''C86'' is a
cassette
Cassette may refer to:
Technology
* Cassette tape (or ''musicassette'', ''audio cassette'', ''cassette tape'', or ''tape''), a worldwide standard for analog audio recording and playback
** Cassette single (or "Cassingle"), a music single in th ...
compilation released by the British music magazine ''
NME
''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...
'' in 1986, featuring new bands licensed from British
independent record label
An independent record label (or indie label) is a record label that operates without the funding or distribution of major record labels; they are a type of small- to medium-sized enterprise, or SME. The labels and artists are often represented ...
s of the time.
As a term, C86 quickly evolved into shorthand for a guitar-based
music genre
A music genre is a conventional category that identifies some pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions. It is to be distinguished from ''musical form'' and musical style, although in practice these terms are some ...
characterized by
jangling guitars and melodic
power pop
Power pop (also typeset as powerpop) is a form of pop rock based on the early music of bands such as the Who, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Byrds. It typically incorporates melodic hooks, vocal harmonies, an energetic performance, and ch ...
song structures, although other musical styles were represented on the tape. In its time, it became a
pejorative
A pejorative or slur is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or a disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something. It is also used to express criticism, hostility, or disregard. Sometimes, a ...
term for its associations with so-called "shambling" (a
John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft (30 August 1939 – 25 October 2004), known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey (DJ) and radio presenter. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly fr ...
-coined description celebrating the self-conscious primitive approach of some of the music) and
underachievement. The ''C86'' scene is now recognized as a pivotal moment for
independent music
Independent music (also commonly known as indie music or simply indie) is music that is produced independently from commercial record labels or their subsidiaries, a process that may include an autonomous, do-it-yourself approach to recording a ...
in the UK, as was recognized in the subtitle of the compilation's 2006 CD issue: ''
CD86: 48 Tracks from the Birth of Indie Pop''. 2014 saw the original compilation reissued in a 3CD expanded edition from
Cherry Red Records
Cherry Red Records is a British independent record label founded in Malvern, Worcestershire by Iain McNay in 1978. The label has released recordings by Dead Kennedys, Everything But the Girl, The Monochrome Set, and Felt, among others, as well ...
; the 2014 box-set came with an 11,500-word book of sleevenotes by one of the tape's original curators, former ''NME'' journalist
Neil Taylor.
The ''C86'' name was a play on the labelling and length of blank compact
cassette
Cassette may refer to:
Technology
* Cassette tape (or ''musicassette'', ''audio cassette'', ''cassette tape'', or ''tape''), a worldwide standard for analog audio recording and playback
** Cassette single (or "Cassingle"), a music single in th ...
, commonly C60, C90 and C120, combined with 1986.
The C86 cassette
The tape was a belated follow-up to ''
C81'', a more eclectic collection of new bands, released by the ''NME'' in 1981 in conjunction with
Rough Trade. ''C86'' was similarly designed to reflect the new music scene of the time. It was compiled by ''NME'' writers
Roy Carr
Roy Carr (1945 – 1 July 2018) was an English music journalist, covering pop, rock and jazz. He joined the '' New Musical Express (NME)'' in the late 1960s, and edited ''NME'', '' Vox'' and '' Melody Maker'' magazines.
Biography
Born in Bla ...
,
Neil Taylor and Adrian Thrills, who licensed tracks from labels including
Creation
Creation may refer to:
Religion
*''Creatio ex nihilo'', the concept that matter was created by God out of nothing
* Creation myth, a religious story of the origin of the world and how people first came to inhabit it
* Creationism, the belief tha ...
,
Subway,
Probe Plus
Probe Plus was a record label based in Liverpool, England. It was founded by Geoff Davies, an enthusiastic promoter of small, unsigned bands, who describes the label as "Music to drive you to drink".De Burgh, Simon (1991) 'Probe Plus Records', ' ...
,
Dan Treacy
The Television Personalities are an English post-punk band formed in 1977 by London singer-songwriter Dan Treacy.Earp, Joseph.The Missing Man Of Music: A Search For The Elusive Dan Treacy Of Television Personalities. ''The Brag'', 26 July 2016 ...
