Music

Revisiting the 'zine of the original crime

Fine and dandy, except that the music, by and large, was a wee bit flimsy. The scene leaders seemed to average one great song each – the Shop Assistants’ ‘Somewhere In China’, The Bodines’ ‘Therese’, Primal Scream’s ‘Velocity Girl’ (the last two you’ll find on a new 48-track compilation album ‘CD86: 48 Tracks From The Birth Of Indie Pop’, compiled by Bob Stanley).

Mostly what you got was a spindly, scrawny rehash of ideas done first and best by the Postcard label: past-its-sell-by-date Orange Juice, Josef K sans the literary panache, early Aztec Camera without the excuse that Roddy Frame had of actually being 16 years old (some of these would-be-kids turned out to be in their late twenties!). Feature continues

The NME’s C86 tape paled next to its predecessor, C81, a cassette compiled by Rough Trade and the NME that documented the far more diverse and adventurous post-punk culture of the early ’80s. I recall going to the original ICA event organised around C86’s release, and feeling dismayed by how inbred and insular-sounding British independent music had become.

Yet C86 did go on to have more of legacy than doubters like myself imagined. Galvanised by ecstasy culture and the genius of producer Andy Weatherall, Primal Scream shook off the malaise of ’60s retro and made the E’d-up epic ‘Screamadelica’. Shambling-era fanzine writer Bob Stanley formed Saint Etienne, who merged the holding-hands chasteness of C86 with house, dub and Northern Soul to create some of the most enduringly enchanting music of our time. The American branch of cutie, clustered around K Records, would influence Kurt Cobain (a big fan of The Pastels and The Vaselines) and spawn the Riot Grrl movement. You can also track C86 genes in bands as diverse as Stereolab, Teenage Fanclub, My Bloody Valentine, and Belle & Sebastian…

So C86’s significance was more in terms of what spun out of it than the actual recorded legacy. In some ways, the scene was the actualisation of a Jesus and Mary Chain song title, ‘My Little Underground’. A tightly-knit intimacy verging on incestuousness was almost the point of the scene, which was based around a small circuit of cramped pub venues and hang-outs like the Chalk Farm ice cream bar. The most crucial thing about C86 was that it involved a resurgence of the do-it-yourself ideal – young people shoving aside inhibiting notions of professionalism and gleefully making their own culture, with seemingly every fanzine editor in a band or starting their own label. If this amateur ethos often crossed into a wilful amateurism, if the lo-fi spirit sometimes turned into Luddite intransigence (one ’zine proposed that music should only be heard on flexidiscs and Dansettes!), the upside of this was a spirit of egalitarianism and autonomy. Women especially came into their own. The cutie image reconciled girlish glamour with tomboy androgyny, and the likes of Talulah Gosh would be regarded as honoured ancestors by the more overtly feminist grrrl-bands of the ’90s like Bratmobile and Huggy Bear. So, if we must have a culture of rampant retro-mania, maybe this is a UK pop moment worthy of commemoration.

The ICA present two nights of C86-themed gigs this week: Friday’s bill features The Magic Numbers, GoKart Mozart, Vic Godard & The Subway Sect, plus a DJ set from Saint Etienne; Saturday’s bill has Roddy Frame from Aztec Camera, Phil Wilson from The June Brides, The Wolfhounds and a DJ set from The Pastels. The compilation album ‘CD86: 48 Tracks From The Birth Of Indie Pop’ is out this Monday on Castle Records.