Davenpete

Douglas Gibson defo - just as well as that's the one I own. Dx

What amused me was the way a few years ago some people were making a big thing of collecting what they were terming 'acetates' - if you tried to tell them the difference in kudos and importance between an actual studio acetate and some poxey EMidisc they just couldn't get their head round it (including a certain 'well known DJ' who dimwits were raving about for playing Loving By The Pound 'off acetate' - despite the fact that everyone with a modicum of inside info knew full well had been cut from the Do The Crossover Baby CD). Dx

Some bird in the front row was giving him the come on - but his mates had warned him off after she'd cheated on them and he didn't want to risk falling for her. Apparently she was just a little flirt. Dx

It would help if you weren't asking about second rate chart garbage. Dx

My first allnighter (Curtis Mayfield) courtesy of Tony Adams from Banbury (where I was at college)... Funnily enough I didn't enjoy it that much - but I was a daft little mod at the time and rather overwhelmed and under-wrecked. I remember in later years (86 or 7) a porn magazine being passed round at Knutsford by Geordie Martin (this was around his spud gun period) which much to everyone's amusement contained a long and detailed letter from two girls claiming they went to the nighter regularly to get off their heads and pick up lads to go at round the back by the bins. Dx

'Always filling the floor' does not necessarily mean good! Basically that means the three cheesiest oldies. Dx

Surely it's 'WAIT, you've only known him one week or two'. Dx

The boss says that when he first started going (Wheel) everyone owned a copy of Stay With Me (and indeed a lot of em loved the Stones too) but that didn't mean they should be or ever were played during the time when northern had become 'northern'. I think the watering down of the scene and the changing of the sound to suit DJs or audiences personal tastes is the biggest danger - I think this is partly because some people have become so obsessed with playing 'new' northern that they have lost sight of 'is it good enough?' - some of the stuff that gets posted on facebook etc etc is just crap and that's why it wasn't played back in the day (or even my day)... As SO many have over the years my plea is to hear genuinely forgotten quality oldies and new stuff that is genuinely unknown but is genuinely good enough... Fact is there IS a finite number of tracks that are 'right' for a northern venue that sticks to its guns, but if you include the vast pantheon of great tracks of the past (many of which of course were lost in the rush of new things turning up) - hell I hardly ever hear much of the 'proper' northern tracks I really LOVE (I KNOW a lot of em are rare, but so is a lot of the dirgy shite that people ARE playing) - you could literally DJ for days and days with this stuff unrepeated without dropping the quality and without 90% of people having heard it more than once or twice in the last 10 years (it was this that to my mind Lifeline did so wonderfully). In my past Ska/Reggae, full-on Latin, psyche and early RnB were very popular too amongst nighter goers (indeed I collected A LOT of full-on RnB in the late 80s - I never played it at 'northern' nighters nor thought it should be myself), more recently funky northern and salsa type stuff - it's OK to like em, just don't convince yourself they're 'northern' because you want to be 'allowed' to like it without feeling you're betraying your northern roots. So I guess my view is that a pure scene WILL survive, but ONLY if it sticks to its musical guns - the greatest danger is that it will be watered down into a homogeneous mush of vaguely dance soul sounding pop - because if there's nothing to make it stand out, there's no reason to get into it as opposed to anything else. I remember meeting a guy outside the 100 Club in the 80s who had been a serious mod in the 60s - never missed a Flamingo - and stopped going when it closed - he was worried sick that the sound of 'soul' had been turned into some pale shadow and was literally in tears when he got in and heard it was still 'right' - I don't want to be him myself in 20 years standing in a venue in tears because I've discovered it's become some kiss me quick, 'now that's what I call northern' jivebunny theme park version of the real thing - better that it contracts to a tiny group of people into the real thing. Dx

We have quite a few copies of this mag going back to mid-67 (along with some very early Blues and Soul) that Les Cokell gave us way back - there's some amazing levels of knowledge given the time. Dx

