Nige Tassell - Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids?: An Indie Odyssey

NEB 007

First published in the UK in 2022 by Nine Eight Books

An imprint of Bonnier Books UK

4th Floor, Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square, London, WC1B 4DA

Owned by Bonnier Books, Sveavgen 56, Stockholm, Sweden

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Hardback ISBN: 978-1-7887-0558-5

eBook ISBN: 978-1-7887-0559-2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Publishing director: Pete Selby

Senior editor: Melissa Bond

Cover design by Steve Leard

Typeset by IDSUK (Data Connection) Ltd

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Text copyright Nige Tassell, 2022

The right of Nige Tassell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright-holders of material reproduced in this book. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publisher would be glad to hear from them.

Nine Eight Books is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK

www.bonnierbooks.co.uk

To the memory of John and Janice,
who filled our ears with music

CONTENTS

* * *

* * *

* * *

Ive been up here at least an hour now.

My arse aches, there are splinters in my elbows, and my teeth are clenched around a pocket torch, its flickering beam growing feebler by the minute. Ive contorted myself into the most unnatural, unflattering of shapes in order a) to avoid falling to earth through the open loft hatch across which Im balanced precariously, and b) to be able just about, at the fullest of stretches to drag that last box out from under the eaves.

There are many boxes much closer, comfortably within arms reach, but Ive been through them already. They each contain plenty of bounty, but its just not the one particular item of treasure Im searching for. Still missing, still elusive.

Fingertips inch this final box of course its the final box near enough to where I can get a proper grip and pull it closer. Scratchy fibres of loft insulation come with it, the desiccated corpses of long-dead insects tangled up in them. This is the last tomb to be wrenched open. A cardboard tomb sealed by brown parcel tape and mummified by a thick layer of dust.

Once opened, the treasure shines through the darkness. The dog has been lying at the bottom of the loft ladder for most of this past hour. If he could talk, he would be my Lord Carnarvon.

Can you see anything?

Me, the intrepid Howard Carter.

Yes, wonderful things.

Well, one wonderful thing in particular: a golden, rectangular box, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, thats lying on top of a pile of similar-sized but not golden rectangular boxes. I pick it up. A dragged thumb clears away more dust. Its providence, its hallmark, is revealed by three letters. NME. Its date of origin is confirmed by a letter and two numbers. C86.

This is the genuine artefact, the real McCoy, the reason my arse is sore, why splinters are lodged in my elbows, why theres a torch between my teeth. The discomfort dissolves. The treasure hunters expedition is over, his discovery exhumed and ready to be paraded.

At the bottom of the ladder, Lord Carnarvon looks distinctly unimpressed.

* * *

Press rewind and hit the stop button when it reaches 1986.

Yowsa! Yowsa! Yowsa! Five years on from our lavishly lauded C81 cassette debut, NME is once again making a declaration of independents.

The copywriters of the NME had certainly had their Weetabix the morning they wrote the blurb to accompany the announcement of their latest mail-order cassette. Under the headline This Years Models, the alliteration was working overtime. This latest compilation, C86, was a punchy parade of primetime pop and a cool spool of stunning sonic splendour. Fortunately, for those unfazed by hyperbole, a tracklisting was also included; readers could make up their own mind if the twenty-two tracks eleven a side were worth trundling down to the post office to fetch a postal order for 2.95.

Of course that tracklisting was worth it. The whole thing was delivered to your door for less than fourteen pence per song. It was a no-brainer to 40,000-odd members of the NME faithful who speedily clipped their coupon from the paper. For starters, there were plenty of strong hitters among the roster Primal Scream, the Soup Dragons, Age of Chance, Half Man Half Biscuit, The Wedding Present whod already made at least half a name for themselves among the readership. Those were worth the price of admission alone. Then there was the promise of the lesser-known outfits Miaow, McCarthy, the Wolfhounds who might be the heroes of tomorrow.

The intention of the three NME staffers who compiled the cassette Roy Carr, Neil Taylor and Adrian Thrills was to replicate the blueprint of C81, to provide a snapshot of the independent music scene in the country at the time. The sound was starting to change, Carr later told Record Collector, and we were getting a sense of that at the NME. You were starting to hear the first hints of what would later become indie-pop. It was a really interesting time for music. Around a dozen bands were initially earmarked as potential contributors, a figure that eventually expanded to the sainted twenty-two. Those who made the final cut, Carr admitted, were the ones who were coming through at the time that we happened to like. It was all quite arbitrary.

As a barometer of independent music, it showed that the current scene wasnt quite as wide-ranging as it had been five years earlier. On C81, US underground rockers Red Crayola were followed by Brit-funkers Linx, the Beat by Pere Ubu, John Cooper Clarke by James Blood Ulmer. In comparison, C86 was narrower and almost exclusively populated by white kids with guitars.

But there was still plenty of variety on show. Theres a world of difference between the plaintive, longing tones of the Pastels and the angular indie-funk of their fellow Glaswegians the Mackenzies. Similarly, the shouty sloganeering of the Age of Chance is the antithesis of the shy tunes of McCarthy.

These bands had different ambitions. Some desperately wanted to be on Top of the Pops. Others refused to work within the structure of a rapacious music industry. All, though, were united by a willingness to do the heavy lifting, to cover the hard yards, themselves. In the face of bright, shiny New Pop, and as a middle finger to Thatcherisms dismantling of society, punks DIY culture was re-adopted. Inadvertently, the governments own Enterprise Allowance Scheme signed up to by plenty of the bands on the cassette helped create this new cultural wave.