The Right Direction

My name's Matt. I'm 18 and I come from Blackburn, Lancashire and this is my Northern Soul story. Since I was young, I grew up on the Motown that my Mum used to play in the car on the way to school. I must have only been about seven, but as long as I can remember, I have been listening to Motown. My Mum used to be a real Tamla fanatic, buying rare imports every week when she was as young as I am now (needless to say I now 'own' these records!).
When I was about seventeen, I started to listen to the 60's beat, things like The Small Faces, The Kinks and Hammond. I started to get heavily into the Mod scene. After a lapse of about six years, I also started listening to Tamla again. It was somehow fresh and new. It seemed that although I'd listened to it before, I had rediscovered it again. Old songs like 'I Hear a Symphony' and 'SOS' had been reactivated again. I realised how good these songs were, listening to them as someone with a now more mature musical attitude.
I had heard rumours about Northern Soul and one week while at University, I got a parcel from a friend down south who had promised me a Northern Tape that she had had for a while. I was more than exited and as I ran back to my room and as I placed the tape into the hi-fi and heard the first strains of Howard Guyton's 'I watched you slowly slip away', I knew that this music held something special. On that tape were such corkers as 'Landslide' by Tony Clarke and Sue Lynn's 'Don't Pity Me'.
At the same time, I was writing regularly to Nina, a Spanish girl who was a Northern fanatic. She soon sent me a tape which contained amongst others, the incredible, Judy Street's 'What'. I was now hooked on this music that had been suddenly been readily available to me. Over the Christmas break, I was supposed to meet Nina at the Ritz gig in Manchester on the 29th of December. Unfortunately she couldn't make it and I thought that it would be the end for the Allnighter. However, the friend that sent me the tape from down south was home and agreed to come. I was elated. I even bought some new shoes that I could easily dance in. When we arrived, there was a rather large queue and there was a certain air of anticipation in the growing crowd.
When we got in the dance hall, I was amazed by the intensity of the place. Great people, great dancers and more importantly great music. We stood on the balcony for a while assessing the writhing crowd on the dancefloor, seeing the blokes spin and fall into a split. We were amazed. Blokes and women twenty, thirty, even forty years older than us dancing with more vigour than our young bodies ever could! Once we got onto the floor, we were transported to somewhere different lost in the music and family like atmosphere. I was soaking when we left at six in the morning. I had danced that hard that I could feel my legs seizing up at every shuffle. Since then, I have been on the lookout for more and more Northern Soul to listen to. I have found a girl in the same halls as me that is hooked on Northern too. So there'll be less of that dying out business thank you!   Take it from me, a youngster, Northern Soul is here to stay.
That's all and Keep the Faith,
Matt.........