This Sore and Broken Blackpool Legacy, or the Enduring Appeal of Punk Rock in Blackpool

Abstract

This chapter examines the career of Blackpool punk-influenced band the Ceramic Hobs, and their frontman Simon Morris. It considers their place among the punk and post-punk tradition within the town, and the struggles which that scene has had in gaining broader recognition. It argues that the band, Morris’s own mental health-focused musical and literary work, and his ultimate fate, closely reflect the economic, social and cultural history of Blackpool. It draws on the economic and social history of Blackpool, with an emphasis on factors testifying to the town’s deprivation and marginalisation.

This chapter examines the career of Blackpool punk-influenced band the Ceramic Hobs, and their frontman Simon Morris, who died in 2019. It argues that the band, Morris’s own musical and literary work, and his fate, closely reflect the economic, social and cultural history of the town. In my investigation, I will draw on a number of sources. One is the economic and social history of Blackpool, with a particular emphasis on factors testifying to the town’s deprivation and marginalisation. Another source is my private archive, including records and small press publications referring to the history of the Ceramic Hobs and its leader, as well as my own recollections of the band, spanning about twenty five years, which covers more than half of the band’s history. I also draw on the discourse of punk, in particular the idea that punk is uniquely suitable to capture social malaise.

1 Blackpool and Punk

Some of the key components of Blackpool’s socio-economic situation include limited employment opportunities, high rates of poor health, poor housing and high levels of hard drug use. It holds the dubious honour of hosting many of the country’s most deprived wards (Parkinson 2019), and tops or comes close to the top of statistics for suicide and mental health problems in the UK (O’Connor 2017). Blackpool has, indeed, become synonymous in recent times with UK austerity.

By the same token, there is a close fit between Blackpool and punk music. Punk rock, initially popular in the UK from 1976 onwards (Butts 2020), is well-documented as dealing with social issues in its lyrics (Dimery 2010: 378; Mulholland 2003: 20–21). It initially reflected the heated political situation of the mid-to-late 1970s, while also offering a point of escape to teenagers who could see no other route out of both that real world pressure and the anodyne mainstream culture which they were, at that point, still expected to uncritically accept. Bands such as the Sex Pistols opened up a portal to a new way of expression for a generation, direct and confrontational, as epitomised by records such as ‘Anarchy in the UK’ and ‘God Save the Queen’. As a part of this movement, mounting dysfunction in Blackpool since its seaside resort heyday, as discussed in this book’s introduction, has become perfect subject matter for its homegrown punk acts. However, this was not so much the case when punk began, when the town was still a popular tourist destination, and locally born residents did not experience the same levels of deprivation as have been documented regularly in recent years. Local band the Fits even recalled that tourism meant that they could distribute their records with ease, just via passing trade (Glasper 2014: 113). In the sleevenotes for The Best of the Ceramic Hobs 1986–1989 (issued in 2010), Simon Morris still refers to the band as having been ‘striving to escape the sterility of…the Fylde Coast’, rather than escaping its later horrors, hence mirroring both the famous punk band the Buzzcocks’, and the Blackpool area band One Way System’s, beginnings as escape routes out of ‘boredom’ (Glasper 2014: 117). In line with this situation, Blackpool, and the surrounding Fylde Coast area, was not initially at the forefront of the punk revolution. Its young population was, in fact, largely in thrall to northern soul throughout the 1970s, as epitomised by the nationally important nights held at the local branch of the Mecca chain, featuring music which was often played at a velocity which has something in common with punk (Brewster and Broughton 2000: 98–108).

The town became more well-known initially for its literate post-punk groups, starting from around 1979–80. Many bands formed in the former year, and there were releases from John Robb’s The Membranes and from Section 25, from 1980 onwards. These notably included the Blackpool Rox EP, featuring both bands, on Robb’s Vinyl Drip label, which also used some artwork from local alternative music guru Fes Parker, a slightly older character who added some occasional, unique aspects to the bands’ output. There were even classically punk instructions, on the back of the EP’s sleeve, about how to make a DIY record. Volume two of the series, in 1983, featured Sign Language, another post-punk group, whose leader Laurence Brewer would later go on to join the Ceramic Hobs. These groups were perhaps keen to elevate themselves above the dominant image of the town as a hub for no-nonsense frivolity, with Section 25 instead associating themselves with Manchester’s epochal, forward-thinking and culturally aware Factory label. Section 25 were even followed to Factory by another local group, Tunnelvision,¹ and The Membranes ranted about their ‘Tatty Seaside Town’ on 1988s Kiss Ass…Godhead! album.

