Ian Dewhirst

Isn't original vinyl collecting more about the money these days? It's a rich man's sport isn't it? For sure, everyone can amass a collection of £10-20 cheapies but I doubt they'll fill a dancefloor or create much excitement in collectors circles or on a dancefloor as a large boxful of mega expensive rarities. I think money has transformed the scene into something that's become almost a caricature of what it used to be about - a bit like the Premier League really, namely, that only a handful of people can afford the big rarities, like only the richest teams can afford the best players. The Salvadores made sense to me when I had two or three copies in the 70's first time around for less than £20 apiece. The record doesn't sound any better now @ £3,516 and I don't think I could justify paying the additional £3,496 for a copy now. Multiply that times all the conceivable big money tunes that I might fancy owning again at some point and there wouldn't be much change out of £500,000. So, yes, for sure there's a large element of snobbery about Northern Soul except that these days you have to be in a position to afford it! I quite often wonder if when I make my next million will I be likely to amass yet another top-notch collection of originals? I'm not so sure these days. I've heard everything a zillion times, I've owned virtually everything I've ever wanted on O.V. at some stage or another and I already have multiple copies of everything I want on numerous formats anyway, so I guess the only reason I'd need 'em all again would be ego/snobbery related. People wear their record collections like badges of honour nowdays and it seems that everyone has the mandatory few boxes of big money items in their homes. Surely anyone with a spare £250K can whip together a heart-stopping collection pretty quickly these days can't they? So is it possible to be a serious O.V. collector if you're in a low paid job, broke, paying for a trail of divorces, supporting numerous children or been recently made redundant? If anyone can advise how I can replace my entire 70's collections on O.V. for less than £250K then let me know! Answers on a postcard please...... Ian D

Sorry folks, I'm on duty @ Prestatyn this weekend, so it'll be a repeat of an earlier show - I'll try and choose a good one and ask Carl if he'll programme it. Tune in next week for the Prestatyn report and the usual Sunday afternoon shenanigins! Toodle Pip and see you next week LIVE! Ian D

Yes, vinyl wears out eventually and yes, future generations will have no choice but to play music files as all the decent copies of O.V. will be worn out by then plus styli won't be available anymore........ Ian D

Oh to be young again LOL! We welcome the young Chris Box back for the 2nd time in the last couple of months, so following a DJ slot until the early hours he did a quick trip up from deepest Wales to drop in on the show again before doing his own show a couple of hours later. When you're that age you don't need sleep! Anyway as per usual we had a ball and a musically rockin' time so heeeeere's the download folks! Six Million Steps Presents The Original Mastercuts Show with Ian Dewhirst and special guest Chris Box on Sunday 8th March 2009 on www.starpointradio.com. To download the show simply hit the link below! Or for this and all archived shows please pay a visit to www.sixmillionsteps.com where you can download the last 4 weeks worth of all Six Million Steps produced shows. That's 16 hours of free music over the last 4 weeks plus loads of new fully downloadable KILLER mixes in a variety of styles! So let's go with this week's show:- 1st Hour Ivan Matias - I've Had Enough 280 West feat Diamond Temple with Ray, Goodman & Brown - I Never Knew Jose Burgos feat Kenny Bobien - For Your Love Linx - You're Lying - Remix Steve Myers - Shake Me Bridge - Baby Don't Hold Your Love Back Jay Player - Love Is The Answer Colors - Am I Gonna Be The One 2nd Hour Don Thomas - Come On Train Mandrill - My Kind Of Girl Anthony White - Where Would I Be Without You The Fabulous Keys - It's Too Late Barbara Hall - Drop My Heart Off At The Door Al Hudson & The Soul Partners - I'm About Loving You Windy City - Hey It's Over Donny Hathaway - Love Love Love Kellee Patterson - Turn On The Lights Nicole feat Timmy Thomas - New York Eyes Toni Braxton - Another Sad Love Song Oleta Adams - Never Knew Love Jeffrey Osborne - Don't You Get So Mad About It https://www.sixmillionsteps.com/6MS-...8-Starpoint.mp3 Thanks to all for listening and many thanks to Chris Box for a 300 mile round-trip just to drop in and join the show! Such dedication is rare indeed! Best, Ian D

Live in just over an hour on www.starpointradio.com! Join us. Ian D

OK, following my little sojourn to Chichester last weekend the ORIGINAL MASTERCUTS show is back LIVE again tomorrow between 2.00-4.00pm. Starpoint DJ and EMS member Chris Box will be joining me for the show and dropping an 80's set into the second half-hour so expect a rockin' show and then I'll be joining Chris on his show between 6.00-8.00pm so 4 hours of LIVE radio tomorrow only on www.starpointradio.com Tunes coming up from..... Ivan Matias, 208 West featuring Diamond Temple and Ray, Goodman & Brown, Jose Burgos feat Kenny Bobien, Linx, A Special 80's session from Chris Box, Don Thomas, Mandrill, Anthony White, The Fabulous Keys, Barbara Hall, Al Hudson & The Soul Partners, Windy City, Donny Hathaway, Kelly Patterson, Nicole feat Timmy Thomas, Al B. Sure, Toni Braxton, Oleta Adams and Jeffrey Osbourne See you @ 2.00pm sharp! Ian D

