11 minute read
AN INDIE ODYSSEY
Bogshed, Stump and Miaow; The Mighty Lemon Drops, Half Man Half Biscuit and Close Lobsters; The Wedding Present, The Soup Dragons and Primal Scream: we’ve pressed rewind on the musical memory box, hitting the stop button when it reaches 1986.
Back then, the New Musical Express (best known as the NME) was a best-selling British ‘rock inkie’, selling 300,000 copies a week at the peak of its circulation to young people for whom 50p was a very small price to pay for a ticket to ride the exciting, rebellious, subversive and occasionally glamorous waves of cultural revolution away from the sanitised, highly commercial UK Official Top 40 Chart.
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In May of 1986, readers who cared to invest a little more spare cash surfing those waves were offered this: “NME is making a declaration of independents on our latest mail-order cassette: 22 tracks across two sides, all lined up and raring to go in exchange for a postal order for just £2.95”.
Today, Nige Tassell has been a journalist for more than twenty years. Having undergone a stint as editor for the now-legendary Bristol and Bath weekly listings magazine Venue, he’s written extensively about sport, music and popular culture for a range of titles including FourFourTwo, The Guardian, TheWord and BBCHistory.
WhateverHappenedtothe C86 Kids? AnIndieOdyssey is the eighth book in Nige’s prolific career, offering interested parties a fascinating contemporary update on the lives of the members of every single one of the 22 bands listed at the start of this interview, 36 years on.
So, to start at the very beginning (of this book, anyway): how old was Nige when the C86 cassette was released?
“I was 17 – the optimum age for new bands to pitch at,” Nige recalls. “Unusually for music lovers of my generation, I wasn’t a big John Peel fan at the time, mainly because – and this is going to sound really sad of me – I had a daily paper round that started at 5.45am, so I wasn’t listening to Peel at 1am in the morning. But I was a big fan of Janice Long’s Saturday evening show, so I guess my tastes were much more kind of REM rather than Bogshed. The bands on the tape – the popular, more accessible stuff, if you like –was the stuff that chimed with me.”
But why revisit them in 2022? “I like to alternate my books between popular culture and sport – it keeps my interest levels up!” says Nige. “And I enjoy writing in slightly different styles, for different audiences. When I write about sport, the turnover of the people I’m writing about is much quicker than music – in football, for example, the players come and go really quickly. In C86, I had 22 different bands to write about in just one book, so I could go into depth without being ridiculously forensic. I love travel, and meeting people, and writing about their lives. So, where are the C86 bands now? I’ve gone off and found out – it’s really as straightforward as that.”
Surely, though, tracking down members from all those bands can’t have been straightforward, all this time on? “There was an element of detective work at first, and I really enjoyed that element of quest: lots of online searches, following leads,” says Nige. “One of the first people I made contact with was David Gedge from The Wedding Present and he was up for it straight away because the band is his life, to the present day. When I finally made contact with other names on my list, only a very, very few wanted to keep the door closed; I can count on the fingers of one hand the people who said good luck with it, but I’m not interested. But I found that if I talked to one member of a band, the others would come along; the more I got hold of, the more the list lengthened – some on my doorstep, some much further afield – because people didn’t want to be left out. Some of them are still really good mates, and even do occasional gigs; the floppy fringes may not still be around, but the band members are!”
Inevitably, Nige unearthed a handful of sad stories too as his researched dived deeper, learning of band members who are no longer with us, or who are going through personal tragedies of their own. “Sadly, that’s all part of the story for all of us, isn’t it?” he says. “Then there are the ones who have vaguely stayed in touch, or drifted then come back together again, the way we all do with school friends, or people we used to work with back in the day. And sometimes, we’ve just thought, I don’t need to keep in touch with such-and-such a person, but I wish them well.”
What would have happened, though, if only half of those on the C86 lineup had responded to Nige’s requests? “Rather nervewrackingly, perhaps, I knew it had to be all of them or none at all,” he says. “I could perhaps have got away with maybe a couple of them not wanting to to be included because I could have turned their non-compliance into something or, if they were still gigging, gone to one of their gigs and just watched them from afar, for their section. Deep down, I knew I could have gone to all the trouble of setting the whole book out and then not been able to get it across the line. But fortunately, it all turned out fine!”
For Nige, publishing in general seems to have worked out fine, his effortlessly engaging style taking us on a lovely, lively literary journey, distinctly relatable to a ‘certain’ generation. But what will the next generation of live music fans make of Nige’s most recent book – his own children, for example, aged 14 and 17?
“Put it this way: they don’t put up with what I play in the car because they’ve got their headphones in – and I’ve no idea what they’re listening to!” he laughs. “Anyway, they’re both really obsessed by film – they talk about Kurosawa over the dinner table, and discuss soundtracks. But I tend to think, if they see me doing my thing, writing the books that I write at our kitchen table, they’re growing up knowing that they can go their own way and do their own thing too. You’re never going to catch me rolling my eyes and saying, ‘kids today, eh’? I want them to do their own thing, not mine.” Just like those C86 kids are still doing their own thing, today. n
I found that if I talked to one member of a band, the others would come along; the more I got hold of, the more the list lengthened... people didn’t want to be left out
• Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids? An Indie Odyssey; Nine Eight Books; hardback £20 (also available on Kindle)
Expert opinion
Our regular columnist Chris Yeo is away but Clevedon Salerooms report on yet another successful specialist sale.
