Many a Ceramic Hobs record was released on a completly disinterested world by Pumf Records.Mainly because pStan of said group, ran it.
A label not renowned for their classy artwork, Pumf, from Blackpool, have been around since the mid eighties, and continue to churn out reams of aurally unpleasant sonic terrorism in this very awful modern arena that we are captives within.
This compilation from the most terrible year on record.....88....also,incidently the number of keys on a piano, including both ebony and ivory.....ebony and ecstasy more like. What a shit drug for music or what?
There are no idiot dancing anthems on this compilation,thankfully,as Pumf remained an oasis of sanity throughout that very shit epoch.
To recommend this tape further, it has Yximaloo on it,and I dunno if the 'Ball' listed here is Kramer's Band of the same name from the same era? Apart from that its full of hopelessly obscure nutters and weirdos from North West England......and there are a lot of 'em up there!
Tracklist:
1. Cyclic Amp - "Kill"
2. Troll - "An Apple and some Crumpets"
3. Yximalloo - "When The moon Is Full"
4. Howl In The Typewriter - "Water yr Plants"
5. Henry - "Howards Cookery Book"
6. Ball - "Poking In The Jungle"
7. Culture Shock - "Pressure"
8. Dandelion Adventure - "Preacher"
9. Def-A-Kators - "War's a Bore"
10.Xipe Totek - "Untitled"
11.Tracey Metroplis - "Grapevine"
12.Barbara Dwyer - "Dinners on the Table"
13.Ball - "3D Sound"
14.Yximalloo - "Sway Of the Spirit"
15.Howl In The RTypewriter - "Touch"
16.Cyclic Amp - "Him"
17.Henry - "lets Sack City Hall"
18.Dandelion ASdventure - "1997"
19.Troll - "Sun Dial"
20.Culture shock - "Don't Worry About It"
21.Tracey Metroplois - "Its Not Unusual"
22.Yximalloo - "Ring Of Horror"
23.Ball - "Lucy in Disguise With Diamonds"
24.Xipe Totek - "untitled"
25.Barbara Dwyer -"Hey Lawman what gives"
26.Def-A-Kators - "I'm Only Happy When I'm Killing My Grandma"
DOWNLOAD someting weird and wonderful HERE!
Classic UK DIY madness from Blackpools 'Ceramic Hobs'.One of the few,if not the only,original perps of cassette based affronts to musicianship and common decency that are still doing it today!
A C-60 jam-packed with no-fi third generation cassette-to-cassette overdubbed psychopathy like it was recorded off a cheap television in a lounge room full of soft furnishings.
Anything that has a song about my favourite British seventies sit-com, 'On The Buses', has to be good?
These silly boys NEVER sold out.......and nor should you!
Tracklist:
A1 What Can You Do ? (Excerpt)
A2 This Is Egg !
A3 Meat Is Tebbit
A4 Big Frog
A5 Exceedingly Good Weasels
A6 On The Buses
A7 Pineapple Protest
A8 Futile, Ron
A9 Cupcakes
A10 Antisocial Insecurity
A11 The Truth About Carrots
A12 Bob Holness Must Die
A13 Toast From The Piggy-Bank
A14 Louie Louie Bleriot
A15 Apricot Quilt
A16 Tortured By Sparklers
A17 Kiss Me, Hardy
A18 Toffee Apple Death
B1 Happy Hour
B2 Occasional Drizzle
B3 The Bucket Filled Twice
B4 Sperm From The Ayatollah
B5 Knockout Honeycomb Pituitary Gland
B6 The Yew Survives From The Ancient Woodland
So who was/is the 'best band from Blackpool'?........Tempted to say Section 25, but they went disco......therefore it's obviously 'The Ceramic Hobs' innit?
They are a kind of alternative Danny and the Dressmakers,but unlike the dressmakers, they didn't sell out and make 'proper' music. They have been going since the early 80's,still releasing genre liquidising nailed together nonsense to this very day.
This one's only 20 years old,so its vintage mid-period Hobs,rather than classic cassette-era Hobs from the eigthies....but its as if technology never happened,and each member seemed to have the very special talent of being incapable of improving as musicians.....all in the traditional sense of course.
