Garethx

Further to being black marketeers, we're akin to drug dealers: knowing full well that the people we're pushing to can't go without their fix, no matter how in debt / in the doghouse with their partners etc. the buying of another overpriced record will make them. I suppose we could look at it like a public service, it keeps 'em off the streets. "Get that monkey off my back."

We should not forget that the "book price" has to factor in VAT and dealer overheads: staff, premises, web-hosting, business rates, tax and National Insurance contributions and so on. Few of us selling items 'privately' on here or other forums and auction sites have to take these matters into account. Asking for the full book price is a bit cheeky in this light, but at the end of the day finite commodities will always sell for what any particular purchaser deems acceptable at any given time: rather than one true market there are myriad micro-markets.

Yes. I meant to put driven away in quotation marks because I don't think it was the sole reason why people left the scene at that particular time. Barry's question is quite difficult to answer. I tried to reflect that in my reply. The scene's history is convoluted and complex, just like the history of soul music itself. Modern Soul circa 1974-78 played an essential part in the Northern Soul scene flourishing and maturing, I don't think there's any doubt about that. The Modern Soul of 79-85 was probably the last time contemporary music played an important and integral part of the mainstream Northern scene. Once Searling decamped to pastures new I don't think there was ever again a situation where the Norhern Soul scene had dj figureheads who could build sets at big events entirely based around contemporary music. Since the 1990s that contemporary soul music has changed in character to such an extent that I truly don't think it can have an important part to play in the Northern scene as we know it. That doesn't mean there's not good or indeed great music around, just that it and the Northern scene are at best cousins: they share a root and many on here have friends in both camps. 1970s and indeed 80s rarities still have an important part to play in the Northern Soul scene, but can these truly be termed "Modern Soul" when a record can be up to 38 years of age and still qualify for the epithet. The part played by Modern Soul on the Northern scene is a difficult thing to pin down when the definition of modern can be so broad. In Barry's original question I took it to mean contemporary soul: i.e. new releases. The new releases of the past eras sat very easily in the Northern Soul concept at several times in the past, and made a very valuable contribution to the scene. Today's contemporary releases (with the exception of self-consciously retro releases such as KIngs Go Forth) are too different in character from what has gone before to ever play that big and important a role again. At Soul Essence in Great Yarmouth I've seen the proportion of new releases becoming acclaimed weekender staples dwindle over the past few years to the extent that if one makes the grade these days it's exceptional. The scene should always make room for exceptional records: that's only right and fitting; but the idea of shoe-horning contemporary releases into the Northern allnighter format just because this worked twenty years ago is problematic for me.

I respect your point of view Tony, like I said I have a great deal of respect for the likes of Colin Curtis who can see a trail which leads from The Wheel, through The Torch, Mecca, Stafford etc., right up to the present and his playlists of new releases. But regarding your point about getting young people interested in (for want of a better term) the Rare Soul scene: I just don't see that happening and I don't see a reason why it should happen through playing brand new music. The aspects of the scene which will appeal to these new converts will be precisely those which make it a different experience from mainstream clubbing. I don't agree with Trouble on everything, but this is a point he seems to understand very well from a promoters' point of view. For want of sounding like a twat there's a lot about the Northern scene which is still attractive to outsiders. It's esoteric, outsider music. At its best it's really exciting and memorable in a way which a lot of nu soul simply isn't. If a hypothetical twenty-something deejay playing exclusively soulful house were put on at Stoke Kings Hall or Lifeline would that lead to the venue being over-run by teenagers who make a conscious decision to listen to those records in a dusty northern ballroom rather than the environment in which they currently listen to them? That's if teenagers even listen to this type of record: I get the feeling that the natural audience for that kind of music are largely in their thirties and above. The young people you see at venues up and down this country largely seem to me to be mod-influenced in their appearance and outlook: they are more likely to be into 50s and 60s R&B than modern/nu/Y2K soul. This is a generalisation and of course there are going to be exceptions, but that is the impression I get, particularly in the south. Maybe the situation is different in continental Europe. From the events I've been to there seems to be a small but very healthy scene where younger people can listen to and accept a broad base of great soul music. Even there though, the amount of Y2K tunes played appears to be minimal. Remember that if your in your twenties, even records from the late 80s have an esoteric retro-appeal. It's a good template to use to take the scene forward, but like I say, it features basically no nu-soul.

Absolutely, Simon. I'm thinking more of modern soul in terms of brand new releases, be they soulful house or midtempo plodders, neither of which I can see making the playlists of, for example, Andy Dyson or Butch. It's no coincidence that some of the most vibrant Northern Soul discoveries of the last few years are 1970s, funk-influenced tunes such as Ellipsis, Richard Marks, Mixed Feelings etc. To me these are classic Northern-sounding records and deserve to be as big as they are.

