I once started talking to a young guy at Capitol Soul who was an up and coming Northern DJ and I mentioned I liked rap and he looked at me as if I'd shared an enthusiasm for padeophilia.
I\m so glad I'm not really into northern soul
- Thread starter william_kent
- Start date
william_kent
Well-known member
I'd make an angry emoji face as a reaction but I want you to understand that the "up and coming Northern DJ" is who I am an angry at
william_kent
Well-known member
DISSENSUS how angry can you get over this tune?
thanks to @thirdform for the tip
Idris Muhammad - Could Heaven Ever Be Like This
thanks to @thirdform for the tip
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
it is fetishisation of the unsuccessful, and the whole mythology around why they didnt make it (idk if this still happens? people are less romantic about failure in music now maybe, more merciless), but also just about rarities. the rarer, the more special. NS was always seemed to be about collectors and rarities as much as the music, the scene, the clubs, the dances, etc. they only rejected motown cos theres no cult to be made around music that has already made it. doesnt matter that these obscure artists were also trying to be as big as the four tops or whoever, its about romanticising whatever they did accidentally that meant they didnt make it as big, the whole story about why not.
william_kent
Well-known member
I'd argue with you and @blissblogger about this due to my interaction with Twisted Wheel veterans
what happened was speed freaks in Manchester in the late 60s needed fast paced tunes to keep the buzz going but what happened was the record companies stopped making those tunes ( and that includes Motown, they went psychedelic with the temptations. etc ) so some people started dropping acid and grew their hair but some still wanted to jack up speed and dance the night away so they had to find "more of the same" but no one was making it so they had to settle for second tier shit from the past
no one was making Motown hits in 1971, least of all Motown
bassbeyondreason
Chtonic Fatigue Syndrome
This was the originating tune of the northern/modern split ("Modern Soul" meaning early 70s onwards,) extremely controversial, although I don't think anyone ever destroyed a copy.:
bassbeyondreason
Chtonic Fatigue Syndrome
Ian Levine (who went on to produce Hi-NRG, and for Take That) at Blackpool Mecca getting death threats for playing contemporary disco records, "Levine Must Go" banners in the crowd, all very daft.
william_kent
Well-known member
there was an element of homophobia related to that, a lot of the NS* guys I've met were quite narrow minded never mind their penchant for breaking into chemists and cranking up speed
* ooh, what other words can you put together with NS?
* ooh, what other words can you put together with NS?
william_kent
Well-known member
I mean I really like early 80s proto dancehall with Roots Radics as the backing band and Scientist on the mix but no one is making that any more because they are dead or senile or whatever so I have to start digging a bit deeper for "didn't quite make it tunes" so I can understand the Northern guys quandary but I'm not prepared to pay the stupid prices those guys pay
plus it pisses me off that the Northern guys think they invented "cover ups'
I'm pretty sure Coxsone ( of Studio One fame ) did that in the 1950s with "Coxsone Hop" ( which was a cover up of a Willis Jackson tune )
plus it pisses me off that the Northern guys think they invented "cover ups'
I'm pretty sure Coxsone ( of Studio One fame ) did that in the 1950s with "Coxsone Hop" ( which was a cover up of a Willis Jackson tune )
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
which, was seen as great by virtue of its 'newness', or just the fact that something in that style existed which no one knew until the moment someone found that ultra rare copy, i.e. it wasnt second tier shit anymore, it was newly discovered gold, the type of thing no one was making anymore, which just made it even more special.
blissblogger
Well-known member
yeah but I suppose my real point is that IF it had been a hit for Gloria Jones, the Northern Soulies would have dropped it like a hot potato, INSTANTLY
blissblogger
Well-known member
before it was called Northern Soul (a term made up by a record shop owner / music journalist down South) it was known as rare soul. Rare necessarily means not many copies in the world - and if there aren't many copies in the world that's because it never sold enough that there would be represses.
The rarer the better so that meant singles that had only reached the sort of promo stage, a few 100 copies sent out to radio stations and such like.
