Soul Survivors
Wigan is Famous for Uncle Joe"s Mint Balls, a pier, and a casino-a casino without so much as a one-armed bandit. A dive of a place, where a different letter fell off the sign every week, Wigan Casino was hardly Las Vegas. But it did boast the hardest-working dancefloor in showbusiness, and in 1978 American music magazine Billboard voted it the best New York"s Studio 54 into second place. Down Station Road, between Woolworths and the ABC, the Casino became the home of northern soul. The building was demolished in 1981 to make way for a car park, but the beat lived on.
Every month, the parquet at London"s 100 Club is still dusted with cheap talcum powder to make spins and turns easier for the dancers. Trickster, a young man who learnt his moves from black-and-white television documentaries, is soaping up his shoes for the 2am start. "It helps with the moves. When you twist yourself up in the air- one hand on the ground and legs up in the air like a helicopter- that"S called an Arabian. And Crazy Legs look like a breakdance move, but it comes from northern soul." In northern soul, the music is all. You don"t come to an all-nighter to pull. You come to dance. And the place is so busy you need hand- signals to navigate the floor.
With his high kicks,splits and Russian rolls, Keb Darge is sweating heavily. By 3.30 am he changes into his second shirt of the night. Darge is one of the best dancers on the northern soul scene- and he"s used to making the floor his own. "It started at school, when one guy knocked the shit out of me with his fancy side kicks and punches" says Darge. "So I learnt tae kwon do. At the tae kwon do club Christmas party a few boys came in and handed the DJ a wee handful of seven-inch northern soul singles. They started dancing, and i was like "Jesus-dance like that and i"m bound to get a shag". And because i was learning tae kwon do, I could do the splits dead easily."
Northern ( as it"s now known) began in the late 1960s, when the rawness of black American soul music was giving way to a more polished,commercial sound. Some DJs felt the new records were too "produced" for the dancefloor, so they would disppear on record-buying trips to the us, insearch of obscure old releases on labels like Okeh, Cameo Parkway, Ric Tic and Revilot. At clubs such as The Twisted Wheel in Manchester, The Torch in Stoke-on-Trent and the Casino in Wigan, the classic sounds from Motown, Stax and Atlantic were gradually replaced by the DJs new discoveries-christened northern soul- which became classics in their own right.
Today"s northern scene isn"t restricted to the M6 corridor. It may be small-scale, but it"s countrywide, from the Farnborough Recreation Center (Banqueting Suite) to the Lancashire Homing Pigeon Society in Bolton.Thanks to a bout of sampling ( including Rockerfeller Skank by Fatboy Slim, which borrowed heavily from the Just Brothers" Sliced Tomatoes) and testimonials from singers such as Mick Hucknall, Mark Almond and Edwyn Collins, a new generation is discovering northern music. At the 100 Club, the country"s longest-running all-nighter, old boys in peacock suits mix wiyh mods who still aren"t old enought to buy their first scooter. Here, the music all that matters..
To look at the photographs- the 30" flares, the dayglo socks and the hairspray - it"s easy to forget quite how culturally significant northern was. Before northern, thesight of a man dancing alone would draw stares. A club was just somewhere you got chicken in a basket. Northern was more than an alternative to Gray Glitter - it was rebellion. "When I first got into northern" says Keb "it was the only escapist scene. Ther was no disco, no punk, nothing . So the slightly off-their-head folk got into it. Now those people get into everything. All the good punters we would have had in the 70s are spread over all sorts of different scenes- house, garage, hip-hop whatever."
Northern was the ultimate underground scene. A knowledge of music set its devotees apart. It prized its obscurity above all else, and DJs competed to search out the rarest American deletions and white label acetates. They gloried in the rare, and celebrated the eclectic, and weren"t too proud to play the theme from Joe 90 or Hawaii Five O-as long as it filled the dancefloor. DJs managed to sidestep record company hype - most of the labels they were playing had already gone bust - and they didn"t work to any playlist. All they were interested in was finding the next "stomper" - a Wigan term of approval - in a junk shop or car-boot sale.
"The skill of a good northern DJ" says Keb "was to dig through warehouses and pick out records nobody knew -records that were good. But it was never easy. In the past I"ve spent 10 days listening to some idiot yapping on about Jesus, looking through cardboard boxes with cockroaches flying out of them. I went to this warehouse in Miami. An old lady comes out with a gun pointed at me - "Steal any of these records and I"ll blow your balls off". I was there , in the middle of summer, under a corrugated iron roof with no air conditioning for eight days. All that, and i only came back with two records."
