BBC 2 - Northern Soul at the Proms - Tv Broadcast Saturday Night

Is this bringing the longest underground scene, our beloved Northern soul, into the mainstream public eye ?

Watching it now, and the singers and musicians are presenting the music very well and good choice of sounds to a packed Albert Hall.

But i wished it would stay underground, under the radar, off the screens, or am i just getting too old.......

90 minutes of great TV ....   . . . good songs, good musicians, good singers.

Best thing on the box this year.

Indeed

Just enjoy the music as it was intended, not how it relects on YOU .

54 minutes ago, Paul H said:

Is this bringing the longest underground scene, our beloved Northern soul, into the mainstream public eye ?

Watching it now, and the singers and musicians are presenting the music very well and good choice of sounds to a packed Albert Hall.

But i wished it would stay underground, under the radar, off the screens, or am i just getting too old.......

In the words of Williams and Watson, it’s far ‘Too Late’. The music’s not been underground for decades so just go with the flow, discover your own obscure sounds and support venues where progressive DJ’s work hard at exposing the rarest of the rare.

It was a great show, thoroughly enjoyed it.

Sing-along-a-Northern.

Maybe you had to be there. Glad i wasn't.

I personally thought the Royal Albert Hall represented our Passion for soul music really well ,  

Everyone there looked like they had an amazing time,  the atmosphere must have been electric, 

I do love the Proms so for me it was a perfect match,  

Enjoyed the prom,  my only gripe …..no instrumentals, imagine Festival Time, Bari Track or Double Cooking played by that orchestra.

16 minutes ago, Carty said:

Didnt  work for me .

Me neither - sadly it's all becoming way too commercialized for my liking 

1 hour ago, Carty said:

Didnt  work for me .

Snap

19 hours ago, Soulof said:

We really loved it! Brilliant singers and orchestra  it sounded amazing even on our really ole TV without surround sound.  Read in the other thread some songs did not make the cut hope they release another longer one with them included as well  

I hope so too. 

It would have been nice to see the full version. Surely they could have allocated extra time for this event.

I enjoyed the program.

The singers and orchestra covered the songs well.

5 hours ago, ulyssees said:

Enjoyed the prom,  my only gripe …..no instrumentals, imagine Festival Time, Bari Track or Double Cooking played by that orchestra.

If they do revisit in future and with such an orchestra at their disposal the Instrumentals should definitely feature.

Young and stupid, maybe, but it was our passion, and nothing can take that away, we are Soulies.

I absolutely loved it, yes it was all main stream stuff, but the point is the BBC recognised our passion and put it out there, yes we are are a niche group of people but putting it out there can only be for the benefit of us, I didn't even know it was on. Until last year I lived in a small village in Oxfordshire for 5 years, nobody had even heard of Northern Soul there, I got a text this morning to say watch it on catch up from my mate Dave(75), he absolutly loved it, never too old to enjoy our passion!!!

Now living back in my home city, Southampton

On 26/08/2023 at 20:51, Paul H said:

Is this bringing the longest underground scene, our beloved Northern soul, into the mainstream public eye ?

Watching it now, and the singers and musicians are presenting the music very well and good choice of sounds to a packed Albert Hall.

But i wished it would stay underground, under the radar, off the screens, or am i just getting too old.......

That ship sailed in 1977 with the Granada "This England" programme on Wigan Casino !!

Haven't seen it and probably won't but can't get exited either way. Regarding Stuart Maconie, on a northern soul show on radio 2 a few years back, he said he loves the music but doesn't like the politics. To illustrate this he told the story of when he tried to play 'the Night' but found himself on the wrong side of a compilation so played 'Grease' on the basis they'd know it. He just likes every pop music fad deemed 'cool' by the telly since he saw the Beatles aged about three.  

The singers and the orchestra did an excellent job but I hate the way that its seems that history has been re written so that Wigan Casino is the be all and end all of Northern Soul but its' predessor The Twisted Wheel has been airbrushed out. Other clubs of the late 60's contributed to the type of soul music that became known as Northern Soul long before Wigan Casino.