's Dreamworld Records,
Jeff Barrett's Head Records, Pink, and
Ron Johnson
Ronald Harold Johnson (born April 8, 1955) is an American accountant, businessman, and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Wisconsin, a seat he has held since 2011. A Republican, Johnson was first elected to the U.S. S ...
. Readers had to pay for the tape via mail order, although an
LP was subsequently released on
Rough Trade on 24 November 1986. The UK music press was in this period highly competitive, with four weekly papers documenting new bands and trends. There was a tendency to create and "discover" new musical subgenres artificially in order to heighten reader interest. ''NME'' journalists of the period subsequently agreed that ''C86'' was an example of this, but also a byproduct of ''NMEs "hip hop wars" - a schism in the paper (and among readers) between enthusiasts of contemporary progressive black music (for example, by
Public Enemy
"Public enemy" is a term which was first widely used in the United States in the 1930s to describe individuals whose activities were seen as criminal and extremely damaging to society, though the phrase had been used for centuries to describe ...
and
Mantronix
Mantronix was an influential 1980s hip hop and electro funk music group from New York City. The band was formed by DJ Kurtis Mantronik (Kurtis el Khaleel) and rapper MC Tee (Touré Embden). The group is primarily remembered for its pioneering ...
), and fans of guitar-based music, as represented on ''C86''.
''NME'' promoted the tape in conjunction with London's
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA c ...
, who staged a week of gigs, in July 1986 which featured most of the acts on the compilation.
The tape included tracks by some more abrasive bands atypical of the perceived ''C86''
jangle pop
Jangle pop is a subgenre of pop rock or college rock that emphasizes jangly guitars and 1960s-style pop melodies. The term originated from Bob Dylan's song " Mr. Tambourine Man", whose 1965 rendition by the Byrds became considered one of the g ...
aesthetic:
Stump
Stump may refer to:
* Stump (band), a band from Cork, Ireland and London, England
* Stump (cricket), one of three small wooden posts which the fielding team attempt to hit with the ball
*Stump (dog): Clussexx Three D Grinchy Glee (born 1998), 200 ...
,
Bogshed
Bogshed were an Indie band formed in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, England, in 1985 by Phil Hartley (vocals), Mark McQuaid (guitar), Mike Bryson (bass) and Tristan King (drums). They released two albums, two EPs and two singles before splitting ...
,
A Witness
A Witness are an English post-punk/indie rock band, who were originally active in the mid-1980s alternative music scene. Their first EP ''Loudhailer Songs'' and début album ''I am John's Pancreas'' brought them to the attention of BBC Radio 1 d ...
,
The Mackenzies,
Big Flame and
The Shrubs
The Shrubs were an English rock music group, formed in Watford in 1985, releasing three albums before splitting up in 1989.Strong, Martin C. (2003) ''The Great Indie Discography'', Canongate, , p. 503
History
Future Shrubs singer Nick Hobbs ha ...
.
''C86'' was the twenty-third ''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
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
or
reggae
Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, " Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use ...
. ''C86'' was followed up with a
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop si ...
compilation, ''Holiday Romance''.
Legacy
Ex-''NME'' staffer
Andrew Collins summed up ''C86'' by dubbing it "the most indie thing to have ever existed".
Bob Stanley, a ''
Melody Maker
''Melody Maker'' was a British weekly music magazine, one of the world's earliest music weeklies; according to its publisher, IPC Media, the earliest. It was founded in 1926, largely as a magazine for dance band musicians, by Leicester-born ...
'' journalist in the late 1980s and founding member of pop band
Saint Etienne, similarly said in a 2006 interview that ''C86'' represented:
hebeginning of indie music… It's hard to remember how underground guitar music and fanzines were in the mid-'80s; DIY
"Do it yourself" ("DIY") is the method of building, modifying, or repairing things by oneself without the direct aid of professionals or certified experts. Academic research has described DIY as behaviors where "individuals use raw and sem ...
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
Subway in the late 1980s, added a new political dimension to the importance of ''C86''."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 are more ambivalent about the tape's influence.
