Various Artists "Scared To Get Happy: A Story Of Indie-Pop 1980-1989" (Cherry Red)

It always seems a little... bizarre to me that us Brits seems to be so adept in complaining about the fact that it's raining. It's not like rain’s a new thing to us northern Europeans: indeed, it’s the bread and butter of our daily lives. It's like the Inuit complaining about snow, or Saharan nomads moaning about the heat.

We detect the same mentality, the same “glass half-empty”, in the lukewarm reception given to this box set in certain circles. The typical reaction has been along the lines of: “It's OK, but it's hardly Nuggets. Also, Prefab Sprout aren't indie-pop. 6/10”. Or, “yes there are loads of good songs, but mainly on discs three and four, and I've got them all already". There are elements of truth in both of those viewpoints, but disingenuousness too. If you’re going to have a collection of 134 tracks from the 1980s that tells the story of indie-pop's evolution, covering as many bases as possible, then of course there will be some surprises and disappointments, some overlaps with what you already own, and plenty of room for disagreement as to what might have been there instead. The reality is that it would have been a waste of opportunity to stick to the narrow path, not to take any risks. This is a rare opportunity to appraise a genre that, just for a while, went hand in hand with daily life here: like the rain, this collection is British to the core.

What really counts, for us, is this: not only do we enjoy listening to (the vast majority of) this collection, but we've also learned from it. Indeed, some of that education has come at the hands of the tracks we like the least. And as the sleevenotes themselves acknowledge, the box set should be seen as a companion piece: not just to our extant record collections, but to CD86, to Rough Trade Indiepop, even to the um, extraordinary Sound of Leamington Spa series. And, no doubt, to next summer’s promised / threatened C86 triple-CD extravaganza.

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By way of full disclosure, 1986 is where we came in (disc three, basically). I was 13 years old, and it was the year I discovered the music papers, the John Peel show, and this whole new world of ‘alternative’ music. At the time, that made it my “year zero”: music from before that date always had to work that much harder to get my attention. And I was reluctant to believe that my new music was a synthesis of past influences: the past was a different country, one that I didn't want to visit, and I remained doggedly true to my conviction that anything played on *my* turntable was creatively completely pure, and derivative of *nothing*.

After years of my primary musical education being based on the make-up, dancers and studio lights of Top Of The Pops once a week, I was also impressed (I would say ‘starstruck’, if that didn't sound so ridiculous in this context) by the down-to-earth nature of the scene: excited by my new heroes being bands who just wore their own clothes, who looked like normal people, who seemed to be putting music several miles before spectacle. It wasn't about dressing as a punk, or a goth, about outward displays of fashion at all. Gosh, it was as if the New Romantics had died in vain.

So what many people saw as the fatal flaw in bands like the Wedding Present - an overarching ‘ordinariness’ - became, for me, a great part of their attraction. Self-deprecating, at times almost designedly mundane lyrics (“I didn’t go / was it a good film?” or “I always meet you / the day before I wash my hair”) that we could relate to, that helped convey wider, more believable emotions than the bands that were getting the daytime play. And we all started groups of our own, because other people that looked like us were doing just that, and were doing it playing chord shapes that were not too tricky to ape. Yes, for my half-generation, born a decade too late for punk, and not becoming teenagers until the Pistols’ legacy had pretty much been swept away from the popular music landscape, the indie-pop fanzines became our “Sniffin’ Glue”. I gleefully lapped up - no, *mined* - C86 and “Indie Top 20 Volume 1” (both, of course, were cassettes, back in that age when music first became portable).

And even more than a decade later, when I'd started working for a living, and spent reclusive evenings recoiling from the horror of office work in my Stockwell bedsit, I spent a few nights putting together a compilation tape of my favourite moments from my youth. I christened it “In Love With These Times, In Spite Of These Times (Crucial Fashions 1985-1988)”. The subtitle aside, that then became the name of my little fanzine. It was how I felt about that music then, and still feel about ‘our’ music now: songs, words, a scene, that are all about valuing inspiration in the face of an uninspiring world, about *rising above* the free-market dreck, but above all about staying true to ourselves.

