Is Blackpool ready for a clubbing renaissance?
Blackpool’s youngsters want a new clubbing scene. It’s no longer so far-fetched.
Hello and welcome to The Blackpool Lead.
Very often we focus on the nitty gritty of politics in this newsletter, but today we shift our attention to Blackpool’s underground nightlife scene. We look at what it was, and what it could still be.
Our reporter Ella was at Black Lights Festival - set across a number of venues in Blackpool - at the end of June. She spoke with people in attendance from across the globe on their impressions of Blackpool - among a great number of other things.
I’ll be forthright and admit to having little knowledge on dance music - but this one was a joy for me to read and I hope it is for you too.
Blackpool briefing
🌹 Former Blackpool South MP Gordon Marsden has paid tribute to the man who became Britain’s longest-serving councillor shortly before his death.
Cllr Ivan Taylor served as a Labour councillor for a remarkable 60 years before his recent death at the age of 86.
Marsden first met the veteran councillor in 1992, when he unsuccessfully contested the Blackpool South seat, before winning it five years later.
The two Labour politicians hit it off, despite being very different characters. Marsden, who went on to hold the Blackpool South seat from 1997 to 2019, said: “I was very sad to hear about Ivan’s passing.
“He played a crucial role before and after Blackpool became a unitary authority. It was controversial at the time but he had a strong vision that it would be the best thing for Blackpool and he saw it through.
“It will go down as a key moment in Blackpool’s history, affecting things like schools, health, transport and many other aspects.
“Looking back on it, it was a very dynamic period. Now things are changing again with the local authority and we don’t know how that will work out.”
🚔 A school teacher who murdered his adopted baby during a sex attack has appeared in court.
Jamie Varley, 37, was given a whole life term last month for the murder of 13-month-old Preston Davey who suffered “unremitting abuse” at the hands of the former high school head of year.
Varley appeared at Preston Crown Court via video from HMP Wakefield. He spoke only to confirm his identity.
He appeared for a brief, two-minute hearing under the “slip rule” which allows judges to correct legal errors or rectify accidental mistakes. He had not been sentenced in error for one count of sexual assault.
Mr Justice Turner, also appearing via videolink along with other lawyers involved in the trial, sentenced Varley to seven years jail on count 12, the sexual assault of the child, to run concurrent with his other sentences.
It will have no practical effect as Varley was given a whole life term.
🗳️ Andy Burnham will be good for Blackpool because he genuinely supports areas which are fighting against deprivation, says Blackpool South MP Chris Webb.
He was responding after being asked about Labour’s leadership struggle and whether he had a conflict of opinion over support for Prime Minister-in-waiting Burnham or loyalty to outgoing leader Keir Starmer.
Webb said that although he had positive views about working with Starmer, he felt that Burnham would work out best for the country and for Blackpool.
He said: “I do believe Keir did the right thing for the party and the country and I’m looking forward to Andy becoming Prime Minister and to delivering on the vision that he set out for the country.
“I believe that vision will improve the forgotten areas like Blackpool and Markerfield (Burnham’s constituency) and we’ve had many a conversation since he’s been an MP, and will continue to do so, on how we can work together to improve Blackpool – and communities like it across the country.
“I think there’s hope again, the country’s already responded to this, we’ve seen the polls and now Labour are pretty much neck and neck with the the next party (Reform UK) and I think they will only get better as people hear more from Andy Burnham in the weeks and months ahead, as he becomes Prime Minister.”
Is Blackpool ready for a clubbing renaissance?
By Ella Glover
“People used to come in bus loads to Blackpool, just for clubbing,” says local dance music DJ D-Foc. “There’s not much of that anymore.”
He’s referencing the halcyon days of events like Fever at Sequins (previously Oz) and Zone at Jenks and The Venue. Clubbers still remember when DJ Sasha, one of the biggest DJs of the 90s, performed at the legendary Club Shaboo in the summer of 1990.
But with the closure of Syndicate – the UK’s most iconic superclub – in 2011, Blackpool’s dance music scene has struggled to get back to previous heights. Now, a new generation of local DJs, producers and promoters are hoping to kick things back off.
D-Foc recently moved back to Blackpool after living in Manchester. He has tried his hand at revitalising Blackpool’s dance music scene in the past. Before the pandemic, he was throwing a regular techno night called Resonate at The Underbar – which is now the Comedy Station Comedy Club – and was booking world-class DJs like London’s Dax J.
“The first few events sold out, but it started to drop off,” he tells the Blackpool Lead. Eventually, they moved the event to Leeds. “We outgrew Blackpool because the novelty seemed to wear off, and Leeds had bigger venues and there was already a scene there,” he says.
These days, says Daniel Uss, who used to own Club Underground on Talbot Road, another legendary electronic dance music venue that operated between 2002 and 2004, Blackpool’s clubbing scene is “terrible” – “there is no underground scene at all,” he tells the Blackpool Lead. “You’ll never find anything, no techno, you might find a little bit of drum and bass.”
While there are still some DJs here, he says, they don’t do anything in Blackpool. “The problem is, people don’t chance going out in Blackpool, where it’s going to be half empty, when you could drive only 40 minutes up the road and you’re in the heart of Manchester.”
D-Foc says that crowds in Blackpool are “fair weather” and unless you’re booking big names, it’s hard for a small clubnight to compete with a night at the pub. “Blackpool nightlife is so pub-heavy, and because there isn’t an outlet to get people into clubbing, they won’t be as club-savvy,” he says.
Both Uss and D-Foc name the lack of dedicated spaces as one of the main reasons for Blackpool’s lacking scene. Indeed, the venues D-foc used for his Resonate nights have either closed or changed hands, and the remaining venues are not completely fit for purpose for a proper scene, whether it’s due to noise complaints, location or the lack of a proper sound system.
“It’s mostly bars and pubs that are used to put on events, rather than dedicated clubs,” says Uss. “A decent club, with a proper sound system and light does twice as well. I recently brought a sound system to Bootleg Social, but all night we were getting complaints that it was too loud for the Airbnbs upstairs.”
Bootleg is one of the most promising venues in the town – as D-Foc says, it’s just out of the way enough to avoid “stragglers” and as a basement club, it’s got the right feel. But it’s still not an electronic music venue; it’s better suited for indie rock.
Last month, though, Blackpool saw a glimmer of a revival of those club-tourism days of the 2000s. The Black Lights festival, an art and music festival put on by Manchester institution The White Hotel and backed by Blackpool Council and Arts Council England was held across three days on a sweltering weekend in June. Train loads of experimental music fans, dressed in all black outfits and Nike trainers, were crawling over the prom – a stark contrast to the fancy dress of the usual summer crowd – and many said they’d come again.
It was there I met Ryan, a 20-year-old electronic music producer and Dubstep fan from Blackpool, in the makeshift smoking area outside the Winter Gardens on Saturday night. He echoes the point. “There’s no scene in Blackpool,” he says. “I think I’ve been on two nights out here ever.” He’s moving to Manchester in September to study music production at university.
But outsiders saw Blackpool in a new light – and DJs like D-Foc saw new potential in their old stomping ground.
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