I wouldn't class Hold Back The Night by the Trammps as Northern Soul as it's the type of sound that we Wheelers rebelled against in much the same way as those super smooth productions by  The Stylistics, Chi-lites, Commodores, Harold Melvin etc. 

Let battle commence...

7 hours ago, Frankie Crocker said:

Me neither. Trammps were pure disco fodder when I was in Manchester during the mid to late 70’s. Rather like the Tavares, another decent outfit with tunes that grace any wedding celebration as they are accessible to anyone who can handle  pop music. I think Maconie must have included Hold Back The Night to make the Prom a bit more populist and to cow-tow to the ultra-Woke layers of management at the BBC. Inclusion of the tune also reflects his very limited knowledge of Northern Soul.

There is far more to Tavares than their pop hits, some great 70s soul

2 minutes ago, Chalky said:

There is far, more to Tavares than their pop hits, some great 70s soul

Exactly ,albums like Hard Core Poetry and Madame Butterfly are great examples of 70’s Soul at its best .

8 minutes ago, Frankie Crocker said:

Me neither. Trammps were pure disco fodder when I was in Manchester during the mid to late 70’s. Rather like the Tavares, another decent outfit with tunes that grace any wedding celebration as they are accessible to anyone who can handle  pop music. I think Maconie must have included Hold Back The Night to make the Prom a bit more populist and to cow-tow to the ultra-Woke layers of management at the BBC. Inclusion of the tune also reflects his very limited knowledge of Northern Soul.

To be fair ,Hold Back The Night was massive at Wigan ,played by John Vincent off the new Zing album .The tune was only previously known as the instrumental Scrub Board ,from The Torch era etc 

Ha!  "Hold Back The Night" - it just so happens I finished my set Sunday evening with this. Floor rammed more so than any other northern classics and oldies. Make of that what you will.  

16 minutes ago, Frankie Crocker said:

Me neither. Trammps were pure disco fodder when I was in Manchester during the mid to late 70’s. Rather like the Tavares, another decent outfit with tunes that grace any wedding celebration as they are accessible to anyone who can handle  pop music. I think Maconie must have included Hold Back The Night to make the Prom a bit more populist and to cow-tow to the ultra-Woke layers of management at the BBC. Inclusion of the tune also reflects his very limited knowledge of Northern Soul.

Tavares With Freda Payne :I Wanna See You Soon. Cheap as chips and v.g (IMO)

1 hour ago, Eddie Hubbard said:

Exactly ,albums like Hard Core Poetry and Madame Butterfly are great examples of 70’s Soul at its best .

Indeed! We saw them last year I think it was and they were still amazing. Never had a love like this before, Wonderful, Bad times, Positive Forces, all the Sam Dees tunes, anyone who thinks Tavares are just a ‘pop group’ needs to have a word with themselves!

I thought all the singers did a fantastic show, I don't know their singing history but they all displayed great feeling and enthusiasm to all the songs. Remember, I don't think they would have ever known or heard of the songs before.  They had to get to get to know the tunes and learn all the words, I thought they did an amazing job , together with a first class orchestra. It would have been even better if there could have been a Black Male voice in the mix.

What a funny lot we are. If only Tavares had stayed as Chubby and the Turnpikes when they released Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel and it hadn't been a hit.

Chalky, come on mush, yes they cut some bits out, they do out of every programme, there were people watching who have no idea what we dance like or anything about our scene, Levanna is a young refreshing lady, i'm 60 so grew up with this music and Motown, here is a young lady that has embraced our music, from a long time before she was even a thought in her dads head and long after i'm gone, will still be doing what we do now, yes something got cut, but hey ho, Levanna and people like her will keep our scene going, she is a breathe of fresh air.

Go on You Tube and watch her Covid All Nighter, brilliant, clever, this is one smart young lady!!!

