Soulsides

On way back from Asda just now..got this on special offer.

I brought my eldest son up on a diet of hundreds of Soul,Funk and Jazz records from the moment he was born .I would play him loads of stuff on Motown and Stax ,Otis, Carla Thomas,The MG's and Stevie Wonder,also records on Blue Note,Verve,Vanguard and the CTI labels, Duke Ellington,Freddie Hubbard and Count Basie etc. Curtis Mayfield and James Brown and Marvin Gaye were spun quite a lot too. I've been a musician for almost forty years now so I've always had a studio set up at home all through my sons lifetime and around the age of 10 my boy suddenly decided to become a rapper hehe so I would make little tracks for him to rap over and make tape recordings of him which I still have , much to his embarrassment ! The reason for this story is that around the age of 15 or 16 my son went off the rails somewhat and we had a few problems with him which I wont go into here but needless to say I managed to reign him in and got him into college and onto an access course for a prospective place at university. After 2 years at the college and just over 3 years at uni my son is soon to graduate next summer as a fully qualified sound engineer, he's been recording and producing bands,running the live audio at gigs and producing his own music and beats and tracks for other aspiring artists and singers.He literally spends every day and any spare moment he has making music of some description in the studio. So next year my son can both finally and officially call himself a 'Doctor Of Sound' once he's graduated. I sincerely couldn't be more proud of him.

I've just popped into the bookies while the wife's in Tesco and stuck a tenner on Len Goodman making a suprise appearance at odds oft 66/1 by leaping out of the audience and doing some backdrops and karate kicks if 'Sliced Tomatoes' gets a spin.

0ne Question. Is talc allowed on the dancefloor for this 'event' ?

If they don't dance to 'Out On The Floor' I'm going to refuse to pay the BBC for my TV license from now on. Personally, I can't wait for Breakdancing week where Brendan Cole and Debbie McGee will attempt to imitate Crazy Legs from the Rocksteady Crew's signature 'windmill' move while dancing to The Incredible Bongo Band's version of 'Apache' by The Shadows. Ho hum.

Same here with the regard to buying and discovering of records from the 1960s & 70s era which for myself will always be the period for the greatest music but lately I've also come to quite like and appreciate some of the Funky Soul tunes that Hope Street records have released. For anyone who is unfamiliar with Hope Street it's a fairly new Australian label formed in 2009 by Bob Knob ( great name !)) and another bloke who's name temporarily escapes me. I think the people at Hope Street have the right intentions and have a proper appreciation for Soul related music and it certainly isn't a big corporate type set up with an eye on making records solely for the Pop charts. This is a nice one. I also think this lady and her band are pretty good.

Good point. A few years back a friend of my wife's was obsessed with Amy Winehouse and her music. Now,I'm not knocking Amy because I think she had a real passion for the style of music she was paying homage to but my wife's friend acted like Amy Winehouse invented this stuff .One time my wife's friend came over ,we got chatting about music and i asked her if she had ever heard of singers like Esther Phillips,Ruby Winters and the like,she hadn't so I played some of those artists records for her and instantly she understood that this was the genuine article..job done , no beating around the head ,just me playing some great songs for her and opening her eyes to something she had no idea existed. On a similar tip I've worked for many years in Hip Hop production and a lot of the kids come to me wanting to sound like Tupac or Eminem or whoever is popular that particular week. Most of them have no idea that the Hip Hop records they want to imitate are built from samples of old Funk,Soul and Jazz records and think that these rappers are somehow responsible for the sounds involved, so you play them the original tracks and at first they're all crestfallen but then it's like a little lightbulb goes off in their heads and they get it and understand where the roots of the music actually come from. As I said you don't have to beat people round the head, just steer them in the right direction and they can ultimately draw their own conclusions to what the real deal actually is and not the watered down and commercialized version of the artform they are listening to or being influenced by...

I could have picked several but I've been listening to this lady quite a bit recently. I probably should have chosen Patti Austin though tbh..

It's just music for children in my opinion. It's all style and no substance. Virtually all of the contemporary Pop musicians I've heard in recent years with very few exceptions, couldn't even write a note to the milkman .

Wow...what a brilliant thread ! The stories here are truly entertaining and an absolute joy to read.

The Dells or possibly Gene Chandler. Both have too many amazing tracks to mention but if I had to pick just one 'Its All Up To You' by The Dells would be my all time #1 Northern Soul record . G.C.'s version of 'There Was A Time' is absolutely phenomenal with incredible delivery and passion from the first to last note A most honourable mention must go to Edwin Starr, Timi Yuro and Major Lance here too !