Hi Urrrs,
Wasn't going to get involved in this thread but having just read your post I thought it was worthy of a reply.
I just wish there were more people on the Soul scene in the UK who thought this way.
You only have to read some of the threads on various forums (not just on here) to see how blinkered folks on both sides of the Soul scene can be.
At a weekender last year I even saw Northern punters walking through the Modern room with their fingers in their ears & saw Modern punters going into the Northern room purely & simply to take the p1ss out of folks over the way they dressed & danced.
Must make you wonder how folks from outside the Soul scene must view us & it's not hard to see why we can't get new faces onto the scene in the UK.
Now I'm not suggesting for one minute every Northern room books someone to do a full on House set for an hour & every Modern room books an oldies jock to break the night up but somewhere along the line common sense has to come into the equasion. All I'd like to see is a bit more acceptance of each others style of music instead of all the backstabbing & snide remarks that always seems to occur on both sides of the Soul scene.
Been racking my brains to think of a venue in the UK that really does play a broad spectrum of Soul music ranging from classic 60s right through to present day releases in equal measure in one room & I can only think of one place that I have visited that does it consistently well & thats the Red Bar in Wakefield, a night that is free admission & ran by a great group of lads of varying musical tastes who just do it for the love of the music.
Also saw a similar thing happen at a recent night in Sheffield at the Love & Happiness night at Qube.
Soul Sam was the main guest in the main room downstairs alongside Cliff Dale, the Pinches twins & myself playing Modern from the 70s to present day stuff & the upstairs room was playing classic 60s Northern.
At 12-30 the upstairs room closed so all the Northern punters found themselves in the Modern room & Sam was still on so he jumped into his sales box & started playing everything from things like the Velvet Satins & Margret Little right through to stuff like Urban Blues Project & Michael Proctor (& yes it does sound like Tom Jones ).
He finished off with R Kelly's Up & Outa Here & it was so refreshing to see die hard 60s & Modern fans all on the dancefloor together enjoying themselves.
Quality post Urrrs & hope you visit the site more often