Berni - Northern Soul Selection.
 

After watching a ton of NAMM videos from this winters show my ears where in meltdown & could not take another synth/beatbox/software demo...enough already with the bleeping glitchy nonsense. Time to dig out some old school vinyl. Although I am a true electronic music lover sometimes I just need to step away from it. My escape is usually classical but this time I reached for my box of old 7" Northern Soul classic's...oh what joy :D
For those not familiar with this rather strange dance sub culture, read on.

It started in the 60's by a bunch of DJ's from the Northwest of England where I originally come from. These guys collected old soul & rare groove records that where never hits when they where released in the states & had a more raw & unpolished sound compared to the Staxx & Motown records of the time. They would use old ballrooms & dance halls to play 'All nighters' where people would come to literally dance all night to these rare soul tracks.
It's popularity soon spread across the country but the term Northern Soul stuck which is really weird because it was all black american music that this bunch of white people where dancing too. Non of it was made in the North of England.
It also had some influence on some 'pop' acts which the scene particularly hated. Most notably Soft Cell's cover of Gloria Jones's "Tainted Love" which gave them a #1 hit in the UK & US. They also covered another Northern Soul classic "What" by Judy Street after the success of Tainted Love. Both tracks are on my half hour Northern Soul mini mix here...

http://soundcloud.com/dj-berni-2/nor...ul-selection-3

Not the best recordings ever made but they are all over a half a decade old & made by real musicians with traditional instruments & people who could actually sing without the aid of autotune ;)
There was no mixing records as most of the tracks only last 2-3 minutes so the DJ's would just play them back to back usually with a little round of applause in between each track if the dancefloor liked the tune. Here's a cool documentary about the whole scene if anyone is interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMtaEASd2LI

Here endeth the lesson...Keep the Faith!

Cheers,

Berni.

Cool post Berni, gonna have a listen to this.

It is indeed very refreshing to hear real instruments and one take performances - something ive been working at getting clients to do in the studio, as well as myself in the DAW.

thanks man,

Yeah I think that electronic music is so accessable these days you have to wade through piles of crap to get to any good stuff almost on a daily basis. Even 'so called' big names aren't much better than the wanna be's except they have a record company promoting them. Often real talent get's overlooked like the artists that the Northern Soul scene gives recognition too. Another case of the British teaching America about it's own black music history.
I watched an old Ed Sullivan show tonight when a really young bunch of kids called the Rolling Stones introduced a 60 something Howlin Wolf onto that show... they had been fans for years, yet he was pretty much disregarded by american pop culture back then...