I watched it in its entirety and enjoyed it for what it was: interpretations of examples of the genre fifty years on. The vocalists and orchestra did their best to recreate the sound but inevitably fell short of the excellence the original artists provided. However, the performance wasn't intended primarily for the likes of us but for an audience of newcomers to the music, or people who have had only a fleeting experience of northern soul. By this criterion, I would imagine the event will be judged a success.

I was far more interested in the instrumentation than the singers. Accomplished technically as they were, they were never going to match the vocal impact of those classics that we heard all those years ago. I wanted far more shots of the orchestra with focus on the strings, percussion, and wind instruments when they were the main focus of sections of tracks. Indeed, I would have been happy with a playlist entirely of instrumentals. To have that orchestra, with its ability to present a wall of sound would have been such a powerful visual image to augment sounds with which most of us  have been familiar for half a century.

On 27/08/2023 at 09:30, Kenb said:

Sing-along-a-Northern.

Maybe you had to be there. Glad i wasn't.

It all seems to have become so bourgeois:

"lovely glass of wine in front of the telly", no need to go out the door and dig deep for records (just bid on ebay), dance for the Iphone in their kitchen or bang on about whats proper and whats not: when many of them left in 1981 and only came back decades later with a need to re-imagine what it actually was in order to compensate for missing decades of incredible music and a truly underground scene: kept alive and driven by a small group of truly dedicated people.

Drag them into Sheridan's (or other brilliant venue) lock the door for 3 days, play brilliant tunes they have never heard, and probably never will! They missed the true apprenticeship. They seem scared to let go and truly listen instead of re-enacting (and signalling to each other) their limited knowledge on the dance floor week in and week out: by singing all the lyrics and demonstrably dancing them (based on the TOP 500, maybe even less).

bourgeois

boo͝r-zhwä′, boo͝r′zhwä″

noun

> A person belonging to the middle class.

> A person whose attitudes and behaviour are marked by conformity to the standards and conventions of the middle class.

As usual it's my soul that reacts to this stuff. It's not, to me, anything to do with Northern Soul.

It's corporate run BBC armchair viewing figures, fronted by celebrities who barely went anyway and are now supposed to represent us via there own narcissism and limited knowledge and experience of the scene and the music.
All supported and hailed as "brilliant" by a plethora of sing-along-a Northern Soul returnees who seem to be happy that the historical re-enactment scene is being acknowledged,  because in doing so it validates their 'Northern Soulfullness'.

People will re-act (or re-enact) in different ways to what i'm saying. BUT, the scene needs some re-active energy, not just this neatly packaged, feeble, bourgeois BBC ratings driven Prom soul.

The orchestra was excellent but I expected nothing less, they are world class musicians after all.  But the drive, energy and passion was missing, soulless if you like.  The singers were very average at best, the one who did MVPs (Turning My Heartbeat Up), Dobie Gray & Landslide, he was worse than average, thought he was pretty poor.

Some of you are easily pleased.

11 hours ago, Mush said:

Chalky, come on mush, yes they cut some bits out, they do out of every programme, there were people watching who have no idea what we dance like or anything about our scene, Levanna is a young refreshing lady, i'm 60 so grew up with this music and Motown, here is a young lady that has embraced our music, from a long time before she was even a thought in her dads head and long after i'm gone, will still be doing what we do now, yes something got cut, but hey ho, Levanna and people like her will keep our scene going, she is a breathe of fresh air.

Go on You Tube and watch her Covid All Nighter, brilliant, clever, this is one smart young lady!!!

Behave what has she got to do with the proms? I have no interest in watching her look at me videos.  If you are 60 and has been around you would have seen some great dancers in the past......

14 hours ago, Mush said:

Chalky, come on mush, yes they cut some bits out, they do out of every programme, there were people watching who have no idea what we dance like or anything about our scene, Levanna is a young refreshing lady, i'm 60 so grew up with this music and Motown, here is a young lady that has embraced our music, from a long time before she was even a thought in her dads head and long after i'm gone, will still be doing what we do now, yes something got cut, but hey ho, Levanna and people like her will keep our scene going, she is a breathe of fresh air.

Go on You Tube and watch her Covid All Nighter, brilliant, clever, this is one smart young lady!!!

Below average dancer(s) (compared to what I've been lucky enough to see over the decades: I didn't stop when Wigan closed). They (a fair few of them now) are totally focussed on narcissistic self-promotion (spreading the homogenised dancing) rather than being "in the music" and discovering their soul. They spend most of their time promoting themselves to camera, rather than enjoying dancing: eyes closed without onlookers.

They are always dancing for the camera rather than the music, with inane smiles, or mouthing the words of a top 500 tune, supported by empty clutching heart gestures, or  rolling their arms towards the heavenly soul gods with an agonised look on their faces (Wigan motifs). Movements  that have been copied rather than discovered.
No groove or natural 'get down', uniqueness or cool. If thats you idea of refreshing we must have attended different venues over the decades.

The entire Instagram/Youtube soulies self-promotion of their mediocre dancing to Northern Soul is nothing to do with Northern Soul. It's to do with an innate psychological need they have to self-promote.

Of course, if you loved the Proms facade you will love the Instagram/youtube dancers (one of whom claims to be The World Champion Northern Soul Dancer because of a competition held in Blackpool with a majority UK crowd) .

The two things go together like August and Deneen....

29 minutes ago, Paul-s said:

Below average dancer(s) (compared to what I've been lucky enough to see over the decades: I didn't stop when Wigan closed). They (a fair few of them now) are totally focussed on narcissistic self-promotion (spreading the homogenised dancing) rather than being "in the music" and discovering their soul. They spend most of their time promoting themselves to camera, rather than enjoying dancing: eyes closed without onlookers.

They are always dancing for the camera rather than the music, with inane smiles, or mouthing the words of a top 500 tune, supported by empty clutching heart gestures, or  rolling their arms towards the heavenly soul gods with an agonised look on their faces (Wigan motifs). Movements  that have been copied rather than discovered.
No groove or natural 'get down', uniqueness or cool. If thats you idea of refreshing we must have attended different venues over the decades.

The entire Instagram/Youtube soulies self-promotion of their mediocre dancing to Northern Soul is nothing to do with Northern Soul. It's to do with an innate psychological need they have to self-promote.

Of course, if you loved the Proms facade you will love the Instagram/youtube dancers (one of whom claims to be The World Champion Northern Soul Dancer because of a competition held in Blackpool with a majority UK crowd) .

The two things go together like August and Deneen....

According to Clare I'm a lovely mover myself but then she would say that. 

I'm not interested in watching the videos you mention but just to stick up for Levanna I did catch her on YT being interviewed by some reggae guy where she chose a few soul and reggae tracks. She came across well and it put me on to an Italian reggae release that I wasn't aware of. If she makes a few bob from her videos good luck to her.

I agree with you that the Proms is an odd setting for Northern. Very middle class but then I didn't go to the theatre to see your play because I thought going to the theatre was a middle class pursuit and no place for Northern.

More Rosencrantz and Guildenstern than Tony & Tyrone.

4 minutes ago, Quinvy said:

Very good Rod.

My claim to fame on the dance floor is being with Dave Raistrick in a club in S.Carolina back in '81.

We'd found a copy of "I'll pay the price" at the Wax Museum. I got the dj to play it and hit the floor. The odd spin and backdrop and nonchalantly glided back to my table. 

Then these girls started to come up complementing me on my footwork. To Dave's amusement they seemed to think I was a fantastic shagger. 

Once he'd stopped sniggering he noticed that some of the guys were not that happy with the attention I was getting and he thought it best we leave.

Which we did rather hurriedly to avoid any unpleasantness. 

Absolutely loved it.  The orchestra put their hearts and soul into the music.. the singing was amazing.  The input from the people who where with Stuart gave awesome remarks.  But the best by far for me was the most energetic dancing by all the younger generations in their white t shirts waving their hands around like it was a rave.. why did we not dance like that in the 70s and 80s, they put so much effort and enjoyment in their dancing it was magnificent 

8 hours ago, Chalky said:

The orchestra was excellent but I expected nothing less, they are world class musicians after all.  But the drive, energy and passion was missing, soulless if you like.  The singers were very average at best, the one who did MVPs (Turning My Heartbeat Up), Dobie Gray & Landslide, he was worse than average, thought he was pretty poor.