Punk held on exceptionally well in Blackpool. The town had a serious flirtation with another speedy music scene, rave, in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Garnier 2015: 44–45), in which many of its punks also became embroiled, including members of Zyklon B and One Way System.² The 1990s then saw the punk flag kept aloft by Andy Higgins’ tenacious Just Say no to Government Music (JSNTGM) label.³ The town welcomed its annual, international punk festival for the first time in 1996,⁴ which was initially named after the highly appropriate Sex Pistols song ‘Holidays in the Sun’, then re-christened Wasted, and later Rebellion, as well as being immortalised in Sham 69s wonderful song ‘Blackpool’, from their album The A Files (1997). Did the festival’s arrival merely reflect the cheap status of the town’s fading facilities though (Parkinson 2013)? Or did it reflect the town’s appeal towards fans of dying music forms, even dying music forms such as punk, wherein the central plank was to act in a rebellious manner? Even punks seemed keen to return to Blackpool’s Golden Mile, well-remembered by so many Britons from childhood trips away with parents and grandparents. Either way, in parallel with this nostalgia on the part of ageing fans, there was a growth in festival fringe events, culminating in 2019, when five separate series of events ran alongside the main one. Many of the original Blackpool area bands, such as One Way System, The Fits and The Membranes, also reformed.

Yet Blackpool is also, inescapably, the epitome of abandoned northern towns, its punk scene constantly rejuvenated by populist politics of both the left and right. Mazierska refers, in the introduction to this volume, to the high support for the Leave campaign in Blackpool during 2016s Brexit vote. While the Leave vote was by no means exclusively a right-wing concern, it was perhaps not too much of a shock in Blackpool. The Fylde Coast had birthed the archetypal white power neo-Nazi punk band, Skrewdriver (Forbes and Stampton 2015: 24–40⁵), whose sample song titles include ‘Race and Nation’, ‘Europe Awake’ and ‘Johnny Joined the Klan’. The reputation of Skrewdriver’s frontman Ian Stuart Donaldson, as a neo-Nazi, to some extent sullied the reputation of the town’s punk scene, with punk generally being a genre of music more accepting of diversity. Donaldson’s extremist vein of thought survived in hidden corners of the Blackpool scene, and the town as a whole is still notably racially homogeneous (Blackpool Health & Wellbeing Board ‘Joint Strategic Needs Assessment’). Before their frontman’s far-right political interests became common knowledge, Skrewdriver were an early forming punk group in comparison to others in the area, and had a 1977 single called ‘Antisocial’. That title was taken up as the name for a local oi-style street punk band in 1981, and their bass player Darren Mowbray in 1984 formed the skinhead band Skin-Up, whose songs included ‘White Backlash’, ‘PC Bastard’ and ‘Hang the IRA’ (Forbes and Stampton 2015: 150). More recently, until local pressure seemed to lead to the number lessening, many of the Rebellion events saw unofficial fringe events from the neo-Nazi end of the punk scene.⁶ As has often been the case with these type of concerts (Forbes and Stampton 2015: passim), the venues were kept secret in order to dissuade the gigs being broken up, but it seemed to be a matter of pride that they took place in the town annually. Even away from the extreme right-wing, the factionalism of British subcultures was embodied in The Fits’ 1981 Blackpool classic ‘Odd Bod Mod’: ‘I hate everything you stand for’ (Glasper 2014: 112–13).

