Tales From The Conference League : C86

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You'd never know it from reading the music press but this is the twentieth anniversary of C86, a cassette released by the NME in 1986 that highlighted some of the most exciting, experimental and FUN Indie bands around at the time.

These days "Indie" seems to mean EITHER having a piano and whining slowly about nothing much OR ripping off Television at high speed whilst wearing sunglasses and a scarf, but back then being in an Indie band meant you were the inheritor of two glorious legacies - The Beatles and Punk.

As with The Beatles there were no "rules" about what you could or couldn't play - if you liked it, you nicked it - and, as with Punk, enthusiasm was much more important than technical ability. Thus, in the grand tradition of all great British culture, loads of ideas got pinched from other people, mixed up, played wrong, and turned into something exciting, vital and new.

These bands were usually written off as "Middle Class" simply because they were willing to use their brains and be friendly to one another. This attitude always tells you more about the accuser than the accused - since when was being clever and polite the sole preserve of the middle classes? Or do the idiots who say this sort of thing just think that all working class people are rude and stupid?

They were also derided for their lack of "ambition", as they were happy to make the music they wanted without worrying too much about who liked it or how much money they might make. Since the early 1990s ambition has been defined solely as wanting to sell as many records and cram as many people into an arena as you could. It doesn't matter how small-minded and dull the music you make is, as long as you're keen to shift units then you're classed as forward-looking and ambitious.

Is that really what we want? Is everybody happy with the fact that most of the leading lights of "alternative" music are signed up to major labels or fake indies? Do we enjoy hearing them boast about their desire to fleece us for as much as they possibly can? Are we all pleased that the band on the front page of the NME shares exactly the same aspirations as the band on heavy rotation on The Hits, and, indeed, are probably one and the same?

AMAZING NEWS: Personally, no!

So I'd like to suggest we honour this anniversary by celebrating the spirit of PROPER Indie. Let's not hide our intelligence behind a fake bad attitude. Let's not struggle to recreate somebody else's style - especially not that of the original C86 bands - but trust in our own ideas. Let's not worry about how well we can play our instruments, but be ready to surprise ourselves with the sounds we CAN make. Let's not bother about being cool, or whether any of the songs we like will ever bother the charts. Let's just do it because we love it.

Or, in the words of every PROPER Indie Band ever - let's make the music WE want to make, and if anybody else likes it, that's a bonus.

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