Ady Croasdell is one of tonight"s DJs - and the man behind the 100 Club all-nighter. He lifts a record out of his box. "This little 8" acetate is the prize of my collection - a publisher"s demo. It"s called Gettin" To Me, a Lieber-Stoller song recorded by Ben E King. He cut three tracks at one session, but this never came out. It"s certainly the best up-tempo dancer he ever made, I"ve been to America 20 times, but i found this -the best discovery of my life -about 200 yards from the 100 Club. Sod"s law I suppose." Tonight Croasdell is unveiling ( in northern circles it"s known as "breaking") a new record. Not a new release. Just a new discovery. But northern is funny like that..
Gathered at the extremes of the parquet -clicking their fingers - are the record traders. "It is a bit trainspottery" says Dave Rimmer, who also edits the fanzine Soulful Kinda Music. "But I don"t care. i just love records. I like knowing the producers, the writers, the arrangers, and the labels. I"m not a dancer these days -I"m too old and fat - so i spend my time dealing." Collectors are distinguished by the size of their record boxes. "Harry Happy Feet in Aberdeen went everywhere with his box" says Keb. "I grabbed it off him one day. the first two records were northern bootlegs, but behind them was mum"s Dean Martin collection. Shame really. He never got over it."
Another DJ working the 100 Club This evening has a box of records -everything from rhythm and blues to deep soul and midtempo - worth more than £60,000. He wants to remain nameless for insurance purposes. Northern can be an expensive business. An original copy of Do I Love You (Indeed I do ) by Frank Wilson, the last song ever played at Wigan Casino, will cost you more than £15,000. If you can find one. Reissues from labels such as Goldsoul and Kent means that collectors can now gather the rarer grooves on CD for a fraction of the vinyl price - but no self- respecting northern DJ would ever play CDs..
At 4am a lot of the walk-ins leave. First is Kim-a mod from France. And Chinami from Japan, who was turned on to the music after seeing Paul Smith"s collection inspired by northern soul. They"re a bit tired - and, besides, the bar"s shut. Only the hard-core stay on -the coach parties from Stoke and Derby - for the serious partying. Keb leads the way. "At Wigan, the big dancers used to go to the front right- hand side of the stage. After three years I worked my way right up there. I was The Boy . There were a few big dancers in the 70s, but they"ve all let themselves get out of shape now. But we still try our best."
Tradition dictates that, in an effort to stay up all night, dancers pop pills - everything from blueys to dexys. Wigan was fuelled by beer and amphetamines. "Back then, everybody"s mother was on slimming pills" says Croasdell. " And they were pure speed. three or four of those and you"d be off your head."Keb looks a little nostalgic. "Nowadays the drugs just are"t as good as they used to be" says Keb. "you used to be albe to pop into a chemist and get your bombers, and that was good government - approved stuff. You"d be off your hrad, but i was healthy. Now they"re buying all this home - made stuff and it"s not got the woomph."
Sean has been into northern since 1976 - Bisley in Aldershot, it was- but he can still shake a tail-feather. He"s a skinhead, and he looks immaculate. "Mods? Skinheads? It"s all the same line. I don"t like to look like a tink, but there"s no uniform. I always keep sideburns-mark of a man, are"t they? Hirsutenes? I like it. Ever since George Best . And I"ve got some big ear holes. Have to cover them up somehow. I enjoy te 100 Club, but to my mind, there are a lot of tossers here tonight. All because northern"s become popular again. It should be select and elite. Do things for the right reasons, that"s what i say. Do it because you love the music."
Northern jealously guards its underground status. When Wigan"s Ovation - apop group created to capitalise on the northern scene-appeared on Top Of The Pops in high-waister trousers, all self-respecting northern fans cringed. Along with Footse, by Wigan"s Chosen Few, it marked the beginning of the end. Footsee was the b-side of an obscue Canadian surf record, remixed for Wigan by Casino DJs. The BBC wanted the Canadian act to appear on Top Of The Pops- but nobody was sure how to find them. Pans People didn"t know how to dance northern, so a few 18-years-olds from the Casino showed them how..
"After the whole thing had been on the telly" says Keb, "the Casino filled out with sight-seeing knobheads and their talcum powder. Talcum arrived with the media boom. All these idiot thought they would look like good dancers. They were saying "What do we wear?" We only used to wear baggy trousers so you could dance without your balls sticking t your pants. But people started manfacturing ridiculous baggies and selling them off as northern soul fashion. And all that rubbish about covering your vest inbadges of the clubs you had visited. The first time i saw peg trousers, plastic sandals and Hawaiian shirts was at Wigan. The Casino was always very trend-setting."
Condensation is starting to drip onto the parquet. One dancer slows down so a beginner can follow his steps, while a young couple get better acquainted to I Really Love You by Tamangoes. It"s a definite faux pas - in northern, men and women dance separately. Th only place to escape the beating rhythm is he gents. One man is shaving. Another is pulling on a dry flared-collar t-shirt, ready fo one last dance. As it starts to get light, the faithful few spill out onto Oxford Street and think about heading home. It"s like a secret society that wkes up when normal people are going to bed. And only thinks of sleep when the records are all played out. Keeping the faith is an exhausting business......
