Taking Sides : C81 vs C86

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Scritti, James 'Blood' Ulmer, Buzzcocks, Virgin Prunes, Red Crayola, Essential Logic, Lynx, etc

Close Lobsters, Stump, Wedding Present, McCarthy, Bogshed, HalfManHalfBiscuit, Miaow, etc

Gotta give it to C81, myself.

― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:12 (twenty years ago)

Obviously!

― Ther Return of the Son of Dadrockismus (Dada), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:15 (twenty years ago)

i wd love to read a fully reasoned defence of c86 as the better but i do not much expect to

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:17 (twenty years ago)

sorry. i'm c86 all the way here. i can't give you a reasoned defence either: it's a purely emotional response. or perhaps a pavlovian one :)

― everyone thinks grimly fiendish looks daft but he can have his dream (grimlord), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:18 (twenty years ago)

this is all i could find on c96:

http://www.tangents.co.uk/tangents/main/2002/dec/c96.html

― N_RQ, Friday, 18 March 2005 14:19 (twenty years ago)

C96? Never heard of it.

― Ther Return of the Son of Dadrockismus (Dada), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:20 (twenty years ago)

x-post: bear in mind i wasn't reading the NME in 1986 - i was 11, and reading "your sinclair" - so for me it's entirely about the bands involved, rather than the contemporary cultural line about harking back to a mythical jangly past etc. i just prefer the weddoes and HMHB to scritti politti etc, that's all.

― velocity fiendish (grimlord), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:22 (twenty years ago)

C81 predicated a future of thrilling possibilities. By predicating a future based on a reductionist revision of the recent past, C86 was complicit in closing down those possibilities.

Or to put it another way: C81 ruled, C86 sucked.

― mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:22 (twenty years ago)

C86 didn't suck, quite, but yeah that's exactly my feeling...

― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:23 (twenty years ago)

well, it happened, and it involved delgados, bis, mogwai, all of whose work i have at least heard, unlike the wedding present, field mice, ect, ect.

but mike, what do you think of the choice NOW? it's all 2-to-2-and-a-half decades ago, so the "futurity" argument isn't that strong anymore is it?

― N_RQ, Friday, 18 March 2005 14:24 (twenty years ago)

Oh Christ, Mogwai and the Delgados, thank fuck I never heard it

― Ther Return of the Son of Dadrockismus (Dada), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:25 (twenty years ago)

TS: 'Fiddling While Romo Burns' v CD of Dylan covers given away with Uncunt?

― David Merryweather (DavidM), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:26 (twenty years ago)

xpost: Now? Having much more of a past, I'm guess I'm much less hung up about futures.

― mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:27 (twenty years ago)

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/vivonzeureux/Images/c81.jpg Vs http://www.kevhopper.dsl.pipex.com/Littlestumps/stumpC86.jpg

― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:28 (twenty years ago)

Actually, perspectivewise, that's pretty good!

― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:29 (twenty years ago)

o christ that c81 cover is abysmal. jesus wept. it's so bad it makes the c86 one look good.

what's the "022" about?

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:31 (twenty years ago)

It was the 22nd NME mail order tape.

― mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:33 (twenty years ago)

The first NME Mail order cassette was :

Track Listing:
Side One:
The "Sweetest Girl" - Scritti Politti
Twist and Crawl Dub - The Beat
Misery Goats - Pere Ubu
7,000 Names of Wah! - Wah! Heat
Blue Boy - Orange Juice
Raising the Count - Cabaret Voltaire
Kebab Traume Live - D.A.F
Bare Pork - Furious Pig
Raquel - Specials
I Look Alone - Buzzcocks
Fanfare In The Garden - Essential Logic
Born Again Cretin - Robert Wyatt
Side Two

Shouting Out Loud - Raincoats
Endless Soul - Josef K
Low Profile - Blue Orchids
Red Nettle - Virgin Prunes
We Could Send Letters - Aztec Camera
Milkmaid - Red Crayola
Don't Get In My Way - Linx
The Day My Pad Went Mad - The Massed Carnaby St John Cooper Clarkes
Jazz Is The Teacher, Funk Is The Preacher - James Blood Ulmer
Close To Home - Ian Dury
Greener Grass - Gist
Parallel Lines - Subway Sect

― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:43 (twenty years ago)

there's a ilm thread where ALL the mail-order cassettes are listed and discussed

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:45 (twenty years ago)

That's fine. This one is just for these two. A link would be nice though.

