the post post punk culture and the fascinating scene at the time. The 30-year anniversary of C86 saw the original compilation issued in a deluxe gatefold sleeved double- LP edition for Record Store Day 2016. [29] The tape that inspired ‘a thousand indie bands’. The tape that launched a whole genre. Even ‘the beginning of indie music’ (it may be taboo here, but for the sake of discussion I will refer to ‘indie’ as a genre category in this article). These are just a few descriptions of C86, a compilation cassette put together by NME in 1986. The tape was intended as a showcase of mid-80s underground guitar pop, but it was more than a just a reflection: it became a genre itself, launching the careers of bands such as Primal Scream, Jesus and Mary Chain and The Wedding Present, as well as becoming the first collection of indie pop songs. The Story of C86 So much for that old punk/new wave/alternative ethic. Same old, same old ‘f*** the public’ approach to doing commerce.If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month.