From about 2005 onwards, a grassroots revival began on Blackpool’s rock underground, with a punk spirit running throughout the acts, whatever subgenre they worked within. It was helmed by the colourfully named Felch collective, members of which CSOD summed up the tranquilised approach often favoured in the face of decades of adversity in northern England, in their local anthem ‘Wasted Again’: ‘I’m at war with my brain’ (Wasted World: The Music 2008). There was also a fine line of mainly female punk bands starting around the same time, including Swallow, Pink Hearse and, later, The Poly-Esters. Sadly, there seemed to be a lack of understanding among this generation of bands regarding distribution techniques, and even a stubborn resistance regarding any attempts to transmit all this successful work to audiences outside the town, leading to much of the work remaining under-acknowledged.⁷ With the exception of releases from JSNTGM, the knowledge of previous generations of Blackpool punks on this matter seemed to have been lost. From this generation of bands, Litterbug summed up Blackpool in ‘This Town’: ‘This town dragged me down’ (The Its Not Funny Mini Album 2013) and, by 2018, Dischord had condensed their feelings about it into one single phrase: ‘I fucking hate this town!’, on the Wasted World: The Music 2 compilation.

2 The Story of Simon Morris

By 2017, the type of multifaceted dysfunction many Blackpool residents were experiencing had a name. The correct term is ‘constellated disadvantage’, but the colloquial ‘shit life syndrome’ has a certain ring to it (O’Connor 2017). Blackpool is the sixth most deprived town in the UK, with eight of the ten most deprived neighbourhoods in the whole country, which make up 41.5% of the town.

Despite a loving and comfortable upbringing as the son of Blackpool’s former Director of Tourism, Barry Morris,⁸ Simon Morris of the Ceramic Hobs was one of the residents living one of these dysfunctional lives, as he worked away constantly, outside normal avenues of employment, on his semi-hermetic music and writing. Born in 1968, and reaching adolescence as the various waves of punk emerged onto the British music scene, Morris looked for authenticity, eccentricity and hidden meanings in music from a young age. After hometaping sometimes edgy material with schoolboy bands such as Eddy Vomit and the Fat Bastards,⁹ he formed the Ceramic Hobs in 1985.¹⁰ Begun with school friend Steve Lambert, the band was initially a clatter of home-spun noises and enthusiasm, but gradually expanded to include more players and some semblance of tunes. There were attempts at upsetting normality from the beginning, and the band’s first recordings, on Morris’ own cottage label, Smith Research, were paired with a set of telephone prank calls (John There/Summer Hobdays 1985), the first of many experimental recordings by Morris outside his work with the Ceramic Hobs. Mostly, though, the band were exuberant surrealists. Sample track titles included ‘Exceedingly Good Weasels’, ‘Toast from the Piggy-Bank’ and ‘Bob Holness Must Die’,¹¹ and even the name of the band, referencing cooker parts, seemed surreal when taken out of context in this way. The attitude was punk, but the music was initially psychedelic, and if there is one term most used to describe the band over time, with their mixture of abrasive rock and noise music, it is probably psych-punk. There was a flexidisc issued, but as a measure of the band’s lack of commerciality, it took the label until 2010 to sell out of them (Bedrooms and Knobsticks 1987; Batcow 2020¹²).

The Ceramic Hobs were starting to cause on-stage chaos by February 1988, wrecking a PA and throwing animal entrails at a Manchester audience. By 18 July 1988, the band was morphing into a new one, against the backdrop of a drugs scene reinvigorated nationally by the burgeoning rave scene, and locally by the start of Blackpool’s downturn (‘Blackpool’s youth lived in an environment overshadowed by unemployment, drugs and depression’, Garnier 2015: 44). Following an accidental dose of PCP, Morris, aged 19, was admitted to Blackpool’s psychiatric unit for the first time, and later described himself as suicidal from this time onwards (Simon Morris Family Series Volume Six 1995; Morris 2018: 45). In connection with this point, in Blackpool, 25.6% of people consider their day-to-day activities to be limited by ill health. Under 40% of residents claim to be in very good health, and 9.5% to be in bad or very bad health (Lancashire County Council ‘Limiting long-term illness’). The rate of antidepressants prescribed in Blackpool is nearly twice the national average (Gayle 2017). Thirteen and a half thousand adults of working age in Blackpool suffer from mental health problems, and 300 suffer from psychotic disorders (Blackpool Health & Wellbeing Board ‘Blackpool joint health and wellbeing strategy 2013–2015’). Garnier’s reference to unemployment is also fair. By 2017, not only was unemployment higher in Blackpool than the English average, but 13% of the working-age population claimed Employment Support Allowance or Incapacity Benefits, more than double the national average (Blackpool Health & Wellbeing Board ‘Joint Strategic Needs Assessment’).

