A kung fu fighter in a disco

I am shocked and appalled at the existence of this, this, this THING.

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I have never actually owned a proper product by Primal Scream, just a couple of burnt CDs someone else made for me and a promo of their greatest hits. The only one I like is Evil Heat.

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katstevens.livejournal.com

Only good track on Evil Heat = the one with Kate Moss on it. Bizarrely.

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Yes that is my favourite Primal Scream song! It's cos 'Some Velvet Morning' is a v good song innit.

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freakytigger.livejournal.com

Surely someone bought Fuzzbox' proper pop chart hits??

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damnspynovels.livejournal.com

I did. I think I still have Big Bang somewhere.

But then I have C86 too...

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katstevens.livejournal.com

I'm sure I had the George Best CD somewhere but I don't know where it is now.

Thinking about it, like the Lex I only own stolen PRML SCRM. Apart from "Rocks", which is on Now 27 which I bought with my own pocket money.

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jeff-worrell.livejournal.com

If "owned" included "taped off the radio and kept" I could tick about 7 or 8 more than the two I did.

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jeff-worrell.livejournal.com

Rightly or wrongly, I viewed C-86 at the time as a reaction to the opulence of the Big League indie bands. Things like "Bring On the Dancing Horses" by Echo and the Bunnymen and the Cocteau Twins' increasingly indulgent navel-gazing in their new studio (The Moon and the Melodies, anyone?). The shambling bands felt to me like an attempt, not to turn the clock back as such, but at least to make a "riot of their own". That said, I've never owned a copy of the tape and think I only listened to it once.

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dansette.livejournal.com

Someone bought me it from a charity shop. Age of Chance were actually pop in a way after they covered Prince and attempted to sell out (although no one was buying)...the video is on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFEee1uv2AQ

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how few i can honestly tick. i never had a copy of the tape. i had TAPES off of a friend of some stuff here (eg HMHB), and i had tracks by a few on indie compimilations (wolfhounds, soup dragons, stump), my first gig i went to at college was STUMP. HOWEVER, i remain remarkably c86 free.

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and prmls can etbgfdcks

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wizzy-w.livejournal.com

Charlton Heston put his vest on...

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http://mockingmusic.blogspot.com/2006/04/nme-c86-side-b.html not MOCKING ENOUGH if you ask me - with mp3 downloads!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C86_(music) - making the fair point that C86 now sums up bands more from 88/89 (sarah records i'm looking at you)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C86_(music) "A blog keeping C86 alive and championing new bands!" good grief

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and http://ilx.wh3rd.net/thread.php?msgid=5069023&showall=true

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OK i think i wd argue that c86 was the CASUS BELLI bcz:
i. as a non-retro promo it was taken to be saying the Shambling Scene has our FULL EDITORIAL APPROVAL -- to be a manifesto just as c81 had been
ii. but not only was its sound-range WAY narrower than the impossibly eclectic c81 (which sed EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE AND RELEVANT) but the no.of ppl who were in on the choice was very small also -- roy carr, neil taylor, adrian thrills, plus presumably ed and dep ed ian pye and danny kelly -- so other BIG BEASTS were angry their imprimatur was co-opted
iii. the NME freebie cassettes were (absolutely justifiably) very well-regarded, as primers to jazz, old soul, country, nuggets-type psych; as a library repositary to the past -- or the off-mainstream present -- carr had good instincts, good ears, good connections and GREAT licence-negotiating skeez
iv. the hiphop faction -- stuart cosgrove, paolo hewitt, sean o'hagan, lucy o'brien -- were FAR more aggressive polemicists, fighting for a "music plus broader social context" coverage in the mag (to battle eg the face, arena etc); quite rightly they argued that hiphop was a popular, dynamic, important new music wave -- quite WRONGLY they chose to dress this up in a punk-style kicking-over-the-statues rhetoric, which then had to be woven into a never-going-to-succeed marriage of soft-left pro-kinnock anti-thatcherism and Public Enemy-esque confrontation
v. the locus for angry debate every week was -- of course -- who gets on the cover (black artists were "artistically valid" and "politically correct"; white rockstars pulled in readers, at time when circulation was declining badly, but were very much the "conservative" choice
vi. i think cosgrove's instincts were largely correct -- broaden the topic-base rather than narrow it -- but the delivery was ROTTEN: the writing was often offputting -- it treated a key part of the nme constituency with open contempt without making very much serious attempt actually to bring in new readers (UK hiphop fans -- soul fans, clubbers -- were notorious anyway for not being particularly interested in READING about the music they loved; the modes of addrss that already flourished -- at black echoes and a soul monthly i forget the name of -- were pretty flabby pro-industry puffwork) (actually i retain a fondness for black echoes but it was NOT a writer's paper); and -- the one thing i think the indie faction were intuitively right about, though no one had the writing chops to work this up -- the hiphop faction NEVER dealt with "how music might be political in ways which DOESN'T just fawn on established non-musical politics" (MM were actually a bit better on this, tho frankly i don't think anyone at MM -- from simonR on down -- had much of a clue about non-musical politics except insofar as it was addressed by eg virilio)
vii. there were others acting as the em grit which produced the pearl viz SWELLSY -- editing the dick neecher column -- put in a little cartoon of someone goosestepping called THE HIPHOP HITLERS -- which hardly cooled tempers

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v and vi sound REMARKABLY SIMILAR to the current state of play!

