Boogaloosoul London Plumsted

Martin Ainscough (Rbman) mentioned to me at the 100 Club last week that he'd been invited to DJ at the Boogaloo Motown night in Plumstead being put on for charity by Warren. Later in the week he asked me if I'd like to join him, I readily agreed, I hadn't seen Warren for a while and his wife Karen for a few years so it'd be nice to catch up plus some classic music.

Martin drove to Plumstead and the GPS on his phone got us there eventually, a bit confusing near the venue.

Almost immediately Martin had to do a set, playing classic tunes from Motown's golden era in the mid and later 60s plus a few earlier tunes like Do You Love Me. It's easy to dismiss these records as most of us have heard them over and over again but they are brilliantly produced records, and if they were discovered today we'd all be getting very excited about them.

The next guys double decked again playing a good mix, nice to hear Linda Griner's Goodbye Cruel Love and a version of California Soul, might have been Marvin and Tammi. Martin did another set and he was followed by Chris Dale.

He played quite a few Ska records, and they did get people dancing. Personally not a great fan of that genre but others love it. He also played quite a few soul tracks from the 60s: Hand It Over, Selfish One, Ain't Nothing But A House Party, etc. Ideal tunes to fit in with the ethos of a Motown night.

Very nice to see and chat to Carmel and Toni McGowan. The venue was St Pats Social Club, the dance floor looked good and the drinks were cheap. The only downside was that there was a limiter on the sounds and it went off occasionally. A nuisance to us attending but the venue adjoins houses and it can't be much fun to have music blaring into your house, we have to be fair to others.

The night finished at about 1.30, and Martin drove me back to north London pretty quickly. I got into bed at about 2.30, and eventually got up about 9 am to find that it'd snowed while I was asleep. Shock horror lol.