Thinksmart

Like a lot of venues it looks to of had a rock/prog/blues night specifically - here being Monday

Yes I heard a clip on Richard's Sunday show this week. Nice!

As a teenager when the Kent albums were coming out, I was buying them all. Ian's artwork was an intrinsic part of the enjoyment. It added so much intrigue, context and atmosphere when I didn't know the artists and pre-internet there wasn't anywhere to go find out. It's hard to convey how important they were to me then. I'd adore a book of the artwork which I've said here many times. Those covers front and back are imprinted on me, I read and scoured them so many times. Eventually when I met my know wife in '87, I loaned the whole set and many more compilations to a friend. When I surfaced and wanted them back, he said they were all damaged, gone, taken at parties. I was gutted, I still am. Then very soon after the CDs started being produced and I've had all of those. But as enjoyable as that is, it wasn't the same as those original Kent LP covers.

https://soultracks.com/news-john-edwards-lead-singer-of-the-spinners-dies-at-80/ RIP

Thanks Ted for all the promotion, enthusiasm and playing out of our great music. RIP

Thanks for the label, article, dedication and all the work involved. I do not collect vinyl any more but treasure the Hayley CDs which are in my private music server. It will be great if there is a non vinyl way to buy later issued tracks not on the CDs.

The first £100 record if I recall the anecdote correctly. RIP

For sale. Recently issued in February 2025, 4CD set 'There's No Stopping Us Now' on Edsel label in as new condition. Excellent sound quality. Used once. Sent promptly from Nottingham for UK buyers only. Contact via messaging at Forum. £25 + £4 postage and packaging (can add tracking and signed for at buyer cost). The set sells for £32 upwards when new. Payment via Paypal. I only have 1 set for sale, then this post will be closed. For details and tracklisting see link here: https://www.demonmusicgroup.co.uk/catalogue/releases/theres-no-stopping-us-now-the-female-mods-forgotten-story-4cd/ Thanks Mark

RIP. A very diverse musician, his music always has the 'feel good' factor. A lot more Soul over the years than his Jazz-Funk labelling would indicate.

There is a long history between France and Morocco, it used to be a French protectorate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France–Morocco_relations

Someone has to put up this Modern Soul classic. 'If It's Love That You Want' is great from the 1981 album, You're So Good, Just Can't Get Up Off Your Love, I'm Here, his version of Are You Lonely are all wonderful. There are lots of great choices in addition to the Welcome to my Room and Midnight Desire albums (which are essential and available together on a now deleted CD by Expansion that would be good to reissue). I put Randy Brown on random in my online music collection last night and the first track that played was Sweet, Sweet Darling I was looking at onscreen at the top of the thread. Curious!

It's not so much that AI rewrites history, it's that it doesn't have sufficient historical sources to work with in this area. The outcome though is the same, partial, often incorrect information based on incomplete, insufficient data sets. I recently did a speech explaining the opportunities and risks of AI in the energy sector. We got AI to do all the imagery working forward through the ages of humans into the future. It's interpretation when there isn't online content, is often wonky or speculative in a sci-fi way. For example AI understood that the industrial era had water wheels but not that they needed to be at a water source such as a river. Or that in the agricultural revolution preceding that, the farmers did not wear modern tweed flat caps. When talking about 'smart homes' it looked like product brocures in idealistic pictures we see in EV car adverts - because those are the sources it is working with. I used the recent AI assisted Northern Soul songs in the speech live as an illustration at one point - which became the hook that got people thinking afterwards (you can see it mentioned a lot at LinkedIn). Anything where the core knowledge is offline prior to the internet age or behind walls it cannot reach (old fora, chat groups, email groups such as the Keeping The Faith one some of us were in for example), then the AI results are often poor. Especially where this is outside official culture that has historians who have covered it. While we do have plenty of books, these likely haven't been ingested and a model trained on them. For Northern Soul, AI is picking up Wikipedia, news articles, social media, Youtube etc - but it doesn't have a context to refer back to that is extensive. Academic books often miss this as we know, a lot of the real knowledge in 'folk' culture isn't written or online. As such, in future we can envisage AI to produce shallow, often incorrect or partial information from pre-internet sources that do not have biographies/historical references to align to. What's written right now about these things at an online source that is accessible to AI, will likely become woven into the way it expresses its 'truth' in future. Getting writing folks!

Welcome all new joiners. Enjoy the forum. There's a lot of knowledge to be found searching in the archives here but don't be afraid to ask questions and dive in. It's great to read your experiences old and new.

Randy was brilliant. I play him a lot. RIP

Wow, that really is awful. Always enjoyed Modern Soul dancers such as 2 Bad Habits and Same Number, songs such as Visions and Dollar Bill in addition to the classic posted already. Far too soon. RIP

Very interesting to see, thanks

In addition to the ones with video links above there are others unmentioned. One example of course is (I'm Just Thinking About) Cooling Out - perhaps his last great song. The albums with Thelma Houston were great too - Find A Way, Let's Get Together, Don't Pity Me, Only The Beginning are all excellent, catchy Modern Soul dancers.

Two absolute classics by Jerry not mentioned so far: Plus of course... his version of Right Track unissued at the time

Chris Jasper has passed too at 73: https://metro.co.uk/2025/02/25/isley-brothers-legend-chris-jasper-dies-aged-73-22620753/?ito=article.mweb.share.floaty.whatsapp

Not mentioned so far...Feel Like Makin' Love. Duets with Peabo Bryson, her ace version of Compared To What but here's a Modern Soul gem from a soundtrack she did..

Sad to hear. RIP

Oh blimey, Henry Farnborough too. The Spinners are pivotal from 60s right up to decades later. RIP

One of the very best. RIP

Yes some interesting choices there. This release is of interest too of course: https://acerecords.co.uk/hit-run-more-motown-guys

One of the top class Soul singers across decades. Such a powerful, emotive and expressive voice but never too showy. I think of Tommy as a Classy Soul music artist from that marvellous Big City Soul era. I'll put a load of his music on during the next few days! RIP Tommy.