Ian Dewhirst

My God Beeks. For one so young and relatively untainted you're very quickly succumbing to that stubborn attitude that usually engulfs people twice your age and is particularly prevalent on this scene. You'll be telling me you still wear oxford bags and patch jumpers next........... Ian D

That would seem to be a hell of a lot easier than making your own bootleg. What's to think about.........? Ian D

So the official legitimate CD release being played out by you is out of the question then Beeks? Ian D

Well hurry up or you'll be in a queue! Actually I'd like to get Stevie G on as well. He's relatively local isn't he? You can start sorting your show out now then. You know how the format works presumably dontcha? Ist Half-Hour is Soulful House/Disco/Uptempo, 2nd Half-Hour is pretty much 80's, 3rd Half-Hour is Northern/Modern/Crossover and 4th Half-Hour is killer Deep/Mellow/Slow Grooves to Mid-Tempo Anthemic Crowd Pleasers. Time to get those goodies out and let people hear 'em over the airwaves Simon...... Ian D

Well I'm sorry mate! That's what you get for being a snotty-nosed 16 year old kid trying to compete with the big boys LOL.....but what year was that Steve? I'm sure you're a few years younger than me........? I'm comparing my Saturday job @ a clothes shop in Bradford in 1971 which paid me £2.50 which was enough for 2 Bostocks Soul packs @ 20 records for a quid each. I reckon those Soul Packs would be worth more like £300-500 apiece now judging by the quality of the stuff in 'em. That's what I mean. No wonder I'm a tightass. I was spoiled. O.V.O. was the cheapest game in town back then! They virtually GAVE the stuff away.............. Ian D

And the 'b' side of Stevie's "That Girl" UK 7"........... Ian D

That is a boot though innit? She didn't release anything on Tamla and it's not in the listings. The only legit release is a CD as with the Brenda Holloway I believe.... Ian D

I'm sure Family Tree. Also if I was gonna make a Northern Soul bra, I'd almost certainly use an original Tomagoes rather than a UK Soul City re-press! Bloody amateurs....... Additionally I also think that U.S. 7"'s with the bigger centre are much more appropriate for that 'Peek-A-Boo' effect although obviously size of the nipple and surrounding area should be taken into consideration too. Ian D

Yep, it was a pretty fast turnaround even back then with Selecta sometimes bringing out 8-10 boots a month. If you only had a limited budget you'd almost invariably go for a decent unknown or lesser-played tune rather than an established biggie on the basis that you'd have longer to play the unknown record. I quite often had the appalling job of having two or three available records to buy but only a realistic budget for one of 'em, so hard choices had to be made. Everyone knew the "Cigarette Ashes" tale by then but James Fountain and the Anderson Brothers continued to raise the same problem. Also, is it my imagination but was there a faster turnover of tunes back then anyway? A big record could get 'played out' pretty quickly I seem to remember. Some records only seemed to be around for a few weeks before they arrived in quantity. I used to chase down leads every week and deliberately keep back a couple of big goodies for potential swap deals as the buying scene got more complicated. I'd say that by circa '75/'76 people were really getting an idea of which records were generally rare although it was still possible to pick up some fantastic Detroit bargains for a few quid apiece - something that I don't think could ever happen these days. The Perigents for £3 anyone? Detroit Executives for 35p on a list? Not any more........ Ian D

I spend half my life listening to music but that doesn't necessarily include every rinky-dink garage track that comes out week after week! Colin should get out of his Grateful Dead phase and start lashing down some compilations and spreading his knowledge to a wider audience as I told him on Saturday. When are you guesting on the show? I'm getting people asking now plus Sam's confirmed for a future slot the next time he's in town........ If you could stop pumping out one-liners and sort out a suitable Sunday I'd be most grateful old bean....... Ian D PS I see we now have Festa on the air every 4 weeks!

Why not? Ian D

The serious DJ's are primarily there to spread their taste and hopefully entertain and educate their audiences whilst doing it. These days you need someone to dig through the morass of stuff and find the good tunes and that's primarily what every good DJ hopes to achieve. If you're any good at it, you tend to stick around longer. You think anyone else has the time or even bloody patience to spend 16 hours a day digging through tunes? There's so much crap around that it takes a good DJ to filter the crap out and keep people happy. So DJing is a question of taste to me. People will always need guidance from the pros. I personally use a lot of DJ's for their taste and thank God they're around! There's not enough time in the world to listen to everything. So, yes, serious DJ's are essential to the wellbeing of any scene. Ian D

I hear it first and then, if I start loving it, I'll track the bastard down and ANALYSE it! You get to know what you like after a while. I only really listened to Brenda Holloway last year whereas I'd heard it a couple of times before and the sheer brilliance of it didn't sink in at the time. It's since become virtually my favourite Motown track of the last year or so, although there's some INCREDIBLE Motown 60's remixes/re-arrangements which I heard at the weekend which will be challenging it shortly.......... And I've never heard the Brenda Holloway off vinyl, so that scuppers the O.V.O. arguement right there. Was it ever issued on vinyl anyway? Ian D

The average wage back then was £18-25 I seem to remember Steve. 7/6d a week was pocket money and enough to buy a couple of chart singles and a sherbert dab. I started at work in 1972 and my first wage was about £18.00 I think, so that £20.00 for the Salvadores was still a hefty investment. DJ's fees were about £2 for a week night, so 10 of those gigs = 1 x Salvadores. I guess it would be aprox 10-20 weeknight gigs @ £50-100 apiece to even get you HALF of a Salvadores these days! Ian D

