Alberto the Shadow’s Coast Town

Coast Town of Blackpool is one of the biggest live ska band and DJ events in the country. Now on its fourth outing, I caught up with its creator Colin Appleby to find out just what it was all about…

Blackpool… most of us have been there and it is Colin Appleby’s home town. I asked Colin – ‘Alberto the Shadow’ of Shadow Management and director Coast Town Events Limited – where his idea for Coast Town began.

It all started 10 years ago, he said, when he was one of the founder members of the Blackpool based band Ska-Face. They had been formed from a 2-Tone covers band after seeing The Specials in the Winter Gardens on their 30th anniversary tour.

“That’s when we became an out and out ska band,” said Colin. “We added a horn section and developed from there. Ska-Face has performed at scooter rallies and at biker rallies as well.

“We were doing this gig and there were a couple of bike gangs there. Satan’s Slaves were one – we absolutely shat ourselves. We were the support band and we were stopping over as well. Our unease wasn’t helped with our bass player doing quite a bit of ad-libbing at the time.

“He took the liberty to actually start ripping into the bikers, announcing stuff over the mike like – ‘Could the owner of a pink Honda Melody registration G-A-Y-B0-Y please remove it, as it’s blocking someone’s entrance.’ It was all light hearted and to be honest, it was a great event.

“Anyway, we’d been going for a few years and we kept on being asked to do charity events. Every musician gets asked to do charity events, the normal line is: ‘We’re putting on a charity event…’ and the expectation is that you will do it for free. There comes a point, when you are working 40, 50, 60 gigs a year, some years more some years less – and you are spending that much time away from home, from family, there comes a tipping point when you are going to put a value on your time and it’s not a question of being selfish or mercenary or rude. It’s a point of saying, yes, I support your charity, but… we get asked to do this a lot.

“You finally have to pick and choose. To illustrate the point, it got to a point where the bass player in our band had a bad heart attack, a real bad heart attack, his son saved his life. Even given that, he only

missed one gig. Bloody unbelievable.

“It was around that time when we were offered a chance to play the Winter Gardens for the first time, in the Arena, it’s a thousand capacity. It was a punt from them and it was an equal punt on our side. I said we’d do it, but we’ll change the emphasis. From that point on we will do one charity event a year, which we’ll organise.

“The rules are simple, if the security are going to get paid, (and they won’t do it for nothing) and the bar staff are getting paid (and let’s face it, they don’t earn a fortune), then the bands should get paid.”

The concept for Coast Town came from a Heart Beat fund-raiser he had held in September 2014 for the British Heart Foundation, he said, then the first Coast Town even followed in 2015. Unfortunately, it made a loss of £1500, which prompted a rethink.

“I had a sit down with my partners and we discussed whether to continue following such a heavy loss,” said Colin. “It was a case of ‘how do we work this? Do we stop it all now – or have we the nerve to try it again? But we can’t afford to lose money.’ We looked at ways we could re-package it.” The following year did better and now it’s three years in with the fourth one coming up. “People are contacting me asking, ‘When’s the next one?’ Last year we put on 10 bands over 13 hours in the arena, we sold that out, the charity to benefit from this year’s event is for the MS Society.”

But why does he do it? “I think the one thing I really enjoy is seeing other people enjoy themselves. Enjoying the ‘sound’ that they grew up with. I put on an event last month with the original Status Quo drummer, John Coghlan, he’s got his own version of Quo going on. Again, this is a different era, slightly before my time, but I’ve got guys and girls there, fifty and sixty something that grew up with that totally lost in it.

“It’s marvellous to see. It’s the same thing with ska. To see a thousand plus people in that ballroom, skanking away and just loving it, just having a good time – the bands love it as well. You can’t beat it as a musician or performer to go on a stage and see people dance. As a drummer (Colin’s other talent), if people are dancing, I’ve done my job. It’s the best feeling in the world.”

He said he had a simple system for choosing the bands and the running order for Coast Town: “Some bands have more than one gig on that evening so need to be ‘in and out’ so their time slot is limited, some of the bands can only perform after midnight, so that gives a rule, and then you look at the tempo.

“On the night, each of the bands, for the most part, has a 40 minute set. The running order has to build to a crescendo, through the differing styles. I’m excited with Coast Town. Not just because I’m a musician and manager, but because, primarily, I’m a fan. That’s how I began and I’ve been lucky enough to have worked with some astounding musicians over the years, people like Jerry Dammers, Roddy Byers, Dave Wakeling and Nev Staple. When I was 12 or 13 and first listening to these guys, there was no way I could ever begin to imagine that I’d be able to play with them, let alone call some of them a ‘friend’.

“I don’t know whether it’s a series of happy accidents – or a journey, but I’m in contact with a lot of my childhood heroes now, and not one of them has disappointed.”

Coast Town 2018, Blackpool’s fourth annual international ska extravaganza, takes place on September 15 this year at the Winter Gardens… I’ll be there, will you?