The lore of how far people would go to get rare soul is rich - there's this story of how Ian Levine, on holiday with his rich parents in Florida, took the bus every day for five hours or something like that to this out of the way warehouse full of remaindered copies of singles, a treasure trove of flops, and he spent the whole day each day of this vacation digging his way through all this crap, finding maybe 100 singles no one knew about, that then became the basis of his deejaying renown.
Yeah no one was making that kind of music by 1970 - black music had gotten slower, funkier, groovier. But there was a huge swathe of commercially successful stuff in that uptempo urban soul style from the recent past - early-mid 1960s - and Northern Soul deejays and fans zealously avoided it.
They also shunned the brisker tempo, lushly produced Philly sound, which in some ways was a Motown-redux, on the grounds that it was commercial.
It's the archetype of an obscurantist scene, right down to the thing of deejays whiting out the labels - or even putting fake labels - on the singles so that rival deejays couldn't find out the name of the artist / song. You got similar practice popping up independently in the obscure rockabilly fetish scene. It's like a sort of retro version of the dubplate - I alone have this tune, if you want to hear it you must come see me deejaying .
sufi
lala
oddly enough the same tale is recounted in this week's Private Eye, attached to none other than ... Richard Littlejohn 🤢
bassbeyondreason
Chtonic Fatigue Syndrome
"Rare Soul" also a term a lot of people (myself included tbh) use to differentiate themselves from the Northern Oldies scene. I'd contend that there's a strangeness and rawness to a lot of rare soul that you just don't get on commercial recordings at that time. I've definitely posted this a bunch of times, but this is the most expensive record I own (I paid £225, last one through eBay went over £1500) and there just aren't any major label records that hit this same vibe for me (that sort of lo-fi hauntedness, the term "basement soul" gets thrown around a bit
william_kent
Well-known member
my take on the Twisted Wheel is informed by a couple of the regulars, so "oral history" but the older guy told me him and his crew were there for speed and all night dancing, and the big tunes were ones we would all know, and he told me that by 1968 some of the regulars had grown out their hair and started wearing afghans saturated in patchouli oil to cover up the smell of untanned hide and they were dropping acid rather than breaking into chemists for "uppers", and the main DJ did the same and left so he could play moody blues records to longhairs reclining in beanbags, and the regular I knew was mystified by the revisionism of "best of twisted wheel" compilations, but it was about that time that my former boss started going there as an underage and whoever was playing there and at the Torch in Stoke started playing the "rarities" that were needed to keep what was basically a corpse of a scene on two feet... so the scene shifted and changed until there was a Wigan vs Blackpool divide which is what is now the popular conception of Northern Soul ( which as @blissblogger says was an invented record shop category ) - the guy I know who went to the original Twisted Wheel all nighters told me that they just called it "R and B", so he was really at the point where 'modernism" split ranks
when "beating rhythm", the Northern Soul specialist shop in Manchester was still operating I used to pop in every Saturday because they had reggae and psych sections that not many people knew about, so I would hear all sorts of chatter about nondescript tunes that fetched a high price tag... they had pictures on the wall of DJ Shadow and other "diggers" who'd paid too much for a seven inch
when "beating rhythm", the Northern Soul specialist shop in Manchester was still operating I used to pop in every Saturday because they had reggae and psych sections that not many people knew about, so I would hear all sorts of chatter about nondescript tunes that fetched a high price tag... they had pictures on the wall of DJ Shadow and other "diggers" who'd paid too much for a seven inch
bassbeyondreason
Chtonic Fatigue Syndrome
I think the defence of (proper) Northern Soul would be, much like garage rock, that there was such an output of incredible music in that time period (say 64-69) that there were records that were just as good as any hits, but never made it for reasons of economics or chance. Also, it's a dance scene, and in some ways can be as "track-y" as house or techno. It's about records not artists, keeping the beat is the most important thing etc. and there's that rush-activating, affective engineering sentimentality in this stuff just as much as in 92 rave.
bassbeyondreason
Chtonic Fatigue Syndrome
Anyway the soul 45 game is stitched up and picked over and that's why I mostly collect and play gospel now: