Garethx

Phil is right. To hear the LP take was novel and interesting, but it doesn't really improve significantly on the 45. As a record for playing out the single is fine. Great soul record which the scene should be proud of rescuing from history's dustbin. As an aside to the earlier question RCA was manufacturing styrene from 1977/78 when they may possibly have purchased somebody else's styrene plant. If you think about it all US presses of James Walsh Gypsy Band demo I've ever seen are styrene and date from early 1978 (the issue I'm not so sure about, they may exist on vinyl too).

Ion had this way back. Maybe mid, late 80s. I remember going to his flat in London to buy records and he played it to me. Blew me away but I don't think it was for sale anyway. That would have been before 1990. I'm sure Ion can confirm but that's possibly the copy which ended up with Cliff Steele.

Can anyone pin down the date for the first allnighter spins of Larry Clinton: which DJ and where?

The Barron Knights will always be cool Pete.

Herbie Mann's live version of "Comin' Home" is the cool one to have. Nice on a blue label Atlantic Jazz series 45.

Go Go was slow rather than fast. "Summer In the Parks" is a great record but is hardly typical Go Go. It was really a live form of music rather than a studio-based one. Few studio recordings captured the essence of the thing, which was extended jams with snippets of all sorts of songs, riffs and melodies over the top. Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers were a sight to behold live. Definitely one of the best live acts I ever saw. The musicianship was awe-inspiring and the way they could wind it up over a period of hours without ever being boring was breathtaking.

Dutch TV, I'm guessing. A programme like TopPop or a forerunner to it.

I don't necessarily see it that way. In the final analysis if you're looking to import something expensive there should be reasonable customs implications. If it's possible to not have to go through the rigmarole of picking something up from parcelforce or fed ex (both of which are miles from me) who are holding a package to collect duty, VAT and a handling fee, I'll accept it. The pisser would be if there is a handling fee on top of an item which you've already paid the duty on at source. They're not forcing us to pay the customs. We're all adults and can choose not to buy these items, or wait to buy them in different conditions, whether that be a cheaper price or from a different part of the world where there are no customs due.

I've noticed a few items on US ebay now where you are invited to pay the customs fees upfront, and where that isn't something you can chose to opt out of. Has anybody had direct experience with this? It would be interesting to see if such items came through and were still clobbered with the handling fee if not the duty/VAT. It's probably the handling fee part of it I object to most.

That was actually a wind up by Joel in the thread on funk at Northern venues. "Move On Up" has simply got to be one of the greatest records ever made. That's not a claim I would throw around lightly. One I've never owned because it doesn't need to be owned. It's in your heart because it's elemental. Like Carbon or Oxygen.

Elaine Constantine has asked me to post this here: "We are looking for Beany and Kath Temple who lived near Skipton (would probably be in their mid 50's now) and were regulars at The Casino and The Mecca back in the day, please can anyone give us contact details for them now? We need their help with the book. Cheers, Elaine." Any help would be appreciated. TIA gareth

Thanks for clearing this up George.

A fitting epitaph. RIP

Thanks Dave, I've read that before but it just doesn't ring true for me. For a start General American was in Cincinnati, where Kenny himself was based. The label owners may indeed have been from Chicago though. Capice?

The CD version Kenny Smith put out a few years ago is basically a new, tweaked mix of the Goldspot one. The Golspot arrangement is different in a number of ways. Organ at the start. No tack-piano throughout as per the GAR version. Heavy string section in the chorus. No acapella fade-out. Not as good to my ears, but others may disagree. Rumour is that Kenny Smith was approached to put this out specifically for the UK scene at the time the GAR was going big. I don't know if that's true or not, but I suspect the General American was the version which US record buyers were able to go into a shop and buy in the early seventies.

Issue and promo of the original GAR have the gospel fade out. The pressing does not. For me the fade out makes the record in that it sounds incomplete without it. When it's played out the gospel ending is really powerful even if people can't dance to it. The Goldspot is a strange one. I have my doubts about when this would have first appeared and wonder if it was ever available to record buyers in Ohio. The GAR issue looks very nice and you should get £150 for it all day long.

