A NORTHERN SOUL CV

ROOTS.....

I'm slightly younger than some here (sorry everyone, little git I know). Anyway, during the early 1980's to be cool you were a Mod in Nottingham, no question you just did it.   I wanted so badly to be cool and I was cool so badly in my dad's old jackets.   So I became a Mod and lived it 100%, mixing with heavies, getting involved on the edge of the odd scuffle, trying to get my mum to let me get a parka and so on. However even as a kid I'd always loved music, my father loved Buddy Holly and the like and I heard all that. But it was getting a whole collection of Beatles albums taped that got me going.  Then when I became a Mod it was The Who,  just them. Then The Kinks, Small Faces, The Birds etc the whole Brit Beat and Mod boom of the mid to late sixties. Now girl mod's listened to the most poppy Motown and I started going to dances every Thursday night.  I became aware that you couldn't dance to British 60's Mod and started investigating the sources of Who B-Sides (Daddy Rolling Stone by Derek Martin, awesome than, even better now) and The Small Faces. This led me to R&B, ska and commercial soul, you know Motown, Stax and the like. Then something happened.....


NORTERN ROOTS.....

At the Thursday night do's, a weird amazing silent Face Mod called Psychedelic John started DJing.  He wore paisley clothes and played strange Northern like The Crow. I was amazed and then these scooter boys started getting up and doing these incredible dances.  Up until then I had been firmly "Dance like a nutter to My Generation" but wanted something with some grace and class. I was still only 15 but started going underage to the Mod night at The Slipper nightclub in Nottingham, a small informal place that we owned almost. It was home territory and I would get there early and practice.  I remember hearing my first Northern Soul (as opposed to music that was Northern Soul but Mods treated as theirs).  So I hear Sliced Tomatoes, Love On A Mountain Top, The Snake, Landslide, Can I Get A Witness, Nobody But Me, Trampoline, Wade In The Water (the DJ looked like Tony Blackburn and would play the vocal Marlena Shaw version about once a month and we'd run literally to the dancefloor) and more.  Nothing rare or exciting to us now, but solid classics to learn to.

Gradually, staying as a Mod I grew to love the Northern Soul sound more and more. I dropped a lot of the ska and R&B (although I loved that too). About this time I'd got a terrible Saturday job helping at Nottingham's Victoria Market on a fish stall, god it stank and they treated me like dirt but it paid £15-20 a week back in 1984/5.  I'd run off at quarter to five once I got paid to the record stalls and buy any Northern Soul compilation I didn't have.  One guy, Pendulum Records (now gone I think) used to have loads of compilations and I bought Keeping The Faith 1 & 2, Casino Classics 1 & 2 and then started getting Kent.  However Kent seemed mysterious and somewhat exclusive at the time and it took a lot to buy these albums I didn't know one track on.

Keeping The Faith with it's sleeve notes and pictures blew my mind.  I used to listen to the music and imagine what it must be like, even my Mum used to like it which was a good/bad thing after the "turn that row down" to early Pink Floyd (her era not mine!).  I was starting to get comfortable with the music and bought Kent LPs like Gems, Shoes, S.O.U.L Agents and Inferno's excellent Out On The Floor which I played to death.  I remember buying Northern Soul Volume 1 a double album by a strange outfit called Goldmine and I didn't like it.  Too pure, couldn't sing along as easy, where were the gimmicky sounds etc.  However, I'd keep on with it and knew that in there was the future.

Then just as I though I knew all about it, all of 40 tunes maximum I went down in a van with the crew to Peterborough's Wirrana for an allnighter.  My parents nervous "you're only 16, be careful" this coming after walking 25 miles home along country roads in Derbyshire for a party that got called off and being chased by Rockers in Eastwood.

Anyway we walked through the door and I bloody hated it.  Where was Landslide, where was The Snake?  What was all this weird dancing and so on? I got used to it and loved the buzz about the place. I remember the Group being played and thinking "what a dreadful song" but I was fascinated and couldn't shake it from my system.

Well things went from there and I became a soulie Mod, knowing more than most of my ignorant friends about the music and competing informally to build a collection with a great guy we called Joe 90 (his looks).  He's still about and we're still friends, meeting up at nights and so on.  All the competition's gone now.  I remember 5 pressings turning up of "He's Coming Home" turning up and us all racing each other to Rob Smiths' to buy it, Ray Charles "I Don't Need No Doctor" blagging a pressing off Rob before anyone else and the mother of them all to us, Carnaby "Jump and Dance". Buying the brilliant SMART album from a place on Carnaby Street and playing it over and over.  Ah blissful days.


