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So while I was looking up that Nick Cave thing for Bear, I came across this definition for Northern Soul on Allmusic.com:
Northern Soul, for many, is a meaningless term because it doesn't refer to any specific kind of music. For many others, it's a term that means everything. Where most soul genres are named for either the region that the music where the music was created, or for the sound of the music, Northern soul is named after where the music was played — in dance clubs in northern Britain. During the early '70s, once the mods had run out of steam and prog rock was ruling the landscape, there were a handful of underground dance clubs that played nothing but '60s soul records, and they weren't any ordinary oldies. Instead, the DJs at these clubs were obsessive collectors, finding the most obscure American soul singles. Usually, these records sounded like Motown, Chicago soul, or New York soul, but they were records by unknown or underappreciated performers; Major Lance was one of the biggest names on the scene. These records were dubbed Northern soul because of the clubs. Northern soul continued to gain popularity until the mid-'70s, when punk and disco stole its thunder; however, it never really faded away. Some clubs remained open and there was still a collectors' market for the singles, and many rare singles were going for astonishingly high prices. Most importantly, many clubgoers, from Marc Almond to Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs of St. Etienne, went on to form their own groups, which kept the spirit of Northern soul alive.
Now, in my ignorance, I'd thought that Northern Soul meant soul music recorded north of the Mason-Dixon line here in the US. I'd had no idea that there was such a thing in the UK. I've read a few articles about the Ska/Rocksteady & Mod movements going on in the UK, but read absolutly nothing about Soul music in the UK. So out of curiousity, here's some questions I've got:
*How does it differ from soul music here in the US in the same time peroiod? From the looks of it, it looks like the clubs were playing imported american sides.
*How did the UK soul sound different than the various US genres? How much of it was home grown?
*Then, like now, music lovers usually defined what they listened to by the way they dressed. How did these clubbers differentiate themselves from the Teds, Mods, etc.?
*How did this brand of soul segue into the music genres that were to come later on? I'm guessing that this was a big precursor to the Coventry Two-Tone scene that came about in the late 70's. Not to mention the new wave/new romantics--never thought I'd see "Marc Almond" & "Soul" used in the same sentence.
*Lastly (and most importantly), recommendations, recommendations, recommendations.... |
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