C86

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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. Read more: The complete guide to The Smiths Try Classic Pop Plus here for even more on your favourite 80s artists Many of the acts included have gone on to become stalwarts of UK indie. The two bands that bookend C86 are also maybe its biggest success stories. Primal Scream and The Wedding Present both found widespread success throughout the next decade and beyond. The Pastels and The Soup Dragons came of age in the same Glasgow scene that begat Teenage Fanclub, The Jesus & Mary Chain, The Vaselines and the BMX Bandits. The latter were so irked by NME’s refusal to include them on the compilation that they went and called their next album C86. There was an upside as well as a downside,” concludes Stephen McRobbie, of the Pastels. “There’s no doubt that it helped us to reach a larger audience. We probably benefited. But it became more of a signifier than any of us imagined … ” Musically the band have fleshed out with two keyboard players and a bunch of new members and also a woman singer who adds a melodic flavour to Derek’s dark moribund wit. They even end the set on a dark disco number that oddly sounds like Sisters Of Mercy ground through a shambling John Peel session mix from the mid eighties…and I mean that in all the best possible ways.

Various Artists (26) - C86". BBC Music. 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-05-13 . Retrieved 2016-07-04. The Song gained the number 4 position in the yearly John Peel festive fifty vote in 1986. It was the shortest song on the list that year. [6] It’s necessary to fast-forward a full 13 years to locate the next truly great piece of music Primal Scream turned out, helpfully titled 2013. Despite personnel changes – Shields and Mani returned to My Bloody Valentine and the Stone Roses, respectively, while long-serving guitarist Robert “Throb” Young disappeared from the lineup in 2006, before dying in 2014 – Gillespie and guitarist Andrew Innes keep on keeping on. 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. Reviewing the album at the time of its release, NME concluded: “‘Know Your Enemy’ might be riddled with more faults than California, but in an increasingly unambitious world, it allows you to answer with a cautious ‘yes’. Far from divine, but on the side of the angels.”Home | Institute of Contemporary Arts". Ica.org.uk. 2015-04-22. Archived from the original on 2006-12-03 . Retrieved 2015-06-11.

Loaded was released as a single in February 1990, giving Primal Scream their first Top 20 chart success – and their first, very awkward Top of the Pops appearance. It was included in longer form on Screamadelica, 18 months later. 3. Movin’ on Up He continued: “When I hear ‘Know Your Enemy’ I hear that we did a good job of dismantling the success that we’d built up over those two albums. Sometimes you thought the press had it in for you, but we probably had it in for ourselves more.” Michael Hann (14 March 2014). "C86: The myths about the NME's indie cassette debunked". The Guardian . Retrieved 2015-06-11. Reynolds, Simon Rip It Up and Start Again: Post Punk 1978-1984 (Faber and Faber, 2005) ISBN 0-571-21569-6 I’m beautiful, I wasn’t born to follow,” he drawls. “I live just for today, I don’t care ’bout tomorrow / What I got in my head you can’t buy, steal or borrow.” Primal Scream were deep in their moment. An ethereal, swirling, reverberant concoction of heavenly drones, dubby bass, synth squelches, burps and burbles, and sloping beats fit not so much for dancing as for gently swaying in a semi-jellied state, Higher Than the Sun still feels visionary, even futuristic. To borrow a dictum from another bunch of psychedelic warriors of the age: it’s the sound of young men taking drugs to make music to take drugs to.

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] Compiled by NME staffers Roy Carr, Neil Taylor and Adrian Thrills, C86 didn’t invent that jangly pop sound (if The Smiths had formed just a few years later, they’d have certainly been lumped together with the C86 crowd), but it did give it an easily identifiable tag. That fanzine-fuelled first wave helped define the sound of indie for years to come, influencing such bands as Belle & Sebastian, Franz Ferdinand and The Strokes. Cherry Red's 2014 expanded reissue was marked by an NME C86 show on 14 June 2014 at Venue 229, London W1; acts from the original compilation included The Wedding Present, David Westlake of The Servants, The Wolfhounds and A Witness. [28] Sometimes conflated with soundalike sub-genre ‘jangle-pop’, C86 was the term given to a particular brand of introspective, lo-fi, Byrds-influenced indie power-pop. The name derived from a cassette tape given away with a May 1986 issue of the NME. The political aspect has been neglected. It was very, very open to women. Although it wasn’t overtly political, women felt involved because musicianship wasn’t at a premium.”