Timillustrator

There seems to be a lot of it about on bootlegs, was that because they didn't break out of Spain at the time due to political reasons? This is another goodie, spot the original!

Another interesting Spanish one, a rather pedestrian version of A Little Bit Hurt, in English.

There were a few German language versions of UK hits too - I have "Sie Leibt Dich" (She Loves You) by the Beatles, and the Spencer Davis Group also did "Get War In Schoneberg" which is a pop song with the chorus being the tune of Little Latin Lupe Lu.

It is, Dutch! (according to Google Translate) not far off the original but sounded Scandanavian to me at first.

Very nice, interesting name - they were apparently named after the Canary Islands where they were from.

In a similar vein to an previous thread about US Garage bands, a couple of the posts there were actually European bands in a vaguely similar style. A couple here from Spain in their native tongue (one of which it has been pointed out is actually Philly Dog Around the World with different lyrics). The Sheila one was posted elsewhere on another forum (The Snake with different lyrics, but I reckon you could actually get away with playing this!). The Shocking Blue one is much more on the Psych side but in my defence I've heard this played at a soul night by a respected local DJ. Admittedly this stuff never really crossed over onto the Northern Scene but I reckon some of it could do? Anyone else got any more?

Nice, that organ and the guitar at the end are pretty garagey too. What's the Buffalo Springfield song?

I've noticed one or two DJ's seem to keep tweaking up the bass to the point where there's buzzing and feedback or the records jump due to the pulsing. It seems to be as the venue fills though after a couple of hours so there's more background noise and more bodies to absorb the reverberation.

Great list Grahame, I'd dance to nearly all of them - In Orbit and Going To A Happening in particular I'd drop whatever I was doing and run to the dancefloor. I'd echo SoundsOKEH; you'd hear a good number of these played in the West Midlands on any given night. In fact I was out last night at a small soul night in a village about 15 miles away and tonight at a larger event with two rooms and some bigger name DJ's (just got in actually) and from my (bad) memory I would say the following were played at one or the other: Wade in the Water, Tony Galla - In Love, Long After tonight Is All Over (a classic set ender), Hide Nor Hair, Soultime, Duke Browner, Tomangoes and The Younghearts. Of course that's only 8 so 5% of your list so I could see you may think that people are not playing popular stuff but go out every week and by the law of averages you'd pretty much hear the whole lot over 20 weeks. There is a lot more out there though and as BabyBoyAndMyLass says these are all top 500 so some people, particularly those who do go out every week, will have heard some of these played to death. I think the more you go out the broader your horizons will become and you'll see that these do get played but some have become so hackneyed that much of the audience will not be delighted to hear them - the ones that spring to mind are Frank Wilson (you sometimes hear it but it really depends on the venue), Afternoon of the Rhino - which I don't think I've ever heard played out and Sliced Tomatoes which seems to be taboo after the B&Q advert!

It would be interesting to see your list, I like to see other people's perspectives on things. If you could save it to your computer somewhere as a PDF or JPG you should just be able to drag it into a post as you type below.

Hi Grahame, Good post! I'm not sure the vinyl or non-vinyl is the issue here, lots of DJ's will have (as others have said) various top 500 tunes with them and most will play one or two at least. I suspect it may be the venues you've been to. Locally to me there are Rare/Northern Soul events that range from mainly top 500 to mainly not top 500 with all shades in between; I haven't counted but I'd say probably every night you'd hear at least 10 or so or sometimes a lot more. I also think you need to look at it from a DJ's point of view - say you'd been DJing since the 70's and collected records all that time, you'll want to play all the stuff you think is great much of which will be new, not just the same 150 records over and over again. It would get so stale, even if you love those records, after the 500th spin anyone would get a bit bored. So I don't think it's snobbery more like sanity! Having said that there are venues that just unashamedly play popular stuff - there are a couple not that far from me. One is billed as a "Soul night" has video DJ's and apparently plays a bit of Northern, a lot of Motown, 70's + 80's soul etc. I've not been to that though. The other I have been to is similar - popular soul Cameo, a bit of Michael Jackson, Luther Vandross, Barry White, Billy Ocean some 60's and again a few Northern things. It was OK, free in more a place to have a drink than a dance although some people did. These events are not listed on soul source though, I think they are both on Facebook. I think what you are suggesting would, however, be the worst of both worlds - by not having a vinyl policy it would alienate most people on the soul scene but at the same time sticking to the top 500 even would alienate the more casual dance music fan who only know the S song, DILY and one or two others and would find most of the top 500 obscure.

