Stevesilktulip

Officially I switched from rock to Soul in the spring of 74, but I remember going to a youth club in Waterhouses, I'm guessing in73, and 3 girls doing set dance pieces to Third Finger Left Hand, some Motown (Chartbusters 2 (I think)) and Donnie Elbert Little Piece of Leather, which I only realised years later was a northern record, though in hindsight it was kinda obvious. Although it wasn't boys dancing with girls, it was still about girls; Freud was right about that; it's always about girls. Saw country blues artist Michael Roach a few years back and he demonstrated how we got from picking cotton to dancing and it wasn't too far away from northern soul. I'm not advocating slavery, but they had the best music.

Just spotted this is by John Lias, the Paul Kelly man. I remember years ago, he did a top 50 or was it 100 soul albums in Voices from the Shadows, and had PK albums at 1 and 2. I'm a Luther Ingram man but I wouldn't quite put them so high, though I'd have 3 in my top 20, and I think he had the same 3 in his list if my memory serves me, but PK wouldn't do as well as that in my list. I just hope it doesn't follow the usual BBC crap that everybody used to play vinyls albums right through every time but nobody ever plays CDs in their entirety. Really looking forward to this.

Just played in on youtube SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS and I was thinking it's a cover, it's one of those records you feel you've known all your life, but quick check and - lo and behold - it's on the album (it's Savour Faire) which you should check out. It's my age. Love the lady. Thanks again.

Much obliged. Her album Savoir Fayre has some great tracks too.

I had a friend who was belligerent about liner notes and he read Mingus Black Saint and the Sinner Lady with a magnifying glass. I read them where possible. Apart from the practicalities, the availability offered by CDs and computers renders vinyls redundant. Somebody should make empty album sleeves available; I tend to think they're all empty in HMV cos occasionally someone looks at them but nobody ever buys them. I see the supermarkets have wheeled them out for fathers day - embarrassing. Following all the propaganda in the media, as CDs disappear they're rocketing in price and are generally more expensive than original vinyls - when such a thing exists- particularly reggae, but also Soul. Finding a CD you've been looking for is every bit as wonderful as finding a vinyls used to be, and it happens far more often. And naff vinyls (Oasis) are every bit as naff as naff CDs. There are five tracks I only have downloaded on to discs which I would rather have on something proper, even if it means spending lots of money. Can anybody help? Stan Ivory - Come Live with Me. Rance Allen - Where did I go wrong. Deon Jackson - Ill always love you. Bobby McClure You bring out the love in me. Epicenter feat Sandra Feva - Don't come up her no more. If not, can you get your fingers out please Croasdale, Searling, Dewhirst etc. I had all of these on vinyls - so I could see why Bobby McClure might be difficult - but it was only on my second download that I found out there's a longer version of Sandra Feva. Does this mean there was a 12 or an album? The mouth waters.

Indeed but that was musicians rather than DJs - better still, until it descended into smack.

DJs playing obscure Black American music and taking drugs (well. smoking weed) all night started in Jamaica in the late fifties.

V was never an issue.

La La Peace Song. Either version.

Hear, hear. Don't think either particularly make sense nowadays, but both could ie us people here agree.

According to Wikipedia, some use here and some hear, but I have no idea, and I have an English degree. But my degree was during a time when comprehension was the thing, and any notion of 'right' or 'wrong' were scorned.

Loads and loads and some of us are trying to bring them back.

Here here to Joe Simon. Or is it hear hear? I don't know! Nobody knows! Georgia Blue is one of many great tracks. Surely one of the most under-rated Soul Singers of all, and while Step by Step was out, he was more or less a household name. I bought two CDS on Monday, one yesterday and I'm disappointed nothing has turned up today. For a lot of the last fifteen years I've bought one or more every day. My Amazon basket has six hundred items (the maximum - not a lot of people know that) backed up with written lists all over the place. But at least we actually now have a reason why they're evil; because somebody makes money from them, cos nobody makes money selling vinyls, cos the dealers don't have tens and hundreds of thousands of them they're ready to just chuck out. I thought the reason people don't like pressings is because the artist doesn't make any money (cos they do when they're originals?) but the best chance they have is still CDs. Collecting vinyls should be seen as a hobby, and not something to do with music.

As someone who stopped listening to northern soul in 77, I have some sympathy with returners and loads of sympathy for those who've just discovered Soul Music, though I'm absotively, posilutely jealous of their age. There's a big difference between someone who abandoned northern (or felt abandoned by it) for NYD, Funk and Jazz-Funk, which maybe led to Deep Soul, Real Jazz, Blues, Reggae and arriving on the Weekender Modern Scene with far better grounding than anybody who'd stuck around northern; and someone who got into punk-rock, two-tone, career, marriage, mortgage, kids, pop music and bringing their mid-life crisis back with them. However, as someone who chooses to play some Northern Soul in amongst the rest, I'm routinely accused of putting on northern nights, which I roundly deny. As somebody who doesn't worship vinyls played by superstar Djs at 'legendary' venues, it's always difficult to persuade northern people that there's plenty there for them, and Soul Folk that it isn't about obscure vinyls. I understand there's some slippage as oldies disappear, and it's great that young'uns are turning up, but is it necessary to go back to the Twisted Wheel playlist, and do we think they'll still be around by the time we get up to Trafalgar, Fleetwood, Morecambe and Southport?