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juror8.livejournal.com

Hewitt went on to become one of the most audible of the Britpop drum bangers though, correct? Reading upthread that C86 wasn't so much a reaction to hip-hop/soul/whatever as it was a reaction to majoy label indie of the time (qf "Tigermilk" ten years later, I presume), did the hip-hop brigade end up transmuting into the Britpop/Loaded writers of the following decade, with them being advocates for BIG MUSIC of SOCIAL IMPORTANCE rather than the C86 "But we just want to dance/shimmy/whatever" take?

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the specific faction failed when cosgrove was ousted -- he is now big name at channel four -- and the writers that remained were none of them very effective office-politics organisers: hewitt "sold out" i would say (at least in hiphop hitler terms); o'hagan is always just canny with who is in the ascendent i'm afraid

to be fair i think the britpop line had solid evolutionary links with the earlier red wedge kinnockism -- the hiphop faction were strategically pro anything hewitt's schoolchum paul weller did* -- with the gallaghers in place of wishywashy soul

*haha i recall the STUNNED LOOKS ON ALL FACES as we trooped out of the showing of the style council's film JERUSALEM -- has this ever surfaced since? it is awesome poor

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giddyoldgoat.livejournal.com

I'm not sure Stuart Cosgrove is still a C4 bigwig cos he now presents the Saturday afternoon football round-up on BBC Scotland - often w/ Indie football fan Pat Nevin!!

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mcarratala.livejournal.com

More than that, Hewitt went on to write an Alan McGee-inspired spoiler (rushed out before Dave Cav's book), which seemed a little strange considering the history. I reviewed it for Tangents, and he (months) later wrote an impassioned and very odd defence.

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mcarratala.livejournal.com

1. As an NME reader in 86, it was certainly the rhetoric of the hip-hop faction to which I objected. I loved both the Shop Assistants and Roxanne Shante and felt confused – at fifteen, expecting things to make sense – to be told that this was ideologically impossible. Equally, I always found something underlyingly suspect about the "black music is always more vital" argument – it's dangerously essentialist. Mark is right: I felt I was being treated with contempt, by people who certainly had done nothing to earn anyone's respect – only Cosgrove ever seemed much cop. PH very tainted by his over close association with Weller, then at his most derided.
[Presumably that's Blues & Soul magazine you're referring to in point vi?]
2. To me at the time the enemy would have probably amounted to Luther Vandross (but not Alex O'Neal, who was tops), Tina Turner and smoothed up 60s survivors like Steve Winwood.

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yes, blues and soul, thx!

i forgot to mention the BIG FIGHT over "hang the DJ" -- one side saying "THIS IS RACIST", the other side "no no he means TONY BLACKBURN"

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anatol-merklich.livejournal.com

Very very interesting mark, as I started buying NME in 1986. (My first one was WOULD YOU PAY £4M FOR THIS CRAP?.) While I agree (and not completely in hindsight) with the "contempt towards indie kids" writing of the One Side, it *did* make me give hiphop etc more of a chance than I may have done otherwise. (The visible Norwegian music press at the time was not usable here, they were on a prolonged "roots" bender at the time (or doing the alt.country thing 20 years in advance? t/s) -- Stan Ridgway touted as the big thing etc.)

Re ""artistically valid" and "politically correct"" -- if I read you correctly, PC was actually used as a positive yes? (A friend of mine who studied in the us in the late 90s introduced me to the term, at which point I did not get the impression it was meant as ridicule.) Backlash of the century, digging one's own grave etc eh?

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anatol it's worse than that! "politically correct" was first used as a SELF-DEPRECATING JOKE by elements of the left against their fellow elements, who were a bit too earnest or humourless or "rigorous"!! then it was taken up by the anti-left, who kept a tight grip on it ever since

if it was in use in the office at this time, i'm not sure i heard it or recognised it as such -- so the point i'm making is a bit glib and double-edged hindsight-wise : viz that the "ORDINARY RADICAL POLITICS" being argued for i more or less agree with, and some of the hiphop faction's taste was good; but the ATTITUDE TOWARDS POP i think stinks, actually, tho i didn't have the rhetorical firepower at the time to do anything about it

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anatol-merklich.livejournal.com

Ok thx for answer. (I'm still looking out for an ilx opportunity to say "It's political madness gone correct!")

NB!: guy studying in US in "late 90s" above should obv be "late 80s"!!

