Thinksmart

The early CD era was great for me, I devoured them all and still do. Then that combined with legal downloads. By the early 1990s the Motown Northern Soul discoveries were starting to leak out on CD illegally and then legally. That coincided with lots more venues and nighters again. It's slowing down now in compilations but lots of new Soul music to enjoy as mentioned in the relevant thread here. Bandcamp is good now too I find.

I laid my hands on every cheap Soul complilation I could in the early 1980s... All the various Motown ones, Casino Classics, Out On The Floor by Inferno Records, the two Keepin' The Faith on PRT (https://www.discogs.com/release/2926498-Various-Keepin-The-Faith), the early GoldSoul, Rare Soul Uncovered and first Kent LPs. Some would even turn up in my local Woolworths which had rotating stock every week (a brilliant double LP of Veejay blues and soul I've never seen since and not listed anywhere). As soon as I got access, I'd raid Rob's Records in Nottingham every week, especially once I was a Saturday lad on the Victoria fish market about 1983 and had earnings. I'd also go downstairs into Pendulum Records and buy everything new that week, usually 2-3 Kent compilations and equivalent a week. Then once I caught up, it was onto collecting singles. Ah happy days!

Nice enough but Jessie's vocal is too high in the mix, at least in the online play. Is it a demo? What's the Yvonne Baker on it? I'd buy it on legal download (as I do a lot) but it seems to be vinyl only.

I've only heard this one once on Solar Radio and nowhere else or again there. It's from end of last year. Definitely not one for NS purists, it's kind of an update to 1970s Modern Soul style with nice Soul claps and definitely danceable. It has quite a distinct sound and a deliberately odd ending.... it intrigued me enough to buy it download and it often appears in my head, so embedded itself there. I like that it evokes but doesn't copy any particular style.

On Gina Sedman's new album 1972, the song 'Like A Whisper' stands out, a gentle mid-tempo song that doesn't try too hard and is all the more powerful for it.

The new 7:45s album 'Spinning' out a couple of weeks ago has three songs that are very Northern Soul in style that I'll embed below. I'm always in two minds about this, I'm generally more comfortable when an artist is not trying to deliberately create the NS sound but I'm also grateful for new releases carrying on this aspect of Soul Music. The first track here evokes it well, but is it 'too on the nose'? I could see it being played out at some venues but the Youtube channel is definitely trying to make a direct association. We know that for some it causes some discomfort when music is specifically targetted towards and promoted inwards to the scene. Also 'We Will Be Friends' is brass-led midtempo 80s-style modern. 'The Music's Always There For You' is Disco Soul

Enjoying this one over the weekend, can we have volume 2 next week?

A standout from the new Durand Jones and the Indications album 'Flowers'. This has an early 1970s uptempo Soul sound similar to Major Harris, The Artistocrats, The Originals etc. Sounds more full and powerful on the album than Youtube will represent. Darn it, just saw that Mike posted the same track earlier. Feel free to remove this duplicate post, I cannot see a delete option.

The Whispers had a huge discography across many decades, with great music in each. They makes for great home listening in all eras, possibly so many releases and successful they are perhaps less appreciated than equivalents such as The Dells. I have a double CD of the Janus era that covers five years and is all great. Then there is the Solar era and smooth Soul that followed. Plus the 60s Dore tracks. RIP and thank you.

Playing this today and it's a scorcher of a compilation. Feel good, uptempo Rhythm and Blues, it's a delightful listen. I was taken by how a good proportion of these feel equally Northern Soul, which perhaps is a reflection of how the genres have blurred and Northern Soul has embraced earlier music. R&B was always there from the start (and before that), but if this had been released as an NS themed release a fair number of the tracks wouldn't of batted anyone's eyelids on that basis. From whatever perspective, it's just a wonderful, heart warming release. The Love Train - Gamble and Huff Songbook CD is great too and had me singing along internally. It also showed how versatile their songs are to interpretation. Volume 2 must be planned already....surely.... Just keep them coming Kent! It makes my month when the CDs arrive from you, since the early LPs to today.

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