Released in June 2013, Scared To Get Happy (A Story Of Indie Pop 1980-1989) claimed to be the first box set ever to document the explosion of Indie Pop in Britain across the 1980s. Compiled in loosely chronological fashion, the five CDs charted Indie Pop’s development from the post punk era and the dominance of Scottish bands through to its genre-defining C86 period and onto the end of the decade, with the arrival of Madchester and the shoegazing sound. Inspired by the Nuggets compilations, the box set boasts 134 tracks span the Eighties, drawn from all the key labels of the period – Creation, Factory, Cherry Red, Rough Trade, Sarah, Subway Organisation, Zoo, Kitchenware, Pink, Chapter 22, In Tape, Medium Cool, Lazy, Dreamworld, 53rd & 3rd, Ron Johnson, el, Vindaloo, Red Rhino, Food, etc.
Here’s 60 minutes of highlights.
mp3: Various – 60 mins from Scared To Get Happy
The Loft – Up The Hill and Down The Slope
Art Objects – Showing Off To Impress The Girls
The June Brides – Every Conversation
The Shop Assistants – All Day Long
Girls At Our Best – Getting Nowhere Fast
The Dentists – She Dazzled Me With Basil
The Jazz Butcher – Southern Mark Smith
The Corn Dollies – Be Small Again
Marine Girls – Don’t Come Back
The Brilliant Corners – Delilah Sands
Prefab Sprout – Lions In My Own Garden (Exit Someone)
Friends Again – Honey At The Core
Josef K – The Missionary
The Servants – Loggerheads
The Charlottes – Are You Happy Now?
The Wild Swans – Revolutionary Spirit
The Siddeleys – My Favourite Wet Wednesday Afternoon
The Chesterf!elds – Completely and Utterly
The Monochrome Set – The Jet Set Junta (remix)
The House of Love – Shine On
James – Hymn From A Village
There may be a second volume of this sort of nonsense later in the year
JC
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
Just needs a mild-mannered public-school Scouse voice back-announcing the band name and label address to take me back to cold nights in the dark with the FM crackling and the 10pm news full of Princess Di, South Atlantic wars and nuclear escalation. Some of these tracks have aged better than others, but we’ll all argue about which ones . . .
The music is great. The way the CDs are housed in the box, however… I’m never more frustrated than when trying to put away or take out a CD from Scared to Get Happy. Just looking at the photo above is giving me the shakes. Can I get an amen?
A box set that carries before it the likes of The Shop Assistants, The Charlottes and The Siddeleys is invincible.
I agree with Brian about the Krypton Factor-style challenge of removing and replacing the CDs.
Have a brill time in LA, JC and Rachel.
I listened to the mix again today. I noticed two things. The mix doesn’t even start with “Why Does the Rain”, as I implicitly claimed in a recent post. And secondly, I was impressed by how good the Wild Swans’ debut single actually is.