By summer 1989, and having dropped out of university in Manchester, the tone of Morris’ work had soured. His new band was called Satan The Jesus Infekt’d Needles and Blood, and they often focused on the more disturbed and disturbing aspects of the Ceramic Hobs’ material. He was living in Liverpool, suffering from people’s preconceptions about those with mental health issues, and playing sporadic gigs around the north, including with Stevie Massey, a bandmate who became a psychiatric patient several times, and who in 2000 was sectioned and has never re-emerged into wider society. Morris was taking LSD, magic mushrooms, cannabis and beer; communing with those in difficulties of one kind or another; self-harming as part of his on-stage performance art and experiencing a chronic smoker’s cough and suicidal ideations. He was thus admitted to hospital again, with psychosis, back in Blackpool, and this time for a longer period, leading after release to a period of depression (Morris c.1994; Sienko 2004). In regard to the point about Morris’s smoking issues, despite great improvements in smoking rates in the borough, a fifth of 16–17 year olds in Blackpool are still regular smokers. In relation to his suicidal ideations, in Blackpool, healthy life expectancy for men is only 53.3 years (Blackpool Health & Wellbeing Board ‘Joint Strategic Needs Assessment’), and Blackpool’s suicide rate is above both the rate for the north-west and the national average (Gavell 2019). Drugs and alcohol are also often co-existing factors in Blackpool suicides (Blackpool Health & Wellbeing Board ‘Blackpool joint health and wellbeing strategy 2013–2015’) (Figs. 1 and 2).

Fig. 1

Ceramic Hobs, live at the 13th Note in Glasgow, 2012, Copyright Greg Neate

Fig. 2

Ceramic Hobs live, probably at Gullivers in Manchester, 2013

Morris returned to a better level of health partly as a result of his successful second attempt at a degree in English, studying in Manchester in the years 1991–94; and partly as a result of a new relationship which started in 1992, with Lizzy Basra. He was even able to carry out some rare paid work in the summer holidays. Musically, perhaps buoyed by good reactions to some rap recordings he had made which referred constantly to real-life situations,¹³ he continued to unpack his mental health experiences in work by the latest iteration of the band, Orange Sunshine, whose name was a reference to LSD. This situation continued through more name changes, and more low-key releases (Morris c.1994), until the band finally reverted to the name the Ceramic Hobs for 1995s Top Buzz. Back living in Blackpool, near the rest of the band members, regular recordings and live shows together became a realistic prospect, leading to relatively successful circuit gigs in Leeds and elsewhere. Another development for the band in 1995 was Morris’ befriending of, and hand in the revival of the fortunes of, Fes Parker, whose own punk songs were an acquired taste, but were brutally catchy and, like Morris’s own, made reference to his struggles with mental health issues. After a couple of low-key tape releases, Parker got together with old contact John Robb’s band Gold Blade, in order to record 1997s Combined Possibilities CD, followed by a steady stream of CDRs.