That's my point. You may say I am "stuck in a timewarp with a narrow selection criteria" but I am only pointing out what does work, at least in my area. I'm into loads of music but accept that whilst I'd love to go to a night of, say, free and avant garde jazz or delta blues or 70's and 80's hip hop I'd probably be the only one there and can't imagine any local kids being interested in attending.

It's a nice thought. I think I do tend to agree with soundsOKEH though (at the risk of being called grumpy), it may be regional thing but I don't know of any venue in the Midlands or North that plays that type or age of music; there may well be an audience for it in your area, there may be in mine but I don't know because it's just not something that gets played out anywhere. There is definitely an audience for 60's/70's northern soul, there is certainly a (mainly completely different) disco audience, there are a few modern soul places. None of them is particularly made up of people in their early 20's though. Having said that if there's nothing else in town who knows? But equally perhaps playing mid 80's hardcore punk would? or 90's indie? or rap? I wouldn't have a clue.

I'd be interested - I usually drive so only have one drink and it wouldn't bother me, but if I took a friend or my wife they wouldn't want to go somewhere without alcohol. Interestingly the church hall opposite my office does monthly swing dance nights, they're popular with no alcohol but you can bring your own drink and food, they share the food communally on a table. Perhaps the opposite of a soul night crowd though - couples in their 20's, I'm usually the token 'older' person at 50!

Was very good, great film of John Lee Hooker, Son House and Muddy Waters as well as many others. Worth watching on catch up.

It would be easy enough to do if you had a few hours - you can download a list, paste it into XL and then (the slow part) import the high and low values from Discogs. Would probably take about 8 and a half hours if each Discogs entry took 1 minute to input.

Always had Technics for home use since the 1980's, never had a problem, actually never heard anyone say they could do anything bad to your records?! Sounds like snobbery to me.

Slightly off topic but I have been to a couple of swing dance nights locally recently. I'm just 50, at the average NS I am usually one of the youngest, at swing dance nights I am one of the oldest - most people are in their 20's or 30's, including the organisers. The music is all "oldies"; mostly (as far as I can tell) from the 1940's or 1950's but no "nostalgia" as it was all released 30 years before most people there were even born, all played off an iPad as well, no vinyl in sight. I just thought it was an interesting contrast - young people are interested in old music (way older than NS) but doing it their way. Swing dance is huge by me as well, there's something on most weekends.

In my limited experience younger people don't buy vinyl, actually my young nephew (16) does but Emo/Pop punk stuff, my two other nephews (mid 20's) have a bit, all genres. Few of their friends though or my kids or their friends do. A quick straw poll of them came up with "why?", "you can stream it", it's on Spotify", "I don't have a record player/CD player", actually very few of them buy CD's they seem to be almost obsolete, my son (17) reckons more of his friends own vinyl than CD's but that's still not many of them. Virtually 100% of the music they all listen to is on smartphones.

A lot has been written by people over time about what are the "correct" type of trousers to wear. I'm with BabyBoyAndMyLass, there's nothing in the world less important than the kind of trousers that other people wear. Who cares!??!?

Sorry I was being a bit flippant, I really meant the people on Facebook who were certainly dissing Stoke specifically.

Apologies for reviving this thread but on a Facebook forum someone is saying they went to Stoke this month and the floor was empty, numbers down etc. Is it just a regular "bash Stoke" post or is there a trend?

Nice one, if I ever write a book I know who to ask (or should that be whom?).

There's some horrific typos in that preview and some dodgy punctuation. Looks like no one proofread it.