Not yet Purist. Most computers have disc drives and I can't see that stopping for a while...... Ian D

OK, an update. The Frank Wilson original copy is now in the hands of John Manship. Plus there's a LOT of media interest from all sorts of unlikely places. But where do we think this record is going? At this early stage (some 4 weeks before the auction actually commences), the talk on the street is that it will almost certainly be heading out of the UK. So does that mean that one of the two known copies will leave the UK perhaps forever? And where will it go? Ian D

I think the name Marginal probably says it all soul.boy......... Ian D

Seconded Marc. Nothing beats a legitimate CD for me. I have a very complete CD collection built up from 20 years of collecting simply because I want all my masters to be beautifully pristine and well mastered digital copies which will last 70 odd years. Legitimate CD's generally give me that. I get calls every week from record companies needing their own masters even though they have their own original 2" master tapes in an archive somewhere. By the time they've accessed the original tape from a temperature controlled bunker in Arizona, couriered it to New York, sent it to an expensive Manhattan mastering suite who then will send the tape off to be 'baked' before then getting it back to remaster it, then bouncing it down to a digital format and then get it sent over to the UK it's too f*ckin' LATE! And forget about the paperwork and internal charges. $1000 dollars and 3 months by the time it's all done. So f*ck that for time management and cost effectiveness........ Instead they ring me and get a perect digital master within a couple of hours. And for a tenth of the cost, if that. It comes to something when they're ringing me for their own masters! And now they just won't bother clearing anything unless a track is already on their systems and complete with an IRSC code. Which means that any Major company owned slice of obscure Northern Soul simply will never see the light of day unless something really unusual happens. Northern Soul is a pain in the ass for most of today's go-getting record companies. They simply can't be arsed. Their logistics and internal systems mean that they'll have a whole heap of adminstrative and logistical headaches for clearing obscure Northern Soul tracks which they often don't have any proper paperwork on (which makes 'em nervous) and which are a pain in the arse to clear legally. Who needs the headache? So all of sudden, all those Goldmine releases look very alluring as there's a very good chance that none of those tracks will ever be issued again on CD. I've got the whole set (200+) and I play 'em all the time along with all the Kent, Grapevine, Expansion, Castle Communications, Goldsoul, Joe Boy, Universal, Sanctuary and all major and indie label Northern Soul CD releases that I can get my hands on. Properly mastered digital Northern Soul will be as rare a commodity as Original Vinyl in the future. I love it! Northern Soul is still as rare and hard to get as it was when it was first released. The torch is still burning but it will be via LED lighting in the future. And it'll still be just as hard to locate! Mind you, none of this will have any effect on the Frank Wilson auction will it? Some deranged nutter with too much money will buy the bugger. As I write this I'm suddenly hearing "C'mon Train" blasting over the TV whilst they're trying to sell me the benefits of banking with Barclays...... Mmmm. There's a thought. Maybe the winner should wield a Barclaycard? Ian D

If only they were all like that it'd make life a lot simpler for sure Paul. But the problem now is going to be who will take a chance on putting out a CD with all the attendent costs for a market which is only one third of what it was a year ago? That's a sure-fire way to go bust as everyone keeps demonstrating! Plus you can only flog 'em through HMV, the supermarkets, a few exports here and there and a handful of indies which are left. All the margins have gone on the record company side so it's just not worth doing it anymore for most companies. The market has disappeared. I predict that in future whatever market is left for CD's will be done by doing small runs of bespoke CD's where you can run hundreds of different titles at the press of a button. Can you imagine the nightmare of trying to oversee hundreds of 'bedroom' operations? I'm afraid that anyone who thinks that the music business can survive on the public paying 29p for the No.1 single is living in cloud cuckoo land. We can expect thousands of mini bootleg operations from this point on.........it's the wild west out there right now. I was speaking to an American colleague the other day who just caught 3 different companies bootlegging his repertoire in Europe. When he contacted them, they all said "Sue us then". My mate round the corner, Gee Bello from Light Of The World, has just found a couple of tracks he owns on French Boogie compilations. The French guy just said, "No problem, sue me"! Even if you persued legal action, the company would disappear overnight and re-appear the next day selling the same stuff and your legal fees would double! It's a no win situation right now. Plus the declining market, credit crunch, free downloading, cover-mounts, 29p No.1 singles, top heavy industry organisations, expensive lawyers and shaky distributors don't help either. Basically, you'd have to be a nutcase to run a record company under these circumstances, so I doubt that there'll be many standing in a year or two. We're looking at a calamatious decline of what was once the UK's No.2 export earner 30 years ago and it saddens me tremendously. Ian D