Everett True
Everett True (born Jeremy Andrew Thackray on 21 April 1961) is an English music journalist and musician. He became interested in rock music after hearing The Residents, and formed a band with school friends. He has written and recorded as The ...
, a writer for ''NME'' in 1986 under the name "The Legend!", called it "unrepresentative of its times . . . and even unrepresentative of the small narrow strata of music it thought it was representing." Alastair Fitchett, editor of the music site Tangents (and a fan of many of the bands on the tape), takes a polemical line: "(The ''NME'') laid the foundations for the desolate wastelands of what we came to know by that vile term '
Indie
Indie is a short form of "independence" or "independent"; it may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Gaming
*Independent video game development, video games created without financial backing from large companies
*Indie game, any game (board ...
'. What more reason do you need to hate it?" ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' published an article in 2014 debunking some of the negative myths about the cassette.
Follow-ups
In 1996, ''NME'' continued the tradition of compiling a new band album (this time a
CD) by releasing ''C96''. This had little impact, with
Mogwai
Mogwai () are a Scottish post-rock band, formed in 1995 in Glasgow. The band consists of Stuart Braithwaite (guitar, vocals), Barry Burns (guitar, piano, synthesizer, vocals), Dominic Aitchison (bass guitar), and Martin Bulloch (drums). Mogw ...
and
Broadcast
Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum ( radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began ...
being the only acts on the compilation to subsequently enjoy mainstream success. Three other bands on the compilation -
Babybird
Babybird are an English rock band formed by songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Stephen Jones, who has been releasing music since 1995. While Jones' early solo work was released under the "Baby Bird" name, the altered "Babybird" was first us ...
,
The Delgados
The Delgados are a Scottish indie rock band formed in Glasgow in 1994. The band is composed of Alun Woodward (vocals, guitar), Emma Pollock (vocals, guitar), Stewart Henderson (bass guitar), and Paul Savage (drums).
Biography
The band was fo ...
and
Urusei Yatsura
is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Rumiko Takahashi. It was serialized in Shogakukan's ''Weekly Shōnen Sunday'' from September 1978 to February 1987. Its 366 individual chapters were published in 34 ''tankōbon'' volume ...
- had brief success in the United Kingdom after the compilation's release.
The significance of ''C86'' was recognized by several events marking the 20th anniversary of the compilation's release in 2006:
*
Sanctuary Records
Sanctuary Records Group Limited was a record label based in the United Kingdom and is as of 2013 a subsidiary of BMG Rights Management solely for reissues. Until June 2007, it was the largest independent record label in the UK and the largest m ...
released ''
CD86
Cluster of Differentiation 86 (also known as CD86 and B7-2) is a protein constitutively expressed on dendritic cells, Langerhans cells, macrophages, B-cells (including memory B-cells), and on other antigen-presenting cells. Along with CD80, CD ...
'', a double-CD set compiled by
Bob Stanley.
*
The ICA hosted "''C86'' - Still Doing It For Fun", an exhibition and two nights of gigs celebrating the rise of British
independent music
Independent music (also commonly known as indie music or simply indie) is music that is produced independently from commercial record labels or their subsidiaries, a process that may include an autonomous, do-it-yourself approach to recording a ...
.
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
The Wedding Present are an English indie rock group originally formed in 1985 in Leeds, England, from the ashes of The Lost Pandas. The band's music has evolved from fast-paced indie rock in the vein of their most obvious influences The Fall, ...
,
David Westlake of
The Servants
The Servants were an indie band formed in 1985 in Hayes, Middlesex, England by singer-songwriter David Westlake. The band was the original home of Luke Haines.
The band’s '' Small Time'' album was well received on its 2012 release, more th ...
,
The Wolfhounds
The Wolfhounds are an English noise pop band formed in Romford, Essex, in 1985 by Dave Callahan, Paul Clark, Andy Golding, Andy Bolton and Frank Stebbing, and originally active until 1990. The band reformed in 2005 and continues to write, recor ...
and
A Witness
A Witness are an English post-punk/indie rock band, who were originally active in the mid-1980s alternative music scene. Their first EP ''Loudhailer Songs'' and début album ''I am John's Pancreas'' brought them to the attention of BBC Radio 1 d ...