Still, it's probably time to get back to the programme, and to try and explain where “Scared To Get Happy” might fit in.

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The first couple of discs are a direct attack on the young me’s dreams that the shambling scene & the Sarah scene were the start of something completely new, were beholden to nothing more than Thatcher’s generation waking up one morning in early 1986 and deciding to D.I.Y. pop music to the max. The songs on these serve as a bridge between C81 and C86, a journey starting in the midst of post-punk and taking us to the uncertain middle of the decade, by which time it seemed that punk truly was dead, the spirit of post-punk had been co-opted by sinister forces and mainstream music had become an opulent, onanistic, self-celebrating sludgefest, un-coyly celebrating the neo-capitalistic excesses of Thatcherite and Reaganite economics at the time.

The songs on these discs are also, however, keys which unlock the door to the bands that directly influenced the ones we now cradle, now *cherish* the most. These are the groups that our heroes (when we were 13) were listening to when they were newly teenage. To our shame, and much as we’d spent time delving into pop history when it suited us (exhuming British punk, post-punk and new wave), we'd never really listened to the groups that were the immediate precursors of our C86 heroes. “Scared To Get Happy” has given us the springboard to do that.

The first couple of discs thus show an independent scene which is either spread out, or disjointed, depending on your prejudice: some bands are sonorous; some have the high-in-mix, doomy vocals of early goth or the art-school side of new wave; some hark back to before prog or punk altogether, with ‘classic’ songwriting struggling to escape the confines of low production budgets. It's a parade of the earnest, the overblown, on occasion the ephemeral. But there certainly can’t be any denying of its relevance. It’s a lyric to Hurrah!’s bristling “The Sun Shines Here” that gives this box set its title, but more fundamentally it proved the inspiration for Matt Haynes’ original “Are You Scared To Get Happy?” fanzine, which - even as youthful self-righteousness and anger dripped from its every page - found constant time to tell us of the greatness of Hurrah!, at least before they went through Arista’s mangle.

In stark contrast to bands like Hurrah! - that promised everything, yet ultimately fell from view - there are plenty of names on these first two discs that would be familiar to “normal people”, not just us indie-pop obsessives; from Del Amitri, Aztec Camera, Lloyd Cole, Everything But The Girl or the Prefabs through to Pulp, whose “Everybody’s Problem” is almost unrecognisable but actually not bad at all (similarly, Black’s “Human Features” shows that they really weren’t only about “Wonderful Life”). And we don't see any point in airbrushing such names from this collective history - Prefab Sprout might always have been aiming for higher planes but when the notion of “independent pop” was forming, their “Lions In My Own Garden” fell squarely within its parameters at the time. Whilst at one point, Roddy Frame seemed to be cited by every other up and coming indie popster, even when he was ‘all grown up’. You also get to see EBTG here through the prism of the Marine Girls, as the compilation shows how some individual artists (not just the wider ‘scene’) were developing.

So a few of these artists went on to hit it big: your Jarvis, your Tracey, your Paddy. Fair enough. “Commercial success” remains an irritating bugbear for all of us who’d secretly like ‘our’ music to stay underground, but again this compilation is seeking to disentangle us from what bands would go on to: the point is that, in the moment, it wasn't always easy to tell who would go on to a career and who would not. Commercial success is not a ground for airbrushing those bands from their erstwhile roles, or disqualifying them from track listings. On the other hand, “commercial” sounding songs that are a bit rubbish (the Cherry Boys and In Embrace, we're looking at you) are a fail whatever label they were released on.

