it's true that the groups that sounded like bad versions of Velvets/Love/OrangeJuice, and the groups that sounded like bad versions of Beefheart/Fall/SwellMaps, didn't have much in common with each other sonically... but they were playing on the same grubby venue circuit, appearing in the same fanzines, getting put out on the same or similar labels... so their appearance on the same cassette is hardly some movement-as-figment act of top-down scene-creation as this C86 Remembered piece likes to make out... they were all DIY, up to a point (those who actually got offers pretty much all signed to major labels or next-tier pseudo-indie imprints like Elevation, they wasn't much staying-independent-out-of-ideological-commitment as i recall!) ...

beyond that what they really have in common is that they were all, with a few exceptions, a bit shit

they don't call it the Bad Music Era for nothing you know