ORIGINALLY RELEASED IN 20
14
Back in May/June 1986, the New Musical Express released one of their regular mail
-
order
cassettes. Reflecting the latest trends in Indie music, C86 was a
22
-
track cassette which was
inspired by the NME's C81 tape from half a decade earlier. Aside from a few name bands (The
Pastels, Primal Scream, the Wedding Present, the Mighty Lemon Drops), most acts were relatively
unknown beyond the back pages and gig listings of the weekly music press. A few hadn't even
issued a record!
C86 slowly but surely became the NME's best
-
selling ever compilation, selling an estimated 40,000
copies and eventually being reissued on LP and cassette by Rough Trade the following year
. C86
prompted a week of shows at the ICA and would come to embody a whole musical style and era.
This deluxe expanded edition of the original C86 cassette adds some 50 bonus tracks. The box set
is curated by original compiler Neil Taylor and has the endor
sement of the NME. Neil has chosen
tracks which could conceivably have been on the original C86 package: all the recordings were
made between mid
-
1985 and mid
-
1986. Neil wrote about many of the bands at the time.
The C86 3
-
CD has been assembled by the same team behind 2013's Award
-
winning 5
-
CD box set
"Scared To Get Happy" (AIM Best Catalogue Release Of 2013). Many tracks have never been on CD
before. A few are even previously unreleased. Key names include The June Brides, The Jesus &
Mary Chain, The Primitives, That Petrol Emotion, Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes, Happy Mondays,
The Nightingales, The Railway Children, Pop Will Eat Itself, BMX Bandits, the Blue Aeroplanes and
Treebound Story (featuring Richard Hawley)