A point that has to be considered is the nature of modern soul music and the modern soul scene itself. At venues like Stafford and Rotherham the new modern records and newly discovered 60s sounds found a brief co-existence. By the time of late Stafford the likes of Richard Searling and Soul Sam left for a scene based largely around new releases, be they major label or independently produced items. This music sounded broadly similar to the things that had been played at the Northern Niter venues. At around that time I attended probably as many dedicated Modern Soul nights as traditional Northern allnighters. Whiz forward a few years to the late 80s and the kind of soul that was being produced in the US was different in character: fewer releases were on 7" single for a start and CD only releases were becoming a norm. The major label releases had blanded out to try and ape the commercial juggernauts that were Luther Vandross, Freddie Jackson and Anita Baker. The indies were increasingly tinny, shoddy and suffering from miniscule recording budgets. Whereas a few years earlier I could confidently and happily buy several new releases a week, both from mail order specialists like Soul Bowl and major importers like Groove or City Sounds, by say, 1989, I was simply unhappy with the quality of a lot of the modern music I was buying. It was precisely around this time that the Crossover phenomenon started to look very attractive to people like me: older-sounding records, forgotten spins from the Mecca etc. all had a freshness which was very appealing. Similarly the Northern scene was embracing some of these sounds at around the same time. I have clear memories of hearing records like James Phelps on Apache, The Montclairs on Arch, The Constellations, Joseph Webster, Margie Joseph on Volt being played, danced to and avidly collected on both scenes. By this time elements of the purely modern scene had adopted the fledgling House phenomenon: the music was uptempo, solidly rhythmic and some of it was even very soulful vocally. I was buying the odd thing like Movement Soul, Michael Watford, Ron Wilson and Robert Owens. Some of it was great music but the idea that it should be played on the Northern scene just didn't seem to be on the agenda. Some may call me a dinosaur but I don't think the modern-day equivalent of those records should be either. I've always had the utmost respect for people like Colin Curtis, who appear to have a clear vision of where this music fits into the whole scheme of the underground soul scene, but to me personally it doesn't have the textures which make it sit happily with classic Northern records, be they 60s, 70s or 80s releases. Compared to the mid 1970s emergence of the 60s-Modern schism we now have another thirty odd years of soul music to choose from and programme in all-nighter playlists. Is it merely conservatism which prevents entire sets of new releases from featuring in the main rooms at big all-nighters and weekenders? I don't think so: I think it's because it's basically a different form of music. It has some roots in soul of the classic era, but it is a different animal. It has its own fans and it's own venues and it seems to me that this is a happy situation for both camps. Just because the cutting edge djs of the late 70s and early 80s played brand new records it doesn't necessarily follow that this should be the case in 2008.

To answer Barry's question the timeframe in which modern soul was genuinely integrated in to the mainstream Northern scene was a relatively small period in the scene's overall history. Great modern soul music is still being made in very small quantities, but the idea of the scene's pre-eminent deejays making it genuinely integral to their sets in the way Searling, Poke etc. did in their heyday are long gone and will never, ever return. The numbers of people driven away by those sounds were probably not compensated by those who made the opposite journey: from mainstream modern soul to rare Northern soul. As I hinted at above people's tastes and outlook are probably more entrenched than they were twenty and thirty years ago, which is inevitable given the average age of those who participate. There is a small scene dedicated entirely to purely modern soul music. It seems to run along alright so I don't know why it would need to once again join up with the mainstream of the Northern soul scene in the main rooms at the big weekenders or allnighters.

Yes, the scene has changed. That's unavoidable. I think as adults we have a different perspective on things compared to when we all started. It's far easier to be jaded at the age of, say, fifty than when you are eighteen. I couldn't contemplate going to as many events today as I once did. Playlists don't change as rapidly as they once did, for a start. Hearing genuinely fresh sounds on a weekly basis and trying to buy some of them has become a virtual impossibility for the majority. Also as adults we demand more direct involvement in the way the scene is run than we once did. If an event had been a complete shambles thirty years ago we pretty much had to put up with it. With forums like this we can now express an opinion directly to those responsible. There are many more djs than there once were. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is debatable and this is probably not the topic in which to do so. The music will always evolve, sometimes in strange (and personally unwelcome) ways, but the fundamental respect in which the scene has changed is the average age of the people involved. What started as a youth scene has endured in a way in which few might have imagined in their younger days. When Wigan closed the people who emerged to take the scene forward were still pretty young: the movers and shakers were still predominantly in their twenties. By and large those people are still involved to some extent, but the outlook and energy levels can never be the same as in the halcyon days. While still fanatical about the music and the scene people now have other priorities: families, careers, debt and personal crises the like of which couldn't be imagined when we were all young. I suppose we're part of the first generation which doesn't have identical aspirations to those of our parents. By my age (i'm 41) my dad had long forgotten the idea of doing the same things and having the same life he had when he was a teenager (i don't even know if that term had been coined when he was under 20 years of age). Society in general has changed radically in that respect and the soul scene merely reflects that change. The incredible atmosphere of a dusty ballroom filled with adrenaline-crazed teenagers dancing for eight hours non-stop to obscure soul music will never be replicated. Everyone's older, some are wiser and that's the main difference. The major reason the scene has endured is that it's very difficult to let go of those incredible memories. In a previous generation we would have been forced to, but it seems that society is telling us that we can now have a kind of perpetual youth: people in their sixties are by no means thought of as old today; with the pensions time-bomb we'll probably all be in our late eighties by the time we're considered 'old' enough to retire, join the bowls club, potter about in the garden etc. It's changed and will never be what it was in 1973, but all things considered it isn't that bad a place to be.