Keep The Faith Soulies........
As By Richard Johnson
Audio Player ::- P.P Arnold / Everything`s Gonna Be Alright
Every month, the parquet at London"s 100 Club is still dusted with cheap talcum powder to make spins and turns easier for the dancers. Trickster, a young man who learnt his moves from black-and-white television documentaries, is soaping up his shoes for the 2am start. "It helps with the moves. When you twist yourself up in the air- one hand on the ground and legs up in the air like a helicopter- that"S called an Arabian. And Crazy Legs look like a breakdance move, but it comes from northern soul." In northern soul, the music is all. You don"t come to an all-nighter to pull. You come to dance. And the place is so busy you need hand- signals to navigate the floor.
With his high kicks,splits and Russian rolls, Keb Darge is sweating heavily. By 3.30 am he changes into his second shirt of the night. Darge is one of the best dancers on the northern soul scene- and he"s used to making the floor his own. "It started at school, when one guy knocked the shit out of me with his fancy side kicks and punches" says Darge. "So I learnt tae kwon do. At the tae kwon do club Christmas party a few boys came in and handed the DJ a wee handful of seven-inch northern soul singles. They started dancing, and i was like "Jesus-dance like that and i"m bound to get a shag". And because i was learning tae kwon do, I could do the splits dead easily."
Northern ( as it"s now known) began in the late 1960s, when the rawness of black American soul music was giving way to a more polished,commercial sound. Some DJs felt the new records were too "produced" for the dancefloor, so they would disppear on record-buying trips to the us, insearch of obscure old releases on labels like Okeh, Cameo Parkway, Ric Tic and Revilot. At clubs such as The Twisted Wheel in Manchester, The Torch in Stoke-on-Trent and the Casino in Wigan, the classic sounds from Motown, Stax and Atlantic were gradually replaced by the DJs new discoveries-christened northern soul- which became classics in their own right.
Today"s northern scene isn"t restricted to the M6 corridor. It may be small-scale, but it"s countrywide, from the Farnborough Recreation Center (Banqueting Suite) to the Lancashire Homing Pigeon Society in Bolton.Thanks to a bout of sampling ( including Rockerfeller Skank by Fatboy Slim, which borrowed heavily from the Just Brothers" Sliced Tomatoes) and testimonials from singers such as Mick Hucknall, Mark Almond and Edwyn Collins, a new generation is discovering northern music. At the 100 Club, the country"s longest-running all-nighter, old boys in peacock suits mix wiyh mods who still aren"t old enought to buy their first scooter. Here, the music all that matters..
To look at the photographs- the 30" flares, the dayglo socks and the hairspray - it"s easy to forget quite how culturally significant northern was. Before northern, thesight of a man dancing alone would draw stares. A club was just somewhere you got chicken in a basket. Northern was more than an alternative to Gray Glitter - it was rebellion. "When I first got into northern" says Keb "it was the only escapist scene. Ther was no disco, no punk, nothing . So the slightly off-their-head folk got into it. Now those people get into everything. All the good punters we would have had in the 70s are spread over all sorts of different scenes- house, garage, hip-hop whatever."
Northern was the ultimate underground scene. A knowledge of music set its devotees apart. It prized its obscurity above all else, and DJs competed to search out the rarest American deletions and white label acetates. They gloried in the rare, and celebrated the eclectic, and weren"t too proud to play the theme from Joe 90 or Hawaii Five O-as long as it filled the dancefloor. DJs managed to sidestep record company hype - most of the labels they were playing had already gone bust - and they didn"t work to any playlist. All they were interested in was finding the next "stomper" - a Wigan term of approval - in a junk shop or car-boot sale.
"The skill of a good northern DJ" says Keb "was to dig through warehouses and pick out records nobody knew -records that were good. But it was never easy. In the past I"ve spent 10 days listening to some idiot yapping on about Jesus, looking through cardboard boxes with cockroaches flying out of them. I went to this warehouse in Miami. An old lady comes out with a gun pointed at me - "Steal any of these records and I"ll blow your balls off". I was there , in the middle of summer, under a corrugated iron roof with no air conditioning for eight days. All that, and i only came back with two records."
Ady Croasdell is one of tonight"s DJs - and the man behind the 100 Club all-nighter. He lifts a record out of his box. "This little 8" acetate is the prize of my collection - a publisher"s demo. It"s called Gettin" To Me, a Lieber-Stoller song recorded by Ben E King. He cut three tracks at one session, but this never came out. It"s certainly the best up-tempo dancer he ever made, I"ve been to America 20 times, but i found this -the best discovery of my life -about 200 yards from the 100 Club. Sod"s law I suppose." Tonight Croasdell is unveiling ( in northern circles it"s known as "breaking") a new record. Not a new release. Just a new discovery. But northern is funny like that..