In March 1996, tragedy struck. Basra, also prone to mental health problems, killed herself by jumping from Blackpool bus station. Morris experienced psychosis once more, and cathartically included the coroner’s report, art by Basra and letters of distress between friends, in issue 11 of his sporadic zine Turnip Flag. This was included with extremely limited quantities of a single by his side-project, Iron Lion Zion, Selections from the Forthcoming Album of True Rastafarian Cultural Dub. The single’s sleeve art included heart-breaking news reports regarding the decline and death of a young lady with psychiatric problems, Karen Morgan, who also featured on the front of the Ceramic Hobs’ Onepercenters (The Worst Winter Ever) tape that year, and became the subject of the band’s live favourite ‘Pirate Night For Karen Morgan’. Morris’ material seemed to be becoming ever more involved with tragic subjects, some personal to him and others made personal through the strength of his feelings regarding them. In an interview, Morris described the band’s work as dedicated ‘to occult suffering and the dark side of youth culture’ (Marley 2000: 54). Another example of this was the band’s split 7” single with American band To Live and Shave in LA, ‘This Sore and Broken Blackpool Legacy’ (recorded 1995), which featured new member Kieran Bradley, and which lamented the disappearance of the Manic Street Preachers’ Richey Edwards, as well as teeming with obscure Blackpool mental health references (Morris 2016: 157–58). In a 2019 press release for Hannah Peel, her band the Magnetic North were described as being involved in place-rock, with their fantasies based around UK towns. As ridiculous as that term may be, it somewhat suits what the Ceramic Hobs were beginning to achieve.

By this time, close friends of Morris were living in the most depressing of Blackpool’s tight warren of bedsits, as referenced in the introduction to this book.¹⁴ He later quoted Stephen Koch in his preface to Meg McCarville’s Four Circles: ‘Outer Bohemia is too bleak to visit. That is where uninteresting dying drug addicts live with end-stage alcoholics, runaways, the insane, the most wretched of the homeless. Outer Bohemia is Desolation row’. Outer Bohemia sounded like the inner wards of Blackpool. By 2015, over a quarter of Blackpool’s households were private rentals (Allen 2015), and there were 4000 Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) in the town (Hurst 2015).

In 1998, the much-delayed Psychiatric Underground brought together the band’s ideas into what might be considered the mature Ceramic Hobs sound. This was shot through with harrowing concern for what these days are termed ‘service users’ in the British mental health system, on tracks such as ‘Hospital Detective’, the aforementioned ‘Pirate Night’, and the title track; and the band also started a tradition of featuring Fes Parker cover versions on their albums. The title track was more musically straightforward than usual, and particularly moving, including the lyrics: ‘He didn’t get out of there alive/found hanging in his cell at the age of 25…Did they laugh, did they scoff, did they pull your golden hair?/Did they say “he’s just a loony, nobody will care”?’ Morris went so far as to describe psychiatry as ‘a blatant betrayal of all that’s decent about humanity’ in an interview around the same time (Marley 2000: 53), a point later refined in the title of the band’s 2007 composition ‘All Psychiatrists Are Bastards’.

By 2000, spurred on by this work, and reeling from another Blackpool bus station suicide, that of Kieran Bradley (Morris 2016: 158), the Ceramic Hobs had begun a long relationship with the international mental health campaign group Mad Pride. This saw them play busy shows and appear on compilation CDs. Their song for one of these, ‘Make Mine a Large One’, referenced the infamous 1997 Blackpool murder of Christopher Hartley.¹⁵ They even appeared on the television in connection with Mad Pride, and Morris contributed to their books. Playing to this crowd, the second CD by the band, in 2001, referenced both rap group Niggaz With Attitude, who, like Mad Pride, were reclaiming offensive slurs for themselves, and a prominent British psychiatric hospital, in its title, Straight Outta Rampton. This album was both lyrically and musically more conceptually dense than ever, and continued to toy with concepts of extremism. They specifically addressed Islamic extremism on ‘Islam Uber Alles’, a perfect example of Morris’s suggestion in an interview that the band were ‘interested in the area where you’re not sure whether something is funny or serious, or both’ (Sienko 2004), a description which also snugly fitted their darkly humourous songs about Blackpool. Straight Outta Rampton also featured the first appearance of ‘Shaolin Master’, one of the band’s most popular songs, a version of which was later released as a single (Harbinger Sound/Idwal Fisher 2002). It is a vignette about a real-life Blackpudlian wannabe hardman and obstreperous, difficult to live with partner, with illusions about his own physical prowess, and a somewhat demanding tone. Blackpool has notably ranked as the second highest postcode area for antisocial behaviour in the UK (‘Blackpool crime stats’ 2020), and the domestic abuse rate in Blackpool is more than twice that county-wide (Blackpool Health & Wellbeing Board ‘Joint Strategic Needs Assessment’).