Now sold

Price reduced to £165 for quick sale.

Yes. The lookalike is pretty easy to spot if you have one in your hand. The plastic is a translucent very dark brown. If you hold it up to the light you can see through it. Hope this helps.

As I type I'm hearing reports of a canoe containing a box of King's Go Forth singles getting into difficulty off the beach at Seaton Carew.

I can never knock this record. It was the first 45 I ever bought from the US and the first currently 'in-demand' sound I ever got my hands on. The anticipation of the disc arriving was unbearable in the days of scouring magazines like Discoveries or Goldmine, the exotic process of submitting written postal bids etc, which coupled with shipping seemed to take months in those days. When the record arrived and I played it at home it was obviously the work of an Eagles-inspired soft-rock group and I was really crushed. When I had heard it played out by the likes of Adam B and Dave Thorley I had somehow convinced myself that it sounded like the work of a vocal group to rank alongside The Dramatics or Masqueraders (youth eh!). Years later I found a few dozen copies buried in a (very) large pile of soul singles in the Reggae Revive shop just around the corner from where I was living in Kensal Rise. They ranged in condition from mint to hopelessly mildewed and water damaged (I think the last three copies were actually bonded together in a kind of super-thick RCA single). On punting them out I think the most I got for a copy was a tenner. A few months later it started unaccountably selling again for proper money and I was gutted to think I'd missed the sailing of that particular boat. Despite all of this I still love the record; it has a magic that will never dim for me. I too was really excited to see the light blue local issue and am still wondering if it's a radically different version. It would be great if some kind soul could post up the 'local' version.

Yes. Tuska 113 Barbara Hall Humanity c/w Richard Marks & the Minors The Doll

Any chance of posting up the Lookin' For My Baby side of the 45? I personally think this is much scarcer than Tuska 106, Big Man c/w Broken Hearted.

Scans added:

Got to agree with everyone on the merits of this record. Hypnotic, moody and memorable. Not so sickly sweet that it ever grates; this has got to be classed as one of the great 1970s Northern records. Not too common either over the years so I think £300 is a more than fair price, especially in a market where Lee Fields can be a £750 auction item.

Price amended.

I've had quite a few offers of trades, but I must stress that it's got to be money only for this one, unfortunately.

For sale: LoLo 2307 Bobby Hill Tell Me You Love Me / To The Bitter End M- Promotional Copy. Stunning copy of this brilliant double sider in super-clean condition. £165 Shipping within the UK will be £4.50 for Guaranteed Delivery, £1.80 for Signed For Delivery. Will ship overseas. Paypal accepted with an additional 4% to cover their fees. TIA for any interest, gareth

How can anyone ever contemplate parting with this superb piece of vinyl?

Much rarer than the Black Kat 45 I would say Chalky. Maybe not as rare as an original of the Sounds of Birmingham 45, though. Have heard Butch occasionally play the Rajac 45 at dances for the last few years.

Rare. Price would be around £300 mark but that could rise as more people get to hear it. Presumably Ralph Jackson's own label.

I think there is a bootleg of this title. If you look at the two copies on popsike there are some subtle differences in the respective labels: the one which sold for about 400+ dollars is an original: a strong, deeper yellow colour and crisp black type. The copy which sold for 170 dollars would appear to be a counterfeit: paler yellow label, obvious photostatting of the type and a tiny bit of the plastic moulding into the label. I would imagine the marks in the deadwax would be different too. I'll get my copy out of storage and look at the marks: I suspect mine is a boot, I picked it up in a rock 'n' roll shop in Camden Town over twenty years ago for £2. I would imagine it was booted for the dutch deep soul scene in the seventies. An original is a pretty rare record and the price should be around £200+. Hope this helps.

Not strictly speaking about soul music per-se but a potentially great addition to any line-up like this is The Cool World from 1964. Shot on location in Harlem using largely non-professional actors and filmed in the style of the French New Wave, this is an important chronicle of the vernacular clothing styles, dancing, gang culture, and music of the time. It was directed by Shirley Clarke and remains unseen by many. I'm sure this would be of great interest to everyone at the weekender. www.imdb.com lists the production company as Wiseman Films.