Gathered at the extremes of the parquet -clicking their fingers - are the record traders. "It is a bit trainspottery" says Dave Rimmer, who also edits the fanzine Soulful Kinda Music. "But I don"t care. i just love records. I like knowing the producers, the writers, the arrangers, and the labels. I"m not a dancer these days -I"m too old and fat - so i spend my time dealing." Collectors are distinguished by the size of their record boxes. "Harry Happy Feet in Aberdeen went everywhere with his box" says Keb. "I grabbed it off him one day. the first two records were northern bootlegs, but behind them was mum"s Dean Martin collection. Shame really. He never got over it."
Another DJ working the 100 Club This evening has a box of records -everything from rhythm and blues to deep soul and midtempo - worth more than £60,000. He wants to remain nameless for insurance purposes. Northern can be an expensive business. An original copy of Do I Love You (Indeed I do ) by Frank Wilson, the last song ever played at Wigan Casino, will cost you more than £15,000. If you can find one. Reissues from labels such as Goldsoul and Kent means that collectors can now gather the rarer grooves on CD for a fraction of the vinyl price - but no self- respecting northern DJ would ever play CDs..
At 4am a lot of the walk-ins leave. First is Kim-a mod from France. And Chinami from Japan, who was turned on to the music after seeing Paul Smith"s collection inspired by northern soul. They"re a bit tired - and, besides, the bar"s shut. Only the hard-core stay on -the coach parties from Stoke and Derby - for the serious partying. Keb leads the way. "At Wigan, the big dancers used to go to the front right- hand side of the stage. After three years I worked my way right up there. I was The Boy . There were a few big dancers in the 70s, but they"ve all let themselves get out of shape now. But we still try our best."
Tradition dictates that, in an effort to stay up all night, dancers pop pills - everything from blueys to dexys. Wigan was fuelled by beer and amphetamines. "Back then, everybody"s mother was on slimming pills" says Croasdell. " And they were pure speed. three or four of those and you"d be off your head."Keb looks a little nostalgic. "Nowadays the drugs just are"t as good as they used to be" says Keb. "you used to be albe to pop into a chemist and get your bombers, and that was good government - approved stuff. You"d be off your hrad, but i was healthy. Now they"re buying all this home - made stuff and it"s not got the woomph."
Sean has been into northern since 1976 - Bisley in Aldershot, it was- but he can still shake a tail-feather. He"s a skinhead, and he looks immaculate. "Mods? Skinheads? It"s all the same line. I don"t like to look like a tink, but there"s no uniform. I always keep sideburns-mark of a man, are"t they? Hirsutenes? I like it. Ever since George Best . And I"ve got some big ear holes. Have to cover them up somehow. I enjoy te 100 Club, but to my mind, there are a lot of tossers here tonight. All because northern"s become popular again. It should be select and elite. Do things for the right reasons, that"s what i say. Do it because you love the music."
Northern jealously guards its underground status. When Wigan"s Ovation - apop group created to capitalise on the northern scene-appeared on Top Of The Pops in high-waister trousers, all self-respecting northern fans cringed. Along with Footse, by Wigan"s Chosen Few, it marked the beginning of the end. Footsee was the b-side of an obscue Canadian surf record, remixed for Wigan by Casino DJs. The BBC wanted the Canadian act to appear on Top Of The Pops- but nobody was sure how to find them. Pans People didn"t know how to dance northern, so a few 18-years-olds from the Casino showed them how..
"After the whole thing had been on the telly" says Keb, "the Casino filled out with sight-seeing knobheads and their talcum powder. Talcum arrived with the media boom. All these idiot thought they would look like good dancers. They were saying "What do we wear?" We only used to wear baggy trousers so you could dance without your balls sticking t your pants. But people started manfacturing ridiculous baggies and selling them off as northern soul fashion. And all that rubbish about covering your vest inbadges of the clubs you had visited. The first time i saw peg trousers, plastic sandals and Hawaiian shirts was at Wigan. The Casino was always very trend-setting."
Condensation is starting to drip onto the parquet. One dancer slows down so a beginner can follow his steps, while a young couple get better acquainted to I Really Love You by Tamangoes. It"s a definite faux pas - in northern, men and women dance separately. Th only place to escape the beating rhythm is he gents. One man is shaving. Another is pulling on a dry flared-collar t-shirt, ready fo one last dance. As it starts to get light, the faithful few spill out onto Oxford Street and think about heading home. It"s like a secret society that wkes up when normal people are going to bed. And only thinks of sleep when the records are all played out. Keeping the faith is an exhausting business......
Keep The Faith Soulies........
As By Richard Johnson
Audio Player ::- P.P Arnold / Everything`s Gonna Be Alright