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viii.

giddyoldgoat says that from outside it seemed like an editoriallly confected debate to boost readership -- IF ONLY!! sadly pye was a weak editor who didn't know how to turn sharp difference of opinion into good copy; we WEREN'T ALLOWED TO MENTION MELODY MAKER, let alone address their arguments; and pye's misleadingly well-orchestrated accession and subsequent appointment of danny k had led to the grumpy exist of a lot of lesser-known but well-experienced writer-editors (danny is amiable and emollient but was at daggers drawn with stuart sometimes; i am fond of a lot of these people but many of them behaved very badly and it fucked up a paper with really good resources)
ix. the DENOUEMENT came with an theme issue on censorship -- i think pye had left, exhausted, at this point -- where cosgrove and designer joe ewart laid out a page which included giger's PENIS LANDSCAPE sleeve of the dead kennedies... IPC high-ups got wind of this outrage and pulled the entire article on pressday; the only available cover pic was the legendary MOTORCYCLE BOY -- a BAFFLINGLY terrible pic for a cover -- cosgrove and ewart were sacked; the LOOK of the paper -- which had been good, if a little precious and arty for what it was -- lurched towards the ABSOLUTELY FUCKING AWFUL, and a young james brown leapt up the editorial ladder to declare the advent of GREBO
x. the one thing that all factions utterly concurred on = no one is allowed to say anything bad about u2

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... robin quotes simonR here (http://robincarmody.livejournal.com/26706.html), summing up the implicit anti-thatcherite politics of the shambling bands -- i think there is an important point here which eg

thebopkids is eloquent about sometimes

to restate: i don't think nme OR mm dealt with the politics issue well -- nme basically argued for the assimilation of pop discourse in "mainstream radical politics"; mm argued (correctly) that music contains implicit politics of other kinds, which should be nurtured and valued -- but in the end, the um "aesthetic dimension" they were hioping to valorise was undermined by the boho neo-futurist sonicstorm irrationality they over-favoured (there's a lot more to pop; and more still to the rest of music)

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epicharmus.livejournal.com

You mean this?

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freakytigger.livejournal.com

My wife has just phoned me up to say that a car driving down our road playing hip-hop with Woofers on full blast provoked a spasm of angry kicking* in our unborn!

*or was it DANCING! "Schooly" rises up names list....

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hiphop was NOT strictly speaking a breach-point -- they were the hiphop hitlers because they were hitleresque in their love of hiphop, i think the argument ran

it was the rise of dance music in 87 -- chicago house in particular -- that the indie side were suspicious of: as early as this it only had a TINY following in the uk; and the london club-scene was notoriously elitist and not especially "black" (obv more than indie was, but nevertheless); some of the "soulcialist" rhetorical armory was quite flawed by now

IMPORTANT: the very vexed question of what appeared in the "indie" charts -- how they were compiled, whether dance labels like Jive or manu-pop like SAW were to be included (yes economically, no "ideologically" was the "indie" attitude)

also there was at this date a series of "straight" soul acts hugely promoted by CBS (ie the major majors) -- terence trent d'arby the most dramatic (and least "straight"), but a string of others wyho i now forget -- who were fielded VERY uninterestingly by the soul faction

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mcarratala.livejournal.com

The most notoriously duff "real soul" band of the time was surely the dismal Hot House, with the distinctive and never pleasant vocals of Heather Small, later of M People.

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byebyepride.livejournal.com

Yo -- first name of kid must be 'MC' or 'DJ. Pref former.

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martinskidmore.livejournal.com

I am winning/losing an indie poll! Hurrah for me! My answers would have been very different if you asked which I like (about five tracks from C86, I think).

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koganbot

Haven't heard anything on it. If I ever hear the whole thing and it turns out to be GREBT, will this undermine my Why Music Sucks rants from '86 and '87? (Answer would probably be, "No, not at all. Were just a blip while you, Frank, had stuck your nose up at a trend.")

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well i didn't read yr wms rants till 90 or 91 i don't think but they seemed exactly in synch to me -- to articulate most of the relevant critique let's say

there are a couple of gently fugitive songs on it which seem better now than they did then -- i have an (original! swank swank) tape copy which i can't upload sadly

therese which tom put up last night is on it and is emblematic

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the blog i meant to link up the way http://www.indie-mp3.co.uk/ has mp3s of the whole thing if you look around

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byebyepride.livejournal.com

This is all fascinating (and sad): I knew very little of this, except what I have gleaned from the enormous brain of

freakytigger over the years. I was only just getting into music in 1986 and lots of everything was tremendously exciting. I had no knowledge at that point of the existence of the music press. These two facts may be directly related...

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koganbot

My vote for Bodines should probably be discounted, as I haven't even listened to the track yet.

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--- adrian thrills

he was universally loathed (not as a person -- he is perfectly affable -- but as a writer and tastemaker)

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giddyoldgoat.livejournal.com

He has found his natural home as the Daily Mail rock critic!

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jeff-worrell.livejournal.com

"Really Stupid" by The Primitives

This isn't a shambling record though. It's teen pop through a JAMC filter. The Shop Assistants sort of fall into this category too. Both bands were templates for the cutie indie that eventually led to the woeful Sarah records. Only they avoided tweeness and were all the better for it. (The Primitives of course lurched successfully into the mainstream within 2 years.)

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yes i still love the shop assistants "china" -- the aesthetic was JAMC fuzz-harmony with the volume turned right down to 1!!

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