I did Little Milton at Colne; I also saw him in Manchester on a bill with Latimore. James Brown was great at the Sage. I was talking to Billy Walker (of Walkers) before and we weren't expecting much but agreed it was more homage. It turned out to be the best night there to date, though bluesman Lucky Peterson a couple of years back was great too.

I think his second album's due out soon.

Just back On Maze. On the Sarah Cox eighties show a year or two back, she had a guest on who'd just brought out a remixes album and she asked him a list of general questions including 'best night out in the eighties'. He promptly responded Maze Live and the lovely, charismatic Coxy asked who Maze are. Reminds me of when Johnny Walker thought the Yes Album was their first album. A record shop in Leeds made a similar mistake when Mrs Silk picked up a copy of the wrong album for me, but Walker hosts Sounds of the Seventies and fancies himself as a bit of a rocker. We're so well served by knowledgable DJs.

My nights tend to be Soul as opposed to northern, but I've had Bowie, Bruce Springstein and Billy Ocean is a bit of an in-joke.

Closer to Soul than rock and roll, I saw Albert King, BuddyGuy/ Junior Wells and John Lee Hooker on the same bill at Hammersmith Odeon in the early eighties. Nothing like that can ever happen again. Before he switched to jazz, my son was really into the blues and I was looking for Larry McCray, arguably the greatest new blues guitarist (and, like all great bluesmen, a soulful singer) and found him on a bill with Otis Clay in Lucerne, Switzerland (also on the bill: Joe Louis Walker and long-term Howlin Wolf pianist, I'm tempted to say Henry Gibson, but the master percussionist at Curtom took that name.) The moment Clay goes into Nickel and a Nail is one of those that will live with you forever, and is captured on an album recorded live at Lucerne. Saw Leroy Hutson at Camden Jazz Cafe the day after boxing day and was thinking of y'all when he took a break and the backing singer did Cashing In.

I think the headgear is getting silly. Everybody who sees him says it's just in time, before he gets too chummy with Jools and the BBC. I saw him in Cheltenham about five years ago and thought that. It was great though; not as good as I'd been told, but better than I'd expected. Anybody see Johnnie Taylor with Denise Lasalle, Bobby Bland and Mosley and Johnson circa 87? Somebody shouted out 'what about my love' and he looked horrified. He has to play his Stax stuff, it's a Malaco tour and he has to play Disco Lad, and somebody's asking for Beverley Glen.

Wow, Ohio Players and War. Now I'm jealous. Saw P Funk in 78, Isleys early nineties and lots of great funk bands. Tower of Power at Cheltenham Jazz Festival in a couple of weeks. Nothing beats a classic funk band live.

Just read through them all. I was ill and missed Jesse James and Love Affair was my favourite record at the time and is still one of them. Saw Anita Baker at Hammersmith Odeon on her first gig and she was superb. Hadn't planned to see her next time at the Arena - her third album was much weaker than the first two - but she was every bit as good at the bigger venue. When I met my wife, she was a fan so we saw her in Manchester. I didn't think she'd be very good cos the last album was frankly poor, but she was great again. I thought Loving You was their best record in years and amongst their best ever so I made the journey to the smoke to see the Ojays in 87 I think - tremendous. Teddy in Edinburgh in 82.

Sam Dees doing a PA at Fleetwood was extraordinary; the Soul was dripping down the walls. One of my mates thought I was off my head (and probably was) but I was just so emotionally involved in it. An hour earlier, just next door, Jean Carn had done a duet of 'Free' with Will Downing (a big deal at the time) and the following weekend I met Latimore in a night club in Birtley; one of the few occasions in my life I was starstruck (and I met San Dees the week before).

Maze in 82 will never be bettered (this was their first appearance in the UK, I know the memory gets tricky). I saw them three times in 83, twice in 85 (I'm on the video filmed at Hammersmith Odeon, shaking hands with FB) and again later in the decade when they were selling out HO like rockstars. I saw them a few years back at Indigo O2 - the only time I've seen them do While I'm Alone - but the voice was shot.

Worth remembering that record shop day used to be about music on hard copies before the usual media institutions turned it into vinyls day. I remember when I first identified Gloria Scott, it was a £25 album though I know it went up to £60 and suspect it got higher. Had a cursory look on Amazon the other day and there was a vinyls copy for under twenty quid (since gone) and the cheapest CD was just under a hundred. Anybody who's interested in vinyls should listen to Jo Whiley on Radio 2, 8 oclock week nights; she picks an album each week and plays a track a night under the heading of vinyls revival. KTF Rag n Bone Man.