(#1 in a series - 10 albums that shaped my musical taste) 1973 – I was a bookish kid. Music brought me a little bit more out in to the world, I guess.. everyone wants to be a part of something, and we had our little cliques at school, kids who were allowed to have trendy haircuts… [more]
(#2 in a series – 10 albums that shaped my musical taste) 1976 – fifteen years of age. I was gaining a bit of confidence. I explored and read about music avidly, heavily influenced by a string of young gun rock writers who plied their trade in the NME. Not the shallow travesty it is… [more]
(#3 in a series – 10 albums that shaped my musical taste) 1977 – Sixteen years of age. Every week a new NME to pore over, every week a fresh crop of original new music to investigate, the scene just bursting with life. It was hard to keep up. Each new acquistion felt more personal… [more]
(#4 in a series of 10 albums that shaped my musical taste) 1977 – It was the look that got me. A kind of mutant Buddy Holly: knock-kneed, big horn rims, thrift store suit, turn-ups, Fender Jazzmaster. If a guy like this can be a star.. Declan Patrick MacManus pitched up at Stiff Records with… [more]
(#5 in a series of 10 albums that shaped my musical taste – a little sidestep here, maybe not so.. predictable) 1978 – Two years before, some of us were staying up all night at parties, deafened by The Song Remains The Same, mixing cider with Newcastle Brown and ‘waiting for the sun-rise, man’. In ’78, I’m… [more]
(#6 in a series of 10 albums that shaped my musical taste) 1979 – I was still loving the blues, more often than not blasted out by a rash of speedy punky British R&B merchants like Nine Below Zero and The Inmates, so what’s a music fan to do but go back to the source,… [more]
(#7 in a series of 10 albums that shaped my musical taste) Punk didn’t really hit the English northern industrial city of Sheffield as hard as it did elsewhere. “Rebel? What against? I’ve been doing it all my life, mate, every day. I work hard, I play hard and I’m nobody’s fool. There’s only one… [more]
(#8 in a series of 10 albums that shaped my musical taste) We took a deep breath and held it, in the late post-punk era. Not much joy in serried ranks of earnest young men in long grey raincoats poking desultorily at synthesisers. And that’s definitely what we were missing.. delight, glee, abandon. But we… [more]
(#9 in a series of 10 albums that shaped my musical taste) I’d just like to say to all you young folks that if you’re playing in a band and your raison d’être is complete indifference.. if you’re playing that card, “look at us, we’re chaotic and we don’t care about anything, least of all… [more]
(The final album in a series of 10 albums that shaped my musical taste) Our own particular brand of Northern Soul, the Roses were. Self-belief in bucketloads, strong instrumental ability and a staggering ambition to make their debut the next ‘Electric Ladyland’ or ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’. The Roses railed against the pessimism of the… [more]
Part 1 – No music genre more perfect than Northern Soul? Mix a fanboy’s dedication to unearthing obscure record releases, the regimentation of fashion, and a nonpareil club scene, each venue with its own distinctive politics and sound. Songs that were unheralded, failures by any commercial consideration, but songs that had a certain something, that… [more]
Part 2 – a large part of the excitment of the underground Northern Soul scene was provided by the discovery of obscure records and the battles of one-upmanship between DJs. Find a record with that sound that no one else had, and play it at your particular venue? Pure gold. That venue may have been… [more]
Part 3 – The daddy of all Northern Soul clubs was Wigan Casino, though, as this fine article by Chris Hunt says, it may not have been the coolest or the most innovative. If you wanted to dance, however, it was the place to go. And when you’d wrung yourself out on an all-nighter, the… [more]
Part 4 – Pure gold, and what might be described as Northern Soul’s biggest ever ‘find’, Frank Wilson’s Do I Love You (Indeed I Do) was originally released on Motown’s subsidiary label Soul in 1965. Frank wanted to concentrate on producing, and Motown boss Berry Gordy would certainly have had him do that. The vocal… [more]