There's no simple answer to that except to say the djs hoped there would be plenty of new material in each spot. This obviously gets harder and harder to do the more you dj and was maybe why some of the more established djs came to concentrate on new releases, i.e. brand new modern soul records, many on major labels and available at normal import shops (as opposed to just at Soul Bowl for example). One of the 60s Mafia ideas was to react against that, as they saw becoming a new release scene as being open to record company influence. An important point I think, whether you agreed with that position or not.

It's been said to me that the quantity of new (i.e. previously unknown) sounds which came onto the Northern scene between 1972-74 was roughly equivalent to ten years worth of new discoveries during any other era either side of that period. Because the scene was relatively new then a huge raft of what we think of now as 'classics' came on stream during the Cats, Torch, Mecca, early Wigan era. One of the credos of the Stafford thing was to speed up the turnover of new sounds again, in theory to make it as exciting from a record discovery point of view as that 72-74 'golden age'. Whether the quality was always there is open to a lot of debate. It was a heated debate at the time and it's still seemingly pretty heated now. Great records were found then, and some not so great ones. Things settle down over time and the true classics of any era will have a longer shelf life subsequently. It's wrong to dismiss Stafford as finding nothing of lasting value as that's simply not the case, and to say that misses the point anyway I think. Guy, Keb and the other djs played new sounds at a rapid turnover. Great records were as likely to be dropped as the not-so-great ones. This also happened at any other venue in the past.

Red labels and pink labels are notoriously difficult to scan (as opposed to photograph) and get consistent colour representation. Perhaps anyone on here in printing can explain why.

Why are you making this personal? It's not important to me (or anyone else presumably) whether you agree with me or not. I was the first person to mention Georgie Fame in this topic and nowhere did I make a point about him not being a soul artist or not having soul. My earlier posts weren't a direct answer to anything you posted. When you chose to quote my post calling it twaddle I responded. It's not being disrespectful. It's having an opinion. To suggest I know nothing about the early Motown tours of the British Isles is incorrect.

Who would have booked Georgie Fame on that tour? British promoters worried about ticket sales, that's who. Do you seriously think Smokey Robinson or David Ruffin or whoever booked him to "pay homage and tribute"? If you don't get the point about Karen Carpenter I'm afraid I can't spell it out any clearer for you.

Interesting topic, but does this just not show that the OVO debate can now sometimes be taken to ridiculous extremes? Would you rather have a defective record which doesn't play properly or the legitimate replacement pressed by the label at the time? The subsequent manufacture of 60s discs was possibly far more common than you'd think at first glance. Last week my brother came round to look at records and only when we closely looked at two copies of Jerry Ganey "Just A Fool" on Verve did we realise that each copy had a different master number (one used copy L85 and the other mint and L85=2). Is the mint 'later' press now worthless? I'd argue not, but judging by some of the posts above some clearly think that's not the case. But back on topic: can anyone pin down Gwen Owens to a particular first spin at a 'nighter? The Who and Where would be very interesting to me.

Ion's post above tells it exactly like it was. The only thing I would add is that I think that a few UK dealers had Belgian contacts. Some of the records the Popcorn scene had been looking for which had never been thought of as 'Northern' could now come under the microscope as possible nighter plays. The Trends "Not Too Old To Cry" is an example of this, although it was the other side which had been the preferred play on the Belgian scene.

Thanks for bumping this Bob as I have a bit of an update. I got through to Sharon Soul's son via youtube. He eventually answered: "Did I ever respond to this message. Yes I am the son of Nate and Sharon. Good to meet you. There is no connection to Susan Phillips - atleast they are not the same person...but my mom may have known her..."

Are we talking about the yellow issue of Mislead vocal/int.? I wouldn't have thought it that rare. I've had it in the past very cheaply and gave one as a present to a girlfriend (cheapskate that I am). I've mentioned on here before that I think the Instrumental is actually the better record, despite the Cookie Scott vocal being pretty good in its own right.