A link from the amazing Bradley’s Almanac made me squeak with joy. Last year, the indie-mp3 site made available a download of the C86 mixtape, and explains it thus:
‘The C86 tape was originally given away free with the NME. It later appeared as a limited run of 500 as a radio only copy before getting a full release on Rough Trade Records. The tape collated bands from the UK Indie Scene in 1985/86 with the angle that some (Bodines, Shop Assistants, Mighty Lemon Drops) would burst through on the commercial scene. This never happened although bands like The Wedding Present and Primal Scream scored success a few years later.’ more here…

This is the tracklisting:
Side One

1. Primal Scream / Velocity Girl
2. The Mighty Lemon Drops / Happy Head
3. The Soup Dragons / Pleasantly Surprised
4. The Wolfhounds / Feeling So Strange Again
5. The Bodines / Therese
6. Mighty Mighty / Law
7. Stump / Buffalo
8. Bogshed / Run to the Temple
9. A Witness / Sharps And Sticks
10. The Pastels / Breaking Lines
11. The Age of Chance / From Now On This Will Be Your God

Side Two

1. Shop Assistants / It’s Up To You
2. Close Lobsters / Firestation Towers
3. Miaow / Sport Most Royal
4. Half Man Half Buiscuit / I Hate Nerys Hughes
5. The Servants / Transparent
6. The MacKenzies / Big Jim(there’s No Pubs In Heaven)
7. Big Flame / New Way(Quick Wash And Brush Up…)
8. We’ve Got Fuzzbox… / Console Me
9. McCarthy / Celestial City
10. The Shrubs / Bullfighter Blues
11. The Wedding Present / This Boy Can Wait

…and not only that, but indie-mp3 then asked their readers to suggest tracks for a 2006 compliation - I suppose in a kind of 20 year anniversary celebration. You can download the compilation in a zip file from the article. It looks interesting. And now I should get back to work. Oh - but there is also a link to a great essay by Krister Bladh called Everything Went Pop! C-86 and more: a wave and its rise and fall.

I haven’t read it all yet, but it just intrigues me, as I had lots of these bands on mixtapes I would make - and still have Wedding Present, The Soup Dragons, Half Man Half Biscuit, The Mighty Lemon Drops, The Pastels and McCarthy albums hanging around in storage. I was obsessed. The essay itself makes me wish I’d done musicology at uni. Sadly, I did journalism - and the only way I could figure out to get music into my honours thesis was to examine Australian independent music in the print media - I would much rather have done something like Everything Goes Pop!. This is not to say anything bad about Australian music, but the print media angle was yawnworthy.

UPDATE: a telephone call this afternoon. Mr H informs me that he has a veritable LIBRARY of NME compilations from the same era and that I can dub them all. He brought them all over from the UK when he moved here. Of course he did. M makes me throw all my old cassettes on to the Korrumburra Tip because we’re moving to a terrace in Seddon, Mr H brings all his across great oceans and still has them in his garage. We were obviously destined to conspire.