WHY I LEFT.....

Very simple.  I gave up being a Mod as I felt that everyone was stuck in a rut, the scene wasn't very healthy and I was restricted musically.  It was simple, I wanted to listen to other bands and you just didn't as a Mod.  So I listened to New Order, Kraftwerk and the Velvet Underground.  This started an Indie fixation and then I heard early house music by Graeme Park and Mike Pickering (of M People) in The Garage at Nottingham.  It blew my mind, all the buzz of the old Northern scene but new sounds to my very young ears.  So I dropped Mod and listened to nothing but house becoming a huge collector with records now worth £100 and a lot more (Mr Fingers, Rhythm Is Rhythm etc) and then getting into early Detroit Techno, Jungle and so on.  I would periodically listen to some indie, extreme guitar music and so on but I was very much into what I thought was "the future".

I gave all my LPs to my best friend, a guy who'd grown up with me since the age of 10, had become a Mod with me and was still one (he later married the wife's sister then divorced her two years ago, not seen since).  Anway I entrusted him with them and he fucking gave them to some bird and lost the lot.  I was gutted a few years ago I can tell you.  There was an amazing stomper version of It's Getting Better written originally by Mama Cass that I just cannot find anywhere on one of those LPs.

Soon people who thought I was a pillock at school started knocking at my door saying "I hear you are into acid house, what's going on" and soon I was a bit of a guru.   Started another band, this time playing "hardcore".  Well by about 1993 I was 24 and sick of it.  It was becoming bland (handbag house, garage etc) and losing the hard energy it had before, I'd always seen it as the new punk, aggresive and pushing back the barriers.

Soon though it just wasn't innovating to me anymore and I started listening to other stuff, drifting really.  My poor wife's ear drums needed a rest as well.


WHY I CAME BACK.....

Simple again, I needed some decent song based music, I was crying out for it and looking fondly over my past.

One day my wife and I were in Nottingham and we walked past Rob Smith's who is still there, the place heaving under vinyl, one day the shop will collapse and he'll be found clutching some old record.  Anyway, the dust, the old labels, the crackling vinyl combined.  What's more Rob remembered me after ten years (he conned me by buying my collection for a measly £50, the git).  I spent about £25 that day buying The Spy (my first ever acquisition back in 1984 and I still remembered it), Out On The Floor single and a couple of others.

Putting them on at home I was staggered at how good Dobie Gray and a couple more were.   I went back the next week bought three early Goldmine CDs (Northern Soul Fever 1, Northern Soul Dance Party, This Is Northern Soul) and didn't look back.  Soon I was buying records every week, mail order from Tim Brown, Pat Brady and others.  Soon I had a 1000 record collection, basic but lovely with a few nice sounds.  The Chant's Baby I Don't Need Your Love on RCA Demo and a few more.  I was a proud man.

Since then in 1994 I've flirted with other music, even packed away the collection once but soon come back to it.  Now it's the backbone of my music, I still love R&B as well, latin and the like but Northern Soul especially is my musical love.  I can't shake it and don't want to.  My wife adored it on her first listen as well and is as hooked as me.

I started going to soul nights, all nighters and little do's I'd find advertised all over.   The older real  Northern Soul set in Nottingham is very clicky as they were all Palais go-ers in the 1970s and they won't let whippsnappers like me in.  Even though I know more than many and can dance nicely these days I can still go out and not be spoken to once in a night. Not once.  I'm not some badge wearing, flared trouser saddo, just an ordinary guy and it saddens me for them to treat people this way.   It's that that restricts the scene growing, but that's what they seem to want.   They don't even play especially rare tunes.

Worst moment so far in the alst couple of years.  Last year at Nottingham's Ritzy Northern Soul night some prat sprayed Pepper Spray into the club and my wife collapsed. The night stopped, everyone crowding around, me and the wife in an ambulance along with her sister.  Bastard.  However, the support we got that night and the friends we made on the spot were incredible.

Then....two things happened.  I got a PC and much later in 1997, hooked up to the net.  Then and I can't remember how I came across this legendary bloke called Pete Smith.  After a week of trading that most here wouldn't