Tracklist:
1 Vigil
2 Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
3 Atomic Clock
4 Amplified Sorrow
5 Meeting The Summertime
6 Hospital Detective
7 Thsi Sore And Broken Blackpool Legacy (Germ Mix)
8 These Dead Things
9 Pirate Night For Karen Morgan
10 Hey Lads Hey
11 Dick Whittington, Turn Back (Expose Your Eyes Mix)
12 Mr Vicar
13 Say Goodbye To The President
14 Robin Blood
15 Crash And Burn
16 Irreversible Liver Failure
17 Used Goods/Damaged Goods
18 Winterbottom Speaks
19 Love Letters Read Like Suicide Notes
20 Long Black Limousine
21 Tomorrow
22 Total Disarmament By June 1st 1983
23 Castrol GTX
24 Mr Vicar Fills His Head With Rock
25 Take Fewer Puffs
26 Parrot Night For Caprtain Morgan
27 Psychiatric Underground
28 Low Alcowipe
Blimey, there was a second 'Blackpool Rox EP"????....the space of three years between the two EPs illustrates the difference between the class of 1980 and !983....as in nearly everything in 1980 was brilliant, and nearly everything in 1983 wasn't very good at all.
Four bog standard post-punk tunes from four also-rans in the stakes to be the fifth best band in Blackpool.
Tracklist:
A1 –Fifth Column - Laugh While You Can
A2 –Crack House - Jesus Loves You
B1 –Sign Language - The Killing
B2 –Love 30 - Touchdown
George Formby once sang,suggestively, about his 'little stick of Blackpool Rock'...then...nothing, until John Robb sorted out this EP of Bands from Blackpool.
Naturally featuring The Membranes, with their best ever tune in all its DIY glory, and the most famous doomy dance band from Lancashires premier seaside resort, Section 25....being suitably 'Doomy'.
The other two groups are yer standard New Wave power pop combos of which there were several in any UK town ,village or linear settlement that you'd care to mention.
My UK Seaside resort of choice was always Skegness, mainly due to its geographical location to Leicester(my birthplace,if you didn't know,or care?).....i'm not sure if there was ever a compilation of local Post-punkers from Skeggie,but there should have been.They did have a disco called 'Spangles' after all?
Its catchphrase was,amusingly, "It's Bracing", due to the high winds that whipped up a sandstorm every summer on the beach. I say 'Beach', but it was more like a sewage farm.At low tide me and me sister had to negotiate the untreated sewage and fully intact human turds (not the holiday makers, actual Turds!), to get to paddle in the rancid brown waters of 'The Wash'/North Sea.
A rather 'gay' looking plump fisherman called 'the Jolly Fisherman' was the local mascot to pull in the working class punters from the East Midlands of England and fleece them of their hard earned L.S.D...pounds, shillings and pence to those of you decimalised types....absolutely NOT Lysergic Acid.No drugs in Skeg in those days....or should I say no Skag in Skeg?
Believe it or not, I enjoyed it all immensely(Noooo,not the Drugs, the amusement arcades and stuff!)!?.....we're such a bunch of spoiled brats these days!
I saw all the legends at the Pier Theatre; Tommy Cooper, Ray Allen and Lord Charles, Ken Dodd,Norman Collier, and Norman Wisdom,to whom my mum dragged me to get the autograph of after the show....sucessfully I may add.The only other act I ever got the signature of were Napalm Death!? Also, the Skegness Pier Theatre was the place where i saw my first Pop Group....yep..it was Gerry and the Pacemakers!? This magical place was sadly swept away into the sea by a severe gale in 1978; along with the traditional British summer holiday.
Blackpool seemed like Las Vegas to me and my family.....those bloody bourgeois Northerners didn't know how lucky,or otherwise, they were.No wonder they all moved to London.
Tracklist:
A1 –The Membranes - Ice Age
A2 –Section 25 - Red Voice
B1 –The Kenneth Turner Set - Overload
B2 –Syntax - Dot Dot
