Milk and Northern Soul.by Dave Rimmer
Do you remember when you were a kid, and the only milk you could get was pasteurized or sterilized ? Now you can get all sorts, pasteurized, sterilized, low fat, semi skimmed, skimmed, UHT long life, goat's milk, and I even bet you could get elephant milk if you looked in the right places ! Well that's what the Northern Soul scene is like these days. Back in the '70s there was Wigan and Blackpool Mecca, now.....A quote that is always attributed to Ian Levine (although I'm not sure he ever said it) is "Northern Soul is dead", well perhaps that is now the case. Twenty five years ago you knew where you were with Northern Soul, it has always been hard to define, but when you heard a track you just knew if it was, or wasn't, Northern Soul. So why, and how have things changed so much that 'Love Stormy Weather' can, and does get played at venues on a regular basis. Or how about 'I'm A Big Man' , out and out R & B, hardly Soul music, but still a very in demand record. Neither of them fall within the expected definition of Northern Soul.
The rare Soul scene is so splintered now it really is just like the milk scenario. A combination of customer demand, and manufacturer (read promoter for the scene) desire for new custom, has introduced new varieties through the years. So let's have a look at what is around:
I suppose the closest we come to the old style description of Northern Soul are the big Oldies allnighters like Togetherness. Still playing the same records, still attracting (these days) huge numbers of people, and no pretence to be anything else other than good time Soul music. Highly criticized by a certain hardcore, for not being progressive, this is really unfair. They don't claim to be progressive, they don't claim to be an allnighter for the regular week in week out niter goer. They are playing Soul music for the thousands of people who used to attend regularly back in the Seventies but now only want to go out four times a year for a massive blast of nostalgia. There is nothing wrong with that ! There can't be, or 1500 people wouldn't regularly turn out. So Togetherness have a great reputation amongst the people on the periphery of the regular scene, an awful reputation amongst the hardcore, and just to confuse matters there is the Modern room at Togetherness.
Now I'm not into the type of music being played in the Modern Rooms at Allnighters, so can't honestly pass an opinion because I don't venture in there. But I'm told by people who do that the Togetherness Modern room is superb with some of the best DJs in the country playing some of the best music in the country. How progressive do you want people to be ? And you think you're confused !
Another example might be The Ritz at Bank Holidays. But is it ? In the last year The Ritz have had an Oldies special, a rarest of the Rare, a Detroit & Chicago special, and I've attended them all, and I can't honestly claim to notice any difference in the people who attended them all either. Yet The Ritz seems to be another venue which attracts criticism for no apparent reason. Another example might have been Keele, but there again the last Keele allnighter included three 100 Club resident DJs, and three others who have been guest DJs there as well. Hardly an Oldies line up !
Let's go to the other extreme, in the majority perception anyway. The 100 Club. To me it is the leading Northern Soul Allnighter in the country.