In 2004, following two band members leaving to help reform Section 25,¹⁶ a new line-up was organised, and the Ceramic Hobs released their third CD, Shergar Is Home Safe and Well (Sienko 2018). It is a remarkable and under-heralded set, expertly balanced between the unfettered madness of Morris, and the melodic and production work of Stan Batcow. It is also a concept album about alternative dimensions, and the ‘subversion of linear time’¹⁷ (Sienko 2004). Featured subject matter included online pro-anorexia groups (‘Pro-Ana Tips’N’Tricks’), fear of Blackpool freemasonry (‘Web Beast’) and the carnal sights and sounds that could be observed from Blackpool Pleasure Beach’s Magnolia Cafe (‘Does He Take Sugar’), with significant crowds thronging among the rides at this highly popular tourist destination. The revival of Blackpool punk-inspired bands added impetus to the Ceramic Hobs in the wake of this release: gigs were regular, and often well-regarded by the slowly growing rump of sympathetic supporters in the town and further afield. The band even toured briefly in Germany in 2006 (Morris 2016: 27). The band also issued a compilation of previous singles and rarities (Celebrating 20 Years of Mental Illness 2005). To sate his constant urges to create, and following in a personal tradition going back many years, Morris made guest appearances at live gigs and on recordings by another Blackpool band, Intravenous In Furs, eventually releasing a distillation of their work together on a 2008 split album with the also Mad Pride-affiliated band Ape Shit. A friendship was also forged with Russian noise musician and magazine publisher, Philipp Wolokitin, who released a sizeable amount of Ceramic Hobs-related material. Links from this relationship led to a short tour of Lithuania for the band in 2011.¹⁸

In 2007, the Ceramic Hobs issued their fourth canonical album, Al Al Who, drawing on a rawer production style to represent their recent live material. Morris’ working relationship with Batcow decayed in the wake of this release, and eventually severed, leading to a period when the band again worked under different names. They resurfaced for 2010s Oz Oz Alice, an especially darkly toned record, which went through a variety of underground variations before and afterwards. The project mixed together references to The Wizard of Oz’s prominence in paedophiliac thinking; the North Wales child abuse scandal; Miley Cyrus’ troublesome entry into the world of adult celebrity; the traumas experienced by Idaho child kidnap victim Shasta Groene in 2005, at the hands of Joseph E. Duncan III, including the murders of several members of her family¹⁹ and those traumas experienced by sexual assault victims in Lancashire. As always, Morris researched his material obsessively, and this effort contributed to another psychotic episode, and another spell in Blackpool’s main psychiatric unit (Steg 2011). In 2009, Fes Parker had died of complications from cancer,²⁰ and in 2010, long-term Ceramic Hobs member Andrew Hayes also died of natural causes, in his late forties. The deaths surrounding the band began to have a corrosive effect on Morris, and the band’s mood was ever-darkening, as heard on their 2012 single for Blackpool area label Must Die, 33 Trapped Chilean Miners, which reanimated the riff from ‘This Sore And Broken Blackpool Legacy’, while referencing the well-known real-life news story about a Chilean mining accident, which had disturbed Morris when it occurred during his 2010 psychotic episode.

The mood only dipped further with the awful, and again premature, 2013 death, from motor neurone disease, of Laurence Brewer,²¹ and the drugs-related 2014 death of Morris’ long-term collaborator Nigel Joseph (Wood 2018). Brewer contributed to the first Ceramic Hobs vinyl album, 2013s excellent Spirit World Circle Jerk, and audio from Nigel Joseph’s inquest was sampled for the 2015 50 Shades of Snuff single, which also referenced the 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Spirit World Circle Jerk introduced new, young collaborator Calum Terras, who disappeared in January 2015, only to be found dead in the sea off Blackpool that August.²² In connection with the death of Nigel Joseph, the Blackpool area has well-documented issues with drug abuse,²³ something One Way System had also written about from personal experience (Glasper 2014: 118). Blackpool is second only in the UK to semi-regular Ceramic Hobs touring hotspot Middlesbrough for heroin and crack users per 1000 residents (Mahmood 2019).

