Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been....?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

One of the battlegrounds in the Hip Hop Wars was NME's "C86" cassette, a tape compiled by some of the paper's writers, later described as "the most indie thing to have ever existed". While many of the bands were later embarassed by it and while it suffers from the usual post-facto "OMG it wasn't a scene" backlash (sure, it wasn't a scene in the sense of bands working and collaborating together, but it captures a mood quite well), its legend lives on.

Here's a poll about it:


[Poll #829524]


SHAMBLE ON.

Comments

What I said on ILM about C86 a few months ago

[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.