macca

'tis true. but some peeps would pooh-pooh the idea. whaaaat? R&B? give over! love that 'chopping' rythmn too... macca

mud - it'll be lonely this christmas no, seriously folks... bruce springsteen & the e street band's romp through 'santa claus is comin' to town' still gets to me. especially the corny sleigh bell intro. I was witnessing the 'gotterdammerung' of my second big relationship. it came out xmas 85. we'd drunkenly danced to the record on xmas eve, but then in february we were no more... boo-hoo... M

a great record. one curious thing to note is that the chord progression is basically a 12 bar blues, I know 'cos I play it slowed down on the old geetar. love the sax break too... M

I wanna be your pizza pie man. crap record. crap title. m

I can follow this perfectly 'cos as a kid I used to receive oor wullie & the broons annuals at christmas from my ulster irish-scots relatives in maryhill. now dialect is a particularly emotive word today. I think accent would be the most appropriate word here. as in glaswegian kelvinside or edinburgh (auld reekie) morningside where a creche happens to be a nasty accident involving a vehicle. I assume gaup is gawp, meaning to look indiscreetly at sb/sth. an anglo-saxon verb strangely enough, but then again, the saxon kingdom of northumbria stretched from the humber to the forth with its royal seat at edwin's burgh. that wouldn't seem very scots now, would it? now then, this scottish national socialist party. where exactly on the political spectrum can they be found? would they be on the far right as their name implies? keb hardly exudes far right foam from his mush, does he?

so, the cogniscenti say pink & white, plus reports of another on a maroon/purple label, which some say are originals, but others dismiss as boots/reissues. the levine mecca maroon/purple copy story is VERY interesting. I started off something here. I'm buggered if I'm gonna pay more than a fiver for a boot though. it's psychological. I'd rather not have the record, but then again I'm probably 2 stops short of the ford factory too.

my original was pink. courtesy of john manship, circa 1989. it cost me a tenner. this is a boot in my book, therefore a fiver max. all this 'rare pressing lark' is preposterous in my opinion. a boot is a boot. or is that just me? M

https://cgi.ebay.com/DON-THOMAS-COME-ON-TRA...1QQcmdZViewItem I sold my original about 5 years ago for around 30 euros. these people are two stops short of dagenham. 17 bids!! M

yes, but he uses the term 'mega rare northern', doesn't he? by that description, I would assume that the record was an original, but would ask for clarification just in case. I would also ask about returns/refunds etc. for his volume of trade, his negative feedback is quite low. he also seems a communicative seller. I would say proceed with caution. I might try him on some cheap stuff. I see he's offering the coasters 'crazy baby' with a stamped atlantic distribution mark. 1 bid with 6 days to go...

that paquidermal intro to 'the zoo' by the commodores was considered a bit wacky back then. wot a floor packer though!! M

for drawing me into this music in the first place & 'cos nobody's mentioned it, surprisingly, I'd vote for jimmy james 'a man like me'. those stateside demos still look buckin' good. dusty, aka mary isabel catherine bernadette o'brien, has been mentioned a lot. who said the irish were europe's blacks? the greatest white female r&b/soul artist to leave the shores of the british isles, without a shadow. however, a considerable amount of her 'classic' stuff was recorded in memphis under the aegis of wexler, beckett & dowd. the more poppy 'easy listening' stuff with bacharach & david, randy newman & carole king in NYC. does john mile's 'one minute every hour' count too? I recall it being bandied as northern soul at the youth club circa 1973. it was certainly big & really no worse than some of the more 'poppy' stuff mentioned on here... M

very fond memories of this track. I think it was the first thing I heard when I passed through the casino's doors for the first time on feb 2nd 1975, either that, or the salvadors, or larry santos, or dena barnes... the old memory doesn't serve me very well, alas... has anybody stopped to think about this song's mariachi flavour? there's definitely a tex-mex feel to it... get the old mescal out & give it some!! a clarion call intro too. they seemed to be so important back then... I remember cheryl gray's version being popular at st.ives circa 1977. ginger used to spin it I think. frantic pace, though marred by an over-white vocal in my opinion...