In 2016, Morris returned to his writing, publishing his first book Consumer Guide, via Tegenaria Press. This discussed the various deaths which had affected him; childhood memories; harrowing accounts of his experiences in psychiatric units and his self-medication with alcohol. Blackpool harbours many alcoholic temptations for its residents and visitors, with 1550 licensed premises, one for every 90 residents. The rate of alcohol-specific mortality for males in Blackpool is over two and a half times higher than the national average, and the alcohol-specific hospital admission rate is also over two times higher than the national average for both men and women (Blackpool Health & Wellbeing Board ‘Joint Strategic Needs Assessment’). Morris then began a series of sometimes lightly fictionalised, confessional chapbooks for Amphetamine Sulphate, beginning with 2017s Creepshots. This returned again to the deaths of Joseph and Terras, and to alcohol abuse, and featured a particularly powerful section juxtaposing homelessness with the grants-funded arts. Civil War (2018) conflated the work of Guns N’ Roses with a dysfunctional love affair, plus a 2017 suicide attempt and time spent afterwards in two psychiatric units. The UK’s health services were by this point functioning so poorly that both units were away from the Fylde Coast, and away from Morris’s relatives.

Not long before the publication of Civil War, the Ceramic Hobs achieved their most high-profile release to date. In recent years, the Harbinger Sound label had become home to the hugely successful Sleaford Mods, whom the Ceramic Hobs had supported live on several occasions. The label now put out Black Pool Legacy, a career-spanning double vinyl compilation, with a brilliant track selection from Philip Best of Amphetamine Sulphate, equally good mastering and artwork, and a booklet from long-time band supporter Chris Sienko. It was supported by an extensive article in the Wire, the UK’s principal newsstand magazine for experimental music, which talked about the social fragmentation of Blackpool, and described the band as ‘the authentic voice of the town’ (England 2018: 31), an interesting comparison point to his father Barry Morris’s professional devotion to the promotion of a more hyperbolic image of the town. Morris was also working, around this time and until shortly before his death, with Lancashire post-punk band Vukovar.

The end of 2018 saw the Ceramic Hobs play at the Tusk festival in Gateshead, and be interviewed onstage. Around the same time, Morris’ latest chapbook, Sea of Love, was being prepared for publication. He returned in it to childhood memories and to Terras, and discussed his experiences with Vukovar, all against the backdrop of another love affair. Its release came around the same time as a CD release of the Tusk set, Use Your Illusion III, its title another reference to dysfunctional rock group Guns N’ Roses. A full-length book for Amphetamine Sulphate followed, Watching the Wheels. Here, Morris discussed the works of Queen, and how they had soundtracked his life, returning to the deaths surrounding both him and the collective life of Blackpool’s residents once again: ‘Last time I see him he’s been declared fit for work and has to go in and cry in front of an official every month…his arms now shredded with self-inflicted injuries’.

After scraping together funds for a tumultuous trip to Los Angeles, for a book reading, in November 2019, Morris fell out with close friends and posted entries to his blog regarding emptiness, and about Calum Terras, specifically in the latter case regarding the identification of missing persons, and facial recognition.²⁴ Having cancelled a trip to New York for a live show with one of his noise acts, Smell & Quim, Simon Morris was last seen by his parents on the evening of that concert, Saturday, 7 December 2019. His body was found on 19 December 2019, and the inquest is yet to be held at the time of writing.²⁵

3 Conclusions

In conclusion, it is clear that punk rock, which often reflects and, one might suggest, gains its strength, from the discussion of social issues, has many reasons to find sustenance in Blackpool, with the poor life prospects present for residents of the town, whether in terms of employment, recreational drug use, health, housing, or antisocial behaviour. These have been notably addressed in the works of the Ceramic Hobs, and of Simon Morris, their leader from the inception of the band in 1985 to its demise in 2019. I argued that Morris’ mental health challenges led to him having a particularly empathetic reaction to issues affecting his collaborators. The gruelling effects of these issues contributed to his heightened mental health issues in his final years and, finally, to his tragic death. Both Morris and other musicians within the town and surrounding areas have contributed some fine work to the world of punk. However, this fact may take time to be fully appreciated, owing to the provincial nature of the town and the perceived low-brow, derivative character of its music. This article is a modest attempt to recognise the importance of the Ceramic Hobs in the canon of British punk music.