Saleroom Successes
Clevedon Salerooms held their latest Quarterly Specialist Sale on Thursday 1st September. A varied selection on offer saw some very healthy prices achieved throughout the day.
The high watermark of the sale was hit not once but twice in the Asian Art section, all in the space of two lots. A Chinese cloisonne enamel bowl had arrived in a carrier bag at the saleroom on a valuation day, having languished unloved in a cupboard under the vendor’s kitchen sink. Clevedon’s valuers sensed it could have potential and their hunch proved to be right, as a long bidding battle took it to £8,200.
In a similar story, a group of five Chinese Republican period (early 20th Century) porcelain vases achieved the same price. Finely painted and decorated with Chinese script, they had caught the eye of our valuer on a visit to the vendor’s home. He had sold one such vase years ago for a good sum, but could lightning strike twice? A resounding 'yes' was the answer, as £8,200 was the record for the second lot in succession.
Items with a strong local connection often prove most popular at the Salerooms. A pistol by rare local maker Joseph Callaway found its way home. The vendor had previously waivered over an offer of £1,500, but was rewarded for declining this as it sold at Clevedon for a more deserving £2,400. Also with a local flavour, a rare painted wooden diorama of a Bristol to London mail coach was the subject of strong bidding, selling for £2,800.
The Paintings section also yielded a number of strong prices. A good mid 19th Century oil on canvas of a farmer with prize bull and sheep attracted the attention of a Midlands-based specialist in animal paintings, who secured the work for a multiple-estimate £5,800.
Furniture closed the sale, and from a local Nailsea estate a beautifully primitive Windsor chair illustrated the strong demand for the best period pieces as it sold for £1,400. With some 85% sold and a total well above expectations, the sale represented another resounding success for a saleroom going from strength to strength. ■ • clevedonsalerooms.com; @chrisyeo_antiques (Instagram)
FOOD & DRINK
TASTY TIDBITS FROM THE CITY’S BEST RESTAURANTS, CHEFS AND PRODUCERS
Eat, drink and be merry
The South Glos Food and Drink Festival returns for its fourth instalment, taking place at the Bristol and Bath Science Park on 1 –2 October. Exhibitors will be offering an array of deliciousness, with something to suit all. There will be live music from the stage running throughout the afternoon. The festival will showcase cuisines ranging from Caribbean, Asian, Fried Chicken, Greek, Indian, Latino, duck wraps, gourmet burgers, hot dogs loaded fries, pizzas, burritos, jerk chicken and vegan options.
Try the UK’s #1 sausage, as voted at sausages week and as seen on ITV’s This Morning or an indulgent mac from Mac Daddies, with their signature cheese mac infused with truffle oil and black truffle crumb finished with gold leaf.
If you have a sweet tooth, you will love the selection of sweet stalls, brownies, waffles, fudge, gelato, donuts, plus delicious cakes from local cake maker Daisy B Bakes based in Emerson's green. Traders in the craft stall marquee will be selling headwear, jewellery, olives, spices and a range of handmade items. Four legged friends are covered with a stall selling treats for dogs. The event is running from 11.30am –7pm on both days.
• For more information and to claim your free entry ticket, visit: southglosfoodfest.co.uk
Chef, photographer and president of Slow Food Beirut, Barbara Abdeni Massaad will be at Cookpad UK in Bristol on 1 October to launch her new cookbook, Forever Beirut, and talk about Lebanon’s rich culinary heritage. Barbara is a well-known, much-loved, chef and food writer in Lebanon. Travelling the length and breadth of the country, she has recorded the traditional way food has been preserved in Lebanon. Her Soup for Syria cookbook features recipes donated by Sami Tamimi, Claudia Roden and Yotam Ottolenghi amongst others, to raise money and awareness of the plight of Syrian refugees.
• Tickets are available on shorkk.com
New spirits shop opens on North Street
A brand-new spirits shop and bar has opened its doors in Bedminster’s North Street. Specialising in whisky and rum, Spirited is the brainchild of whisky lover Katy Kennedy, who is focused on giving both a relaxed environment to enjoy food and drink with friends, and the ideal place to buy the perfect dram. Having worked for the likes of Oddbins, Avery’s and Elixir Distillers, Katy has built up a vast knowledge of the best drinks to suit your tastes, and budget. Now, she is excited to offer her expertise to Bristol’s community of whisky lovers and drinkers of quality spirits.
Connoisseurs can find spirits and wines from big-name distilleries and wineries, as well as craft spirits from small independent producers in Britain and abroad. Small drinks producers, little distilleries and craft breweries that flourish in the South West will be a mainstay.
The bar is serving a simple, seasonally changing menu of highballs and a rotating wine list. Wines can also be selected from the shelf to drink in at the bar. Comparative tasting flights – a board of three spirits – are to be a speciality of Spirited, as will a regular ‘break even’ bottle for customers to sample at cost. From October, ticketed tasting events and private sessions will be hosted by brands, suppliers and producers. Katy is also excited to collaborate with local business owners to hold other events such as chocolate and rum or cheese and whisky.
• For more information, visit: spiritedbristol.com and follow the new shop on Instagram @spirited.bristol; 196 North Street