an interesting debate. I never considered moses smith to be a closet pop record. that intro always used to warm the old cockles. you could be hearing some really cutting edge new stuff from richard searling or soul sam, circa 76/77 & when someone rolled out an old war horse like paul anka, johnny caswell, earl grant, salvadors etc, I used to find it enormously uplifting. however, sometime in 1978, I began to loath nearly everything I heard, I mean records like kiki dee, barry benson, helen shapiro, ben zine, lou roberts, cobblestone, 7 dwarfs, teddy vann, ral donner, peggy march, paul anka's other jobbie, holly st.james (yes!), joannie summers, jackie forrest etc; I know some of you will violently disagree with me on this one, but I felt depths were really being trawled that year. I began to lose interest in a big way, & it wasn't as if I could gravitate towards the funk rooms, hideous places peopled by Djs with names like duke polluta, I kid you not. it was at a notts palais all-dayer. I think most of us who felt like that just weathered the storm until west hampstead & the 100 club came along, but that's another story... right, a soul record masquerading as pop? this is a bit like animal farm. 4 legs good, two legs bad etc, david & the giants springs to mind, & he was black I believe. anything by the drifters. gene mcdaniels is a bit 'polished' for my ears. walter jackson wanted desperately to be a mainstream pop performer, but a voice to die for all the same... can't think of any others right now. macca

gimme a tardis. I wouldn't be on cleethorpes pier, nor in tunstall, nor in brazenose/whitworth st or station road. I'd be at a wynonie harris gig in harlem in 1942, watching real acrobats work it on out. there's nothing, absolutely nothing to compare with those guys. they started it all off. I went to two of the above gaffs & I must be one of the few who wouldn't want to go back. now don't get me wrong, days of wine & rose etc; but it was once in a lifetime, part of growing up etc; no, I'd rather have the opportunity to see something REALLY revolutionary, like Louis Jordan & HIs Tympany Five on 52nd street. Real R&B, Real dancing...

gonna be awfully predictable chaps... mr. john vincent. this man could play matt lucas 'you better go go' & donald austin 'you want it you got it' back to back. those were the days... if he were on the scene today? he'd probably have gone back to his Jazz/ R&B roots. I remember a conversation with him at peterborough one night about this. I was none the bloody wiser, I assumed he was talking about little hank. it was more likely to be les mccann, herbie mann, monguito santamaria etc; macca

over here in spain, things are generally OK. I live in a flat, so all the post boxes are on the ground floor. the slot is big enough for a standard package of say 2 or 3 records, but if it's too big, he leaves me a note to pick it up from the main PO the following day. I have had records left on my doorstep though. a quick chat to the PO manager soon put a stop to that though... macca

I can remember one night at wigan watching a bunch of very manic geezers, near the stage, 'giving it some' to the guys from uncle 'the spy'. all those feet lashing out aggressively in all directions, pretty dangerous to be up close... I never saw the gals do it. must've been a macho thing... macca

what category would you put roscoe shelton 'running for my life' in? certainly stomps... macca

I associate the word 'stomper' with the typical 100mph torch era stuff. shuffling with blackpool mecca & cleethorpes circa 1975, when they used to play esther phillips 'what a difference a day makes', it was more like stamping with that record. then there was that ridiculous hop, skip, jump thing, popular at the time of lloyd michaels 'the flasher', in fact I think it came out of that record alone. then there was that very spectacular variant on 'shuffling' called 'scatting', which is a jazz term really. another cleethorpes 'manifestation' if I'm not wrong... macca

nope. I live in spain & while there's a very healthy scene, I doubt very much you'd see 'portly' 45 year olds attempting such things here. there are lots of twenty something skins & austin powers types, mind. macca

I actually blame the 'peer pressure' of the NS scene for my discal hernia (L4/5)... I never was the world's most agile dancer, even at 16. but I insisted on attempting those backdrops, splits etc, my wrists & thumbs also suffered the consequences. over a 4 year period, my spinal column took enough punishment to cause a long term injury. I'd stopped trying by 1979, it somehow didn't seem 'appropriate' anymore. I asked the specialist here about it & whilst he was unaware of the NS phenomenon, he said that regular 'cod-gymnastic' activity, undertaken under the 'wrong' conditions, in an otherwise 'sendentary' life, could easily lead to such injuries. so there you have it. why couldn't I just be content shuffling about like all those 'too cool for their own good' mecca types? I have lived to regret it, sadly... macca

by 'ploughing up' the floor, I was only referring to the so called 'stunts'. I tried to dance to eddie parker's 'love you baby' in my living room the other day, without the stunts of course, but the results were extremely depressing I can assure you.