Actually NO you can't copy labels perfectly nowadays (at least not to the eye of someone in the print business) - most of the cheapo cheapo local labels' production runs were printed letterpress on coloured paper (pretty impossible to get nowadays in the right weight) or overprinted on pre-printed litho labels (hence the splodgy type on most - especially with silver text) - letterpress is literally almost impossible to get done now as nobody has the presses any more... It would be possible to absolutely perfectly copy a record (matrix stamps and all) if you had unlimited access to master cutting (to get the run ins and runouts right etc etc) and a granvure die maker to do the matrix stamps etc - but the record would probably cost you at least a couple of grand before it ever went on press. Dx

I'm sorry but (between this and the other thread) what an absolute load of sanctimonious double think and unfair point scoring against Ian, with anyone offering any comments to try and add balance to the pack mentality being accused of being in cahoots with him in some way. As I understand it from what's been said in this thread: 1. Those people who have received them have been made to promise on their honour that they would never sell them - or pass them on to any third party. 2. Ian has made no attempt to sell any of these and has circulated them only to a very small group of people. 3. Many of the discs have never been released on 45 - so how could they be passed off as 'originals' 4. The world is absolutely awash with bootlegs being passed off as the real thing for profit - why are these not far more offensive than what Ian is doing. 5. Over the years you and I know that there are many respected DJs who've got up to it (I could name specifics but I won't) - I've never previously seen Ian accused of it - despite as probably the greatest breaker of new discoveries ever he has been in the best position imaginable to do so (coz nobody knew what the real thing looked like). 6. As these seem to simply be label lookalikes on standard vinyl any collector worth the name should be able to spot the lack of matrix stamps etc etc Dave

Moved to the other thread Dx

Long before my time (The Torch) but wasn't Too Much played first - seem to remember a review somewhere commenting about the stunning new vocal to Jimmy Conwell. Dx

Never actually heard it at a nighter - had it on a tape Mickey Cruise gave me many years ago (had a lot of very very rare obscure things on it, at least at the time, like the MBs - who always sounded like they actually WERE the Merseybeats to me! and the Mello Souls long before it was being played) and loved it instantly - had no idea what it was for a LONG time - I notice its very hard to find boots of it now (all simply having the vocal of Dont Start None instead) - the lyrics are just brilliant whilst the backing is out of this world - overall immeasurably better than Bobby Callendar etc. There are certainly quite a few records that I absolutely worship but never dance to simply because I wanted to listen as closely as possible to them - things like The Sonatas Going Down The Road, The Mello Souls We Can Make It, John Edwards The Look On Your Face, Linda Clifford You Are You Are, The Masqueraders How (and a number I use to just sit back quietly and enjoy watching my friends loving on the floor) loads more besides (now THAT would be a weird set!) - all stuff with brilliant lyrics, plus a lot of things I love but can't catch the beat on like the Admirations (just CANNOT dance to it). I also have stuff that I love that I almost never play at home and guess I ration myself to like Herbert Hunter. Johhny Gilliam is another one - I could only listen to it a couple of times a year coz it just poleaxed me - specially in my black dog times years ago when it used to knock me suicidal - sold my second one last year but I've no doubt I'll buy it again. Dx

Loved the Fleet - was my first regular allnighter (hence my only going to Stafford a couple of times - couldn't afford to travel that far on my own) - used to ride down every month with Martin Midgley from Bradford (best acrobat I ever saw) and Striker on scooters from Hull. Back room used to be great to dance in - pitch black. Used to be a lot of really crap squad (rugby shirts and trainers) that used to get a lot of very vocal abuse - later Cambridgeshire muscled in and then they got nasty, pulling people off the dancefloor, grabbing people in the Coach and Horses car park, pulling people on the approach roads etc (specially the night Smiggy, John, Pauline, Annecia and Anne got had - though that was Mr Buck's period). Dedicated Soul Club started 83 (I have the patch dated 83) - ended because DR got rounded up in Crossbow as I remember. Dave made a living running dodgy burger vans on Scooter rallies and running events at rallies. A lot of great 70s/modern being played there - Eddie Holman, Lifestyle, the Softones, Alfie Davison, Greg Perry, Sadane and Skip Mahony etc etc etc being really big sounds in the main room. A lot of course more or less new releases at the time - for which I guess we have SG to thank. Dx