I think the evocative background vocals, Brenda's heartfelt phrasing and tones plus the song itself do it for me Stevie. Besides, Tammi's far too obvious as any self-respecting snob will tell ya........ Ian D

We don't wanna do that Kev. My weapons collection is up-to-the-minute, state-of-the-art concealed weaponry of the highest order - including some nice new industrial strength grade 3 mace and a remote electric-shocker which I'm dying to try out.....I'm afraid there's no O.W.O. policy here mate, so tell 'em to leave their cutlasses and sling shots at the door before I pick 'em off early.......... Snob? Moi........? Ian D

I'm lost Rog. Who are the real twats and who are just the wanna-be twats? Ian D

Yeah but I HAD 'em all there at my constant whim and disposal 24/7 from Thursday to Sunday with enough backup and firepower to deal with anything! If Eula Cooper had proposed to me I could have left there and then with my whole collection! Ian D

The Brenda Holloway version's better Beeks. Also check out the 'b' side of Stevie Wonders "That Girl" for the Modern Soul version by the master himself! Ian D

Actually it's a bit simpler than that Dave. I did the bulk of my O.V. collecting in the early 70's when a rare record was but one week's wages at the most. The most I think I ever paid for a record was probably £100. I actively made the decision to go to the U.S. and find 'em myself in 1975 when I got outbid on a Bernie Williams. I would have been comfortable paying £40 but it got bid up to £120 and 2 x £15 swaps making it £150 and that's when I lost interest as I saw the way things were going even in 1975. Additionally, I've always been a notorious tightass who divides his money pretty equally between wine, women and song, and the costs of the songs would have started impacting on the wine and women front! I've replaced my original collection no less than 3 times since the 70's and never paid more than $1 a record but I did spend a massive amount of time in the U.S. in the 80's which is where the bulk of my 2nd and 3rd collections came from. Also, lest anyone get the wrong idea, I was a notorious snob back then and would get very sniffy about some prat playing a boot. However, these days I think the O.V.O. philosophy misses the point except for the newer discoveries. I actually wouldn't play O.V. out regularly on different decks as I know only too well the damage that you can do to 'em by repeated plays on different decks and certainly I'd never play a styrene pressing out (anyone who plays Billy Woods or Mel Britt on different decks is asking for trouble IMO). This point was amplified recently when I looked through a 'name' jocks box and saw that he carried an original and a boot of virtually everything in his box - one for actually playing and the other to assert his O.V.O. credentials! Also, everyone seems obsessed with getting mint O.V. copies these days which is also nuts. How are you ever gonna find a mint rarity of anything when the O.V.O. brigade is around? These days my philosophy has changed a lot. I've got everything I've ever owned or wanted on multiple formats. The days of me having a couple of hundred grand's worth of stuff gathering dust on my shelves have gone only to be replaced with 100 times the amount of music I've ever had in my life. I'm listening to more music these days than ever and I always have a few thousand tunes on hand that I haven't even had time to listen to. Anytime I want to examine the beauty of an O.V. which I don't own I can nip round to a mates or dip in a DJ's box at a gig and w*nk over the label for a minute or two. Also, O.V. was a seriously long extended phase for me which lasted the best part of 30 years or so - a serious addiction every bit as compulsive as drugs IMO. I started to break the addiction sometime in the mid 1980's when I was looking at houses purely for their vinyl storage capabilities and since then it's been a long hard road to recovery. One step at a time.......it's also worth pointing out that I collect numerous genres of music and there's not a house big enough to store everything I need on vinyl. Also times are changing my friends. I had 30,000 tunes with me @ Prestatyn - ten times more than all the DJ's and Dealers put together. I kinda like having a wide choice and I had a couple of listening sessions where I could choose anything I wanted to play to someone within seconds. That is handier for me in this day and age than trailing around a lorry LOL.... Still nothing beats the beauty of holding a 7" piece of magic in your hands and glorying at the minutiae of a label but @ a couple of grand a pop it's an expensive luxury rather than a necessity for me these days. Ian D

Jesus! Northern Soul bras. Now there's an idea. Any pics knocking around.........? Ian D

.......and a O.V. pink Nu VJ copy of course which ironically looks more like a boot than the reissue LOL...... Ian D

I was at Prestatyn drooling over rare records like the rest of 'em! Ian D

Me too. We're ALL snobs! Everyone used to be a 'Div' in the early 70's until they'd paid their dues for at least a year. The Wheel Boys were at the top of the tree and boy did they know it LOL...... And those b*stards @ Barclaycard! How DARE they use Don Thomas to flog more Visas......it's got to the point in my house where all I have to do is shout "train!" and everyone shouts back "down the traaaaaaaack" etc, etc....... Even Don Thomas is no longer sacred.......... Ian D

Yep couldn't agree more Alan! Cheers mate! Over 4 years of LIVE shows every Sunday afternoon 2.00-4.00pm with a wide array of the best Soul from the 60's to the 00's, numerous guests, full playlists and fully downloadable every Monday. Guests coming up include Soul Sam and Simon M, so the Northern/Modern contingent is pretty well catered to as well. Many thanks to all @ Prestatyn who gave me the nod for the show as well! The figures are holding up beautifully. Myself and Steve Handbury spent several hours amassing material on Saturday afternoon for our respective future shows so plenty of goodies coming up from both of us in the next few weeks! Also recommend Shaun Robbins Sunday Soul Selection on Solar as well......... Ian D