Notes

• 1. https://www.discogs.com/artist/129628-Tunnelvision-2, accessed 9/03/2020. Some discretion needs to be used with open-source websites, but there is an element of peer review at work here. This author uses the site in question often for music research (including for various aspects of this chapter), finds it extremely helpful, and contributes extensively.

• 2. Correspondence and conversations with the author. These have been too numerous to realistically reference, although a significant percentage in the second part of the chapter took place in December 2019 and January 2020.

• 3. http://www.jsntgm.com/.

• 4. http://www.rebellionfestivals.com/history, accessed 4/01/2020.

• 5. An incredibly detailed and useful, but somewhat partisan, book.

• 6. These occurred most recently, to the best of the author’s knowledge, in 2018. Flyers and other documents are in the author’s possession.

• 7. Much of the relevant discussion occurred on the now sadly closed Blackpool Bands online forum.

• 8. Articles regarding this story include the following, from the Blackpool Gazette. This newspaper is essential for cataloguing the town’s local history but, as with the equally useful Lancashire Telegraph, BBC News, Southwark MIND Newsletter, Seattle Times and Youth Krisis zine (all also referred to for this chapter), does not always give full details of its writers. https://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/retro/barry-band-the-men-who-put-blackpool-on-the-map-1-9054395, accessed 8/03/2018.

• 9. The only available evidence of this band is a few tracks on the highly obscure Simon Morris Family Series tapes (Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers 1994–96).

• 10. https://ceramichobs.livejournal.com/, accessed 04/1/2020.

• 11. The latter expressed frustration with the omnipresence of the famous afternoon quiz show host of the time.

• 12. Pumf is the long-running Blackpool label helmed by the long-term Ceramic Hob, and former member of The Membranes, Stan Batcow.

• 13. Three albums on Pumf, under different names, beginning with Judge Mental and the Heavy Dread Beat’s Talbot Road, in 1990.

• 14. This author personally visited one of those friends while the latter was living in a single room with another adult male, with only a curtain across the room for privacy.

• 15. Mad Pride: Nutters With Attitude (Mad Pride, 2001), https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/6163645.grisly-search-head-dismembered-body-found-bin/, accessed 5/01/2020.

• 16. Ian Butterworth (ex-Tunnelvision and Vee VV), and Roger Wikeley (who has played with seemingly just about every second band on the Fylde Coast since the birth of punk).

• 17. Morris’s tattoos included one with the prominent phrase ‘Time becomes space’.

• 18. ‘Event: Mad Pride Vilnius’, http://www.arma.lt/2011/04/mad-pride-vilnius-ceramic-hobs-uk.html?view=magazine, accessed 5/01/2020.

• 19. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/jury-foreman-still-haunted-by-evidence-at-duncan-trial/, accessed 5/01/2020.

• 20. https://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/news/punk-rock-genius-fes-parker-dies-1-373590, accessed 5/01/2020.

• 21. https://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/whats-on/music/bands-to-honour-tragic-80s-star-on-night-of-punk-1-6246419, accessed 5/01/2020.

• 22. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-34223714, accessed 5/01/2020.

• 23. https://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/news/people/blackpool-faces-a-perfect-storm-of-drug-abuse-and-depression-1-9725300, accessed 5/01/2020.

• 24. https://ozozalice.blogspot.com/.

• 25. ‘…police were called to reports of a possible casualty on a mud bank in the middle of the River Wyre, near the former ICI site in Thornton. Fleetwood and Knott End Coastguards and RNLI lifeboat crews were called to the scene and the body was brought to shore… Police said his death is not being treated as suspicious and a file will be passed to the coroner’ (Calderbank 2019).