I have to say, I find this side of the scene a bit bemusing. As I remember it, towards the end of the seventies, a lot of the Northern crowd started getting into the funkier side of soul music, and before you knew it, the jazz funk scene was born, and the two scenes were quite seperate, though shared venues quite often.
On another note, I read with great interest on Chalky's site that Richard Searling played You Can't Hide Your Love by David Joseph at Stafford. What was going on there??!!