Most important of all, though, there are just no end of great songs on these discs: as well as those we knew about already (Josef K, Girls At Our Best, Fire Engines, June Brides, the Loft) there are the Art Objects (instantly recognisable from Gerard Langley’s voice as the band who would become the Blue Aeroplanes), the Higsons, and the Nightingales… the latter’s “Paraffin Brain” (a song we first came across when it was covered by lovable Dutch masters Eton Crop) is, as you'd expect, fairly amazing…

Although in truth the second disc pales a little in the shadow of the first, with bands seemingly unable to decide which way to go, until everything coalesces at the end as the likes of the Mary Chain, June Brides and the Loft turn up.

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We’ve already hinted (more than hinted) our love for the ‘85-‘88 (ish) era covered intimately by discs three and four. So the first big tick for “Scared To Get Happy” is the fact that discs three and four, the ones that most closely document are own obsessions, are brilliant. The box set would be failing in its duty if it didn't reflect our halcyon memories of those years. And there are simply fabulous songs here from the Shop Assistants, the Flatmates, the Wedding Present, This Poison!, McCarthy, the Chesterf!elds, the Rosehips, the Siddeleys, Wolfhounds, Razorcuts, 14 Iced Bears, the Clouds, BMX Bandits, the Primals, Mighty Mighty, the Brilliant Corners and, of course, the ever-constant Bubblegum Splash! (our original mini-site on them was generously taken over by indie-mp3.co.uk, and can still be seen here…)

Our prime duty, though, is perhaps to dwell on those acts that we haven’t really focused on before. The Waltones sound better than we remembered any Medium Cool bands being: there's a touch of the Windmills to “She Looks Right Through Me”, with some mighty fine Wedding Present-like guitar work creeping in too. We’d also managed to completely overlook Apple Boutique before now, but now we can't work out how their “Love Resistance” could have managed to evade us for so long. Similarly, we'd totally missed the Hepburns, but “The World Is Cherry Red” is redolent of the skilful pop anarchy of the Higsons; confident, crashing, and unhinged in a good way (Jamie Wednesday’s “Vote For Love”, on the other hand, is unhinged in a bad way, and by the end it's all too easy to recognise the first stirrings of Carter USM, the poor man’s I Ludicrous). The Heartthrobs’ “Toy” is well ahead of its time, too: effectively, a template for when Lush went ‘poppy’ with the likes of “Single Girl”. And after several concerted attempts in the past to fall for Jesse Garon and the Desperadoes, we think that “The Rain Fell Down” has finally got us there.

And don’t Rosemary's Children sound like Revolving Paint Dream?

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But then - ook - we come to disc five. It would be fair to say that it’s the weakest, and uses up a little of the goodwill engendered by the first four. Mind you, again we’d posit that it’s simply reflecting the decline and fall in its subject-matter, and that it’s entirely appropriate for this set, as a historical document, to record the fact that people were starting to lose the plot a bit. The upsides first: there are splendid contributions from the Would-be-Goods, the Claim (on the first hearing of which we realised that the earlier track we thought must be by them was, of course, the Dentists’ contribution), Sea Urchins, East Village, the Orchids and the Charlottes as well as a splendidly unhinged one from Bad Dream Fancy Dress (unlike the Jamie Wednesday track, it’s not really possible to tell whether it is good or bad). There's also an intriguingly good contribution from post-Chameleons outfit the Sun and the Moon, much more accessible and attractive than I’d expected. However, there is some pretty dire stuff here, especially as the CD and the decade progress: the once-wonderful 1,000 Violins are hardly represented at their best by “All Aboard The Lovemobile”, and the Milltown Brothers’ perfectly competent but dreadfully uninspiring schlock has nothing in common with the more amateurish excitements of the preceding discs. Even the Telescopes and Boo Radleys tracks, received well enough at the time, feel muddy and uninspired from the vantage point of 2013.