Shall we say, much as I loved it, I wasn't 'tempted' by the copies of the Q (he had about 100 on a rather dubious orange Hound rather than grey label) - I'm sure you guys remember what an extremely slippery bugger he was and I know he was in direct contact with the group at the time... Take your own inference from that. I also remember you Ted ringing up Salisbury Road frantically before the boy Huff had even got home! Dx

1020 to 1033 - WHAT an amazing string of records in such a short space of time. Dx

Danny Huff (he was my landlord at the time) coming back from New Orleans with two copies of the Cairos on his first trip in 1990 (amongst a heap of other stuff). Dx

Assuming you're talking about the modern RnB scene as opposed to the very earliest days of Northern Soul. Probably the key events that were specifically 'RnB' were Brian Rae's RnB allnighters 1991-93 (I DJed at most of these, along with Mark Bicknell who was really heavily into it at the time and played a major role in spreading the word through spots at Bradford etc, and I think Roger Banks and Allan Millington did some), there were about 10 of these at various venues in central Manchester contemporaneous to Brian/Tim Ashebende's hugely popular Twisted Wheel revivials (one had over 2000 people stufffed into the venue with all seven rooms of Placemate 7 open) which were heavily RnB centred, being much more musically 'high brow' than the Wheel revivals of today. The stated aim of these was to play dance RnB imports that would have been spun/popular at the Wheel had they been known before RnB fell largley by the wayside at the venue in the late 60s. There was a lot of tape swapping about at the time centred on RnB at the time. Whilst not big, these events were attended by a lot of people who went on to promote or DJ RnB who tended to be sat around madly scribbling down records. The stuff played was very much what we'd call 'Rhythmn and Soul' rather than that jump blues crap that RnB as a played genre later dissolved into... Things like Jimmy Armstrong's I Won't Believe It Till I See It and LaVern Baker's Wrapped Tied and Tangled and a lot of Kent, Modern, Duke and Peacock stuff - much of which had been played at the Wheel - people wouldn't even consider most of it 'RnB' nowadays - just soul. Another factor was the London Mod scene and the early Moustrap allnighters at the 100 Club from about 1991 - though these were very poppy by comparison - with a lot of psych stuff like Electric Prunes, John's Children and Davy Jones being played. Overall though there had been a rapidly increasing amount of RnB appearing at allnighters from the mid-80s - I guess kicked off by the popularity of RnB at Stafford and particularly just post Stafford at the 100 Club. Saus was also a major RnB mover and shaker in the early 90s (as Roger became too of course), turning up a lot of stuff and tracks he sold to other DJs who then got the credit for them. Dx

Weren't they also The Corner Boys as in 'Gang Wars (just don't make no sense)' on Neptune? Dx

My favourite one I noticed years ago is that Skiing in the Snow has the same writers, producers and arrangers as Native New Yorker. Dx

Very much a tune of its time - the mid-80s - had a soft spot for it back then. Dx PS It was a biggy for Tony Clayton.

Jungle - as in concrete jungle. The old 'this I feel will bust my pants' has got to be the best. Dx

Original pics are VERY scarce and usually expensive and usually still in copyright. Most of those in CDs come from collectors (often specialists in black music promo pics). Dx

Eddie - Wasn't there also an early club out on the Coventry road right next to where it now crosses the M40? Remember Tony Adams pointing it out to me back when I was still at college in Banbury. Dave Les Cokell was involved in promoting it (possibly with Franny) - he certainly DJed there, it's only a few miles from Settle where he grew up. Dx