Yep. Tend to agree with you there Steve. Some people are professionals and go through dozens of companies living the high life. The banks haven't exactly set a good example for fair dealing or transparent policies either, so until you sort the guys at the top out, the guys at the bottom will carry on getting away with it. Who CAN you trust these days? By the way, was the Skull Snaps album OK? Ian D

Hey Steve, The problem runs much deeper than that and it's not always a black and white situation. Having seen 80% of all the record companies I've ever known either go down, merge, cease trading etc, etc I think the odds of ANY record company surviving is a miracle these days. I also think it's been shake-out time for the majority of music related companies over the last couple of years especially. Unless a company is exceptionally well-structured it won't be able to survive in today's climate. Also, in the same period of time we saw the collapse of far bigger operations like Fopp, Entertainment UK, Woolworths, Pinnacle and Zavvi so the size of an operation is no guarantee either. Additionally, almost every part of the UK industry is skewered against minor U.S. artists anyway who will generally need UK representation to even understand how their interests can be protected and collected. The big companies can be every bit as bad as the smaller companies in 'forgetting' royalties, none accounting etc, etc and the laws governing the UK publishing business are a licence to steal in my opinion. I know a number of so-called repectable UK Publishing operations who take full advantage of certain tricks and collect on titles that they shouldn't be collecting on at all. I also know a number of companies who prefer to use a legal disclaimer on their releases which kinda gets them off the hook for licensing until anyone chases. There's a tremendous lack of transparency in a number of areas of the UK biz not least in the difficulty artists have chasing up their copyrights over here. If you want to find out who owns a copyright in the U.S. you just pump into the BMI or ASCAP databases and bingo, you'll find what your looking for. However, our U.S colleagues cannot do the same over here because mere entry to the MCPS database is for members only! If you're over in a suburb of Detroit it's not that easy believe me. Also virtually none of the necessary re-restructuring for the recession has been done with the industry organisations who are still running their businesses as though they were banks LOL..they still think it's the 80's! In short, the whole industry is in a mess. Since I've been writing this, Amazon have just announced that they'll be selling the No.1 single for 29p i.e. less that a packet of chewing gum. THAT'S how much music has devalued in this recession! I can't imagine that the writer's proportion of 29p will amount to much over 2p! It's all very sad and I don't necessarily approve of everybody's methods in a lot of companies (both major and minor) but in another year or two there won't be any such thing as a record company so I guess we should relish 'em whilst we can. Also, I should point out that Kent is the exception to the general rule as a record company. Great ethics and good people running it are a rare combination these days! Ian D

The pink one is the first issue. Never saw the blue one until years later............ Ian D

That would be my definition too. Uptown would be nice polished, well-produced records with an aspirational smooth veneer, whilst Downtown would be more raw, with a less polished production and generally nasty funk or Southern grit............ Ian D

LOL, depends what the remit is Mark. I think that CD's a bootleg for a start so doesn't count as a legit release to the market. But when you release to the market you can sell to either a few hundred or thirty thousand - the market, repertoire and/or licensing budget dictates the type of album that gets legally released. One man's Northern Soul CD is another man's cobbled together lousily sequenced poor bootleg.............. There's TONS of Northern Soul bootleg CD's at the moment being openly sold on E-Bay and the BPI and record companies don't seem that bothered or can't afford the legal expense of persuing 'em, so there'll be tons more like this in the future I reckon..... Ian D

I hope he's OK....I haven't bumped into anyone who's seen him lately....... Ian D

Yep, sure were. Has anyone seen Hector lately? I haven't seen him for years......... Ian D

PM me with your details and I'll chase it up Jolly..... Ian D

I think the disorganised chaos and tilting piles of records are part of the appeal aren't they? A genius stroke in target marketing IMO Ian D

Well, there was a point in the early 70's when Selectadisc was a must-visit location for Northern Soul devotees but sadly no more........ https://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?storycode=1037050 I guess that leaves just Rob Smith flying the flag in Nottingham? Ian D

Mega rare. Last one I saw was $300 and that was in Buffalo, N.Y. Ian D

OK, an MP3 of that acetate....... "(Home To) My Waiting Woman" - ? Home_To_My_Waiting_Woman2.mp3 Anyone recognise the vocalist? Ian D

Nope. Nothing to suggest it's ever been released on a vinyl album and it's not in the LP numbering sequence......... https://www.discogs.com/label/Z+Records Ian D

A good rekid is a good rekid is a good rekid..........etc, etc One of my faves too. Don't play it as often as I should these days...... Ian D