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So let’s move on. For there are a number of further plus points to bring out as we step back and survey these five CDs as a whole. Firstly, this compilation really does pick up so many of the key labels. Not just Sarah and Subway and 53rd & 3rd and Narodnik (for kids like us) or Factory and Creation (for slightly cooler / older kids) or Esurient or the Pink Label (for really *really* cool kids) but the early beating heart imprints of Zoo, Fast Product, Kitchenware and Whaaam! (There is a respectable argument that had the box set come out on another label, there might have been *slightly* fewer Cherry Red contributions, but to be fair they don’t take the nepotism to extremes). And even labels that we've always been cool on but were clearly part of the superstructure (el and Medium Cool are two that come to mind, but between them, they deliver three or four songs here we really enjoyed). The compilation would be a lesser experience without such a full sweep of labels.

Unlike some others, we reckon the box set strikes a pretty good balance between obvious and obscure track selections. For the harder-to-find bands, it often picks out one of their singles. For those bands with existing retrospectives, it’s more likely to pick up on an early track or a contribution to a flexi-disc (an important structural part of indiepop back then). It's great, for example, that the Soup Dragons are represented by a song from their impossible-to-locate first shelved single, the Bluebells by a rare flexi, or the Close Lobsters by an early song that sounds them feeling their way. The Orchids’ “I've Got A Habit”, too, is a great tune that would have sold out early on, and that isn’t on all the Sarah compilations (or, possibly, the Elefant reissues). And there have been mutterings about the inclusion of the demo version of “Just Like Honey” to represent the Mary Chain, but to be honest it's just a good version of a great song: no beef from me.

It's interesting seeing which bands wear others’ influence on their sleeves: some links between bands on the different discs are already known (e.g. the Wedding Present covering the GAOB track here, “Getting Nowhere Fast”), but there are definitely traces of both the Marine Girls and Dolly Mixture in Talulah Gosh. And the Farmers’ Boys had obviously, um, drunk a lot of Orange Juice. We also find it strangely comforting to find out that the Shamen were always pretty bad, the Wonder Stuff were always very annoying, the band that became Ocean Colour Scene weren't much better than OCS were, and that we’re as untickled by the early Stone Roses (despite their more danceable take on the “Sonic Flower Groove” style) as by their later, more famous works.

There are maybe a few songs that, on “stylistic” grounds, shouldn't be here. bIG*fLAME’s "Debra" and Age of Chance’s“Motor City” are indubitably terrific, but stick out like sore thumbs: a case could be made that they build on the legacy of first-discers the Nightingales or the Fire Engines, but their inclusion here also suggests that Cherry Red, wrongly, aren't planning a separate box set for all the “awkward squad” bands (the "post-post punk" bands, as John Robb had it in his enterprising history of that scene).

And Jane’s “It's a Fine Day” is really rather lovely, but the absence of any guitars (indeed, the absence of any instruments at all) makes it hard to work out exactly where it fits in. Still, it’s nice to be confounded once in a while.

The compilers acknowledge that they couldn't get everyone they wanted. But the key omissions - Orange Juice, the Pastels, Felt, the Field Mice and that band at the flaming core of 80s independent pop, the Smiths - are at least not hard to track down, nor likely to be absent from the collections of most who buy this box set.

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Our suggestions, should there ever be a volume 2? Let's start with the best stuff that you can't currently get, unless you're prepared to pay small fortunes on e-Bay. Buba and the Shop Assistants’ “Something To Do” seriously needs a wider audience. Ditto the singles of James Dean Driving Experience. And the ‘lost’ MBV EPs (“The New Record By” and “Sunny Sundae Smile”). Emily, perhaps – “Stumble” is a minor masterpiece if ever there was one. More from that first Soup Dragons EP? Five Year Plan (although there's a low key re-issue of their stuff in the offing). The Sinister Cleaners’ “Longing For Next Year”. Something by the Wildhouse. Or the Mayfields. The Nivens’ radiant "Yesterday". Or are we stumbling back into “Sound of Leamington Spa” territory?

Right. To sum up. If you’ve ever glanced at our blog before, chances are that you know that 1986 was our year zero. The line we used to hold was simply that no good music was made immediately before them, at all: from pure fallow sprang new music; everything kicked off, with no debt to the past. This box set has proved us wrong, and we’re grateful for the toil that’s clearly gone into it.