.
The 30-year anniversary of ''C86'' saw the original compilation issued in a deluxe
gatefold
A gatefold cover or gatefold LP is a form of packaging for LP records that became popular in the mid-1960s. A gatefold cover, when folded, is the same size as a standard LP cover (i.e., a 12½ inch, or 32.7 centimetre square). The larger gatefo ...
sleeved double-
LP edition for
Record Store Day
Record Store Day is an annual event inaugurated in 2007 and held on one Saturday (typically the third) every April and every Black Friday in November to "celebrate the culture of the independently owned record store". The day brings together fa ...
2016.
Cherry Red Records
Cherry Red Records is a British independent record label founded in Malvern, Worcestershire by Iain McNay in 1978. The label has released recordings by Dead Kennedys, Everything But the Girl, The Monochrome Set, and Felt, among others, as well ...
issued an imagined
sequel
A sequel is a work of literature, film, theatre, television, music or video game that continues the story of, or expands upon, some earlier work. In the common context of a narrative work of fiction, a sequel portrays events set in the same ...
compilation titled ''C87'' in 2016, followed by ''C88'', ''C89'' and ''C90''.
Track listing
See also
* ''
CD86 (album)
''CD86: 48 Tracks from the Birth of Indie Pop'' is a compilation album of artists from the original ''C86'' era, released in 2006 by Sanctuary Records. It is compiled by Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne.
To coincide with its release, the Institute ...
''
*
DIY ethic
"Do it yourself" ("DIY") is the method of building, modifying, or repairing things by oneself without the direct aid of professionals or certified experts. Academic research has described DIY as behaviors where "individuals use raw and semi ...
*
Fanzine
A fanzine (blend word, blend of ''fan (person), fan'' and ''magazine'' or ''-zine'') is a non-professional and non-official publication produced by fan (person), enthusiasts of a particular cultural phenomenon (such as a literary or musical genre) ...
*
Indie pop
Indie pop (also typeset as indie-pop or indiepop) is a music genre and subculture that combines guitar pop with DIY ethic in opposition to the style and tone of mainstream pop music. It originated from British post-punk in the late 1970s and sub ...
*
Indie rock
Indie rock is a Music subgenre, subgenre of rock music that originated in the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand from the 1970s to the 1980s. Originally used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the mu ...
* ''
NME
''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...
''
*
Post-punk
Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad genre of punk music that emerged in the late 1970s as musicians departed from punk's traditional elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a variety of avant-garde sensibilities and non-roc ...
*
Punk ideologies
Punk ideologies are a group of varied social and political beliefs associated with the punk subculture and punk rock. It is primarily concerned with concepts such as mutual aid, against selling out, egalitarianism, humanitarianism, anti-autho ...
*
Punk subculture
The punk subculture includes a diverse and widely known array of ideologies, fashion, and other forms of expression, visual art, dance, literature, and film. Largely characterised by anti-establishment views, the promotion of individual freedom ...
References
External sources
* Bladh, Kriste
''Everything went Pop!, C86 and more, A wave and its rise and wake'' (pdf) 2005* "Fire Escape Talking
("Fire Escape Talking blog", July 7, 2006)
* Fitchett, Alastair
(''Tangents Blog'', July 25, 2005)
* Hann, Michae
(''The Guardian'', 13 October 2004)
* Hasted, Nic
("The Independent", October 27, 2006)
* Pearce, Kevi
''Tangents'', March 2001)
* Reynolds, Simon ''Rip It Up and Start Again: Post Punk 1978-1984'' (Faber and Faber, 2005)
* Reynolds, Simo
(Time Out, October 23, 2006)
* Stanley, Bob
(''The Times'' October 20, 2006)
* True, Everet
''C86 Q&A''''Plan B Blog'' July 22, 2005)
* Wire, Nick
''The Guardian'', October 25, 2006)
{{DEFAULTSORT:C86 (Album)
1986 compilation albums
Alternative rock compilation albums
Indie pop albums by British artists
Jangle pop compilation albums
Post-punk compilation albums
Rough Trade Records compilation albums
New Musical Express
Compilation albums included with magazines