The
Eighties have — like the stack-heeled Seventies before them — been
repackaged and filed away as an era of Duran Duran, Dynasty and mobile
phones the size of a fridge. Just how it felt to live through the
decade if you weren’t a plumber on two grand a week or a character in
Less Than Zero — in fact if you were just a mere pop fan — is explored
in two forthcoming events.
The American experience is laid bare in American Hardcore, a
movie about the likes of Black Flag and Minor Threat, punkers who laid
out the rules for grunge, emo and beyond. The British underground of
the period is less cool, yet equally influential. One of its milestone
moments was a cassette compilation called C86, given away by NME in
1986, containing 22 tracks of what came to be called “indie” music.
Back then indie was an abbreviation of independent, a mark of your
outsiderdom — you had no dealings with major labels such as EMI or CBS,
you were answerable to no one.
A week of gigs at the ICA ran in tandem with the cassette’s
release; this weekend there is a 20th-anniversary celebration of the
event featuring groups that inspired C86 (Subway Sect, Aztec Camera),
some that were part of it (the Pastels, June Brides) and latterday acts
that draw deeply from it (Magic Numbers).
Its roots lay in the moribund British pop scene of 1983. The
boom that had created New Pop (ABC, Human League, Soft Cell and other
post-punk subversives) had inadvertently also spawned super-sanitised
acts such as Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw and Paul Young. In those
desperate times Lloyd Cole looked like a genuine contender.
What had been a thriving, ever-mutating underground scene
three years previously was reduced to a few brave souls who persevered
in the face of an increasingly bland and compliant pop landscape.
Alan McGee was one of those who persevered. He had moved to
London from Glasgow and started the Living Room club — upstairs at the
Adams Arms in Fitzrovia — in 1983. From London came the Loft and the
June Brides; from Scotland the Pastels and the Jasmine Minks. All
shared a scratchiness, an air of solidarity and an ear for a great
tune. Relocating to Chalk Farm in 1984, the Living Room became the
hottest venue in town when a quartet of East Kilbride miscreants called
the Jesus and Mary Chain made their messy, deafeningly loud debut on
McGee’s label, Creation.
The sound of these groups was raw, the influences were
Warhol’s Factory, the Byrds, Buzzcocks, Ronettes and Shangri La’s.
Creation led the way and by mid-1985 we were in the middle of a minor
revolution, time-capsuled by NME’s cassette a few months later.
The Manic Street Preachers’ Nicky Wire said recently: “In the
mid-Eighties everyone was a socialist”: the independent, proto-indie
C86 scene was definitively anti-Thatcher and anti-corporate. It created
its own parallel universe of fanzines, labels and distribution. Groups
were groups, never bands (which was a “rockist”, corporate hippy term).
Major labels were a no-no, and the new compact disc format was
definitely out. Going to the opposite,
DIY, extreme, groups put out flexidiscs instead, a cheap, disposable format that somehow stated their Marxist principles.
But C86 was DIY out of necessity. For most groups there were no
jobs, no cash, no choice but to do everything yourself within your
means. The look of C86 was second-hand charm. Johnnie Johnson of the
Siddeleys aspired to look like Marlene Dietrich. Other girls opted for
the Leslie Caron look in The L-Shaped Room, a beatnik Audrey Hepburn.
Boys sported the quiff — part Morrissey, part Albert Finney — or the
fringe/moptop, pioneered by Orange Juice’s Edwyn Collins. The ultimate
role model, for boys and girls, was the Jesus and Mary Chain’s young
drummer Bobby Gillespie. Truly, it was an asexual scene.
Like far-left factions, groups that had much in common built
up petty rivalries. The June Brides and the Jasmine Minks were the
biggest names at Alan McGee’s Living Room club and couldn’t stand the
sight of each other. Some found the Wedding Present too macho, others
considered the Pastels too fey. The Soup Dragons were condemned as
bandwagon jumpers. Some groups on the NME compilation (the McKenzies, A
Witness, Stump) were genuinely dire, but attitude over ability often
won the day.
This was a generation weened on punk ethics without the “year
zero” albatross. If these one-chord wonders couldn’t capture that Phil
Spector thunder in the confines of Alaska Studios — a dank railway arch
behind Waterloo station — they were happy to try.
By 1987, though, a lot of the impetus was gone. What had
seemed like a movement that could challenge the majors, as punk had
done, dissipated when those same majors signed up and de-balled some of
the bigger names, such as the Bodines and Shop Assistants. Primal
Scream aside, very few groups lasted. The immediate future of pop
turned out to be nothing to do with C86, or even guitars, but had been
brewing in Detroit and Chicago’s bedrooms and clubs — house and techno
were the new punk.
Viewed from 20 years away, C86 feels like a great British DIY
boom in the tradition of skiffle or Merseybeat. Like its predecessors
it was in the vanguard of a revolution rather than the revolution
itself. More obvious with the passage of time is that, with the
honourable exception of the Postcard label, it was the starting point
for indie music. It lit the touch paper for the Stone Roses, then Oasis
and eventually all manner of million-selling acts.
The sound — buffetted and no longer sounding as if it was
recorded in a garden shed — has become the mainstream. Armchair
revolutionaries now have MySpace to do the job of the fanzine. Yet,
listening to the new CD86 compilation, there is a real sense of urgency
in the music, love and hate in equal measure. Its perpetrators may not
have manned the barricades in their anoraks, but C86 was a political
education.
C86 — Do It For Fun takes place at the ICA, SW1 (020-7930 3647), Friday 27 and Saturday 28 October,
featuring clips from Hungry Beat, Saint Etienne’s documentary about
Eighties British underground music, to be released in 2007. www.ica.org.uk. CD86 is released by Sanctuary
