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

freakytigger.livejournal.com posting in

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

dubdobdee.livejournal.com

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

From:

alexmacpherson.livejournal.com

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

From:

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?

From:

dubdobdee.livejournal.com

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

From:

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!!

From:

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.

From:

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.

From:

dubdobdee.livejournal.com

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"

From:

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?

From:

dubdobdee.livejournal.com

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

From:

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"!!