C86 full tracklisting

The Age of Chance - From Now On,This Will Be Your God
A Witness - Sharpened Sticks
Big Flame - New Way
The Bodines - Therese
Bogshed - Run To The Temple
Close Lobsters - Firestation Towers
Fuzzbox - Console Me
Half Man Half Biscuit - I Hate Nerys Hughes ( From The Heart )
The MacKenzies - Big Jim
McCarthy - Celestial City
Miaow - Sport Most Royal
The Mighty Lemon Drops - Happy Head
Mighty Mighty - Law
The Pastels - Breaking Lines
Primal Scream - Velocity Girl
The Servants - Transparent
Shop Assistants - It's Up To You
The Shrubs - Bullfighter's Bones
The Soup Dragons - Pleasantly Surprised
Stump - Buffalo
The Wedding Present - This Boy Can Wait
The Wolfhounds - Feeling So Strange Again

― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:46 (twenty years ago)

Although, that's in the wrong order...

― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:47 (twenty years ago)

i was hoping someone else would go looking mark!!

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:47 (twenty years ago)

wasn't the order of one or other - or the track-listing or something - changed w.rerelease?

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:48 (twenty years ago)

C81 dropped the Buzzcocks and/or Lynx, for something else. Panther Burns, prob.

― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:52 (twenty years ago)

C81 vs. C86

I was going to do a track-by-track FIGHT and award points, until I realised that I could scarcely remember half the C86 tracks.

― mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:53 (twenty years ago)

Tangents on C86:

"If the NME journalists of the time had only shown the same levels of wisdom and insight as their forebears of five years previous (when the same paper, in conjunction with Rough Trade, put out the genuinely fascinating and inspirational C81), then C86 could have been a terrific showcase for the diverse and inspired underground music of the mid 1980s. Instead they laid the foundations for the desolate wastelands of what we came to know by that vile term 'Indie'. What more reason do you need to hate it?"

― mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:57 (twenty years ago)

**C81 dropped the Buzzcocks and/or Lynx, for something else**

I don't think so. That tracklisting looks right.

― Dr. C (Dr. C), Friday, 18 March 2005 14:58 (twenty years ago)

that's the original listing dr c: but it wz changed on rerelease (presumbly a rights thing)

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 18 March 2005 15:01 (twenty years ago)

ok i'm gonna take em both home tonight and intersperse them w.RS LaRue's two salsa while i'm lookin after my mum and dad this weekend!!

= i want to reappraise my own opinions now that the "dust" has "settled"

(mark s = comes back from shropshire a fanatical wolfhounds fan)

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 18 March 2005 15:05 (twenty years ago)

"there's a ilm thread where ALL the mail-order cassettes are listed and discussed"

― mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Friday, 18 March 2005 15:09 (twenty years ago)

I think C-86 in and of itself was a weak, poorly compiled release. For every gem (The Bodines, Pastels, Weddos) there was two or three lumps of coal. So many of these acts proved to be duds.

C-81 is consistent. Granted, so many of the acts on C-81 are just now getting their due. But there's never been a shortage of people who lavish their praises on Rough Trade's golden age. "Do You Wanna Buy A Bridge" and C-81 go a long way to canonizing this era.

― Brooker Buckingham (Brooker B), Friday, 18 March 2005 15:16 (twenty years ago)

As much as I love jangly indiepop music, I've always thought the C86 cassette itself is pretty weak. Most of the bands on it did have some great songs, but they aren't on that comp! I can't comment on the effect of C86 when it came out because I was 10 in 1986, I didn't hear until I found a copy in Reading's Sound Machine when I was 21.

C81 I don't think I've heard all of because the only copy I found on Soulseek was incomplete, whoever ripped it excluded a lot of the songs because they didn't like them (Lynx, Furious Pig etc I think). But the Raincoats, Josef K, Essential Logic songs are great, so I might side with C81 just for them!

― Colonel Poo (Colonel Poo), Friday, 18 March 2005 15:34 (twenty years ago)

C86 was a bit tooo damn twee.

C96's failure probably had a lot to do with the decline of cassettes.

― Quit glaring at Ian Riese-Moraine! He's mentally fraught! (Eastern Mantra), Saturday, 19 March 2005 16:56 (twenty years ago)

C81 is generally thrilling. I only like about four tracks on C86. It's weird that most people (young music geeks) have only heard or C86.

Imagine how bad C06 would be, though.

― I.M. (I.M.), Saturday, 19 March 2005 17:24 (twenty years ago)

Only three minutes a side, for a kick off...

― mark grout (mark grout), Saturday, 19 March 2005 18:09 (twenty years ago)

five months pass...

As far as I'm concerned (and being 42 in a couple of weeks time I think I'm in quite a good position to judge both) the difference in the the two is that the only connection is the title. C81 was a melting pot of different sounds and styles while C86 was an overview of the current (mainly) British bands who seemed to share a certain jangly style and seemed to represent the new hope as the NME saw it. Whilst I enjoyed the bands represented and a lot of their music the diversity of C81 makes it the winner for me. By the way as far as I remember the Linx track was replaced by JACKANORY STORIES by The Television Personalities

― Spencer Kurash, Sunday, 11 September 2005 11:13 (twenty years ago)

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