The Big Birmingham Soul Night Wigan Casino Reunion

In quite a contrast to my review of their 'Heart of Soul' event a few weeks back this as near to a perfect event as you can get. First off the venue is stunning - Grade I listed Town Hall designed by Joseph Hansom (he also invented the Hansom cab, by the way), beautifully restored a few years ago, with massive dance floor, big gallery, plaster ceiling, marble stairs; the very epitome of a grand Victorian (well Actually Georgian by a few years) Hall which very few buildings in Britain come close to. Inside is nicely done with two bars for this event, a downstairs room with a small dance floor and plenty of chill out space in the foyer. Lighting is also nice - magenta and blue which has a great effect. 

With that in place it would be hard to get the rest wrong and they didn't - good sets from all involved, I missed Richard Priest but other people said he was very good, Russ Winstanley being predictable but who cares, Alan King's was great, locals Sonny and Spare rounded things off nicely keeping things going for the last two hours. Downstairs I was very impressed with Glyn Preece (who runs the Wolverhampton based Out Of Time which gets consistently good reports) who played a great selection of R&B, 60's soul and Latin stuff. Only possible criticism was that the downstairs dance floor was a bit too small when it got really busy but people just danced on the carpet!

Great crowd of mixed ages with many local faces there including legendary dancers Rob Pearce and (world champion) Simon Walsgrove. 

Bit of a disaster sketching wise - did a postcard of Alan King that I then left on the table to dry and next thing I know it had gone - perhaps someone thought it was a really badly done flyer with no information on it , so that remains the unfinished (and disappeared 16th sketch of DJ's I've done so far) tried to draw Ed Edwards downstairs and did a reasonable one of Sonny & Spare on the main stage. Didn't get time to do a panoramic sketch (only there for 7 hours?!).

Well that's two five star reviews in the space of 8 days, I really must go and have a lie down; or go somewhere crap so I can give a 1 star review .

I rarely give 5 stars - I've noticed most reviews are by the promoters of the events who inevitably give 5 stars to everything. I am trying to be objective.