Some of you are easily pleased.it 

Biggest Northern soul karaoke ever bad enough listening to it

I imagine it must have been like sitting on your sofas getting all excited by faded beer-blunted memories of a gig they attended forty years ago , by watching a cheap DVD of a lame modern 'tribute' act having a go at covering songs by a band they are too young to have ever seen live themselves. 

In other words excrutiatingly sad ... needless to say I neither listened to or watched either debacle.

3 minutes ago, Woodbutcher said:

I imagine it must have been like sitting on your sofas getting all excited by faded beer-blunted memories of a gig they attended forty years ago , by watching a cheap DVD of a lame modern 'tribute' act having a go at covering songs by a band they are too young to have ever seen live themselves. 

In other words excrutiatingly sad ... needless to say I neither listened to or watched either debacle.

If you did not watch or listened how can you form an opinion ? 

18 hours ago, Modernsoulsucks said:

According to Clare I'm a lovely mover myself but then she would say that. 

I'm not interested in watching the videos you mention but just to stick up for Levanna I did catch her on YT being interviewed by some reggae guy where she chose a few soul and reggae tracks. She came across well and it put me on to an Italian reggae release that I wasn't aware of. If she makes a few bob from her videos good luck to her.

I agree with you that the Proms is an odd setting for Northern. Very middle class but then I didn't go to the theatre to see your play because I thought going to the theatre was a middle class pursuit and no place for Northern.

More Rosencrantz and Guildenstern than Tony & Tyrone.

I guess your severe myopic view and lack of knowledge of theatre history, and its use throughout the world  amongst working class social groups, and in different settings,  as a political tool to challenge the dominance of middle class theatre is at play here Mr Sucks: Augustus Boal, Jerzy Grotowski, Joan Littlewood etc. I'm afraid, I can't help you with your dogmatic perception of theatre: based on never going.

The things i comment on here are things i have seen/heard and formed an opinion about. Whereas you seem to form an opinion with no experience of what you comment on. Its called conjecture based on bias.

Though,  you say you haven't seen the videos i mention but stick up for them? It goes exactly with your bizarre critique of a play you never saw. Some pretty deep thinking going on there. How was the wine you never tasted, perhaps you can give us your wise opinion on that? It would be as interesting and banal as this.

Having not seen it, i guess you are in no position to comment on the social demographic that made up the audience, or the political content of the play. And, having also not seen the online dancers videos I discuss you are in no position to comment on them either: (I never mentioned Levanna, did presume/project it was her?). 

So Mr SoulSucks, as you reveal in your ignorant unsubstantiated commentary (based on a rigorous concept of "non-seeing"). You didn't say a word that isn't biased and based on a total non-experience of the thing in question.
Maybe you need just a little more time to catch up and change your ways, so that you can form an informed opinion: not a dogmatic one based on an empty place. Think it over a bit more and looky looky at whats going on before commenting on it. 

I'm sure this is just a little misunderstanding but you definitely need a better script writer.

On 31/08/2023 at 07:49, Leicester Boy said:

A lot of people easily pleased in my opinion...

On the contrary, a select number of people who know their onions, actually appreciated the performance of a world-class orchestra and some unknown artists who had rehearsed to the point of perfection. Most of us into Northern Soul are unashamedly elitist, secure in the knowledge that our music trumps all other genres, so to hear it reproduced note-perfect was a real treat. It’s also worth pointing out that many of the original records have slightly flawed vocals that add to the listening experience so it’s daft to expect singers to sound like Ray Pollard or Timi Yuro et al. I like a variety of music and am extremely hard to please - The BBC Prom did a great job of entertaining those in the Albert Hall but evidently the TV programme disappointed many of those on the sofas at home. If you don’t recognise musical quality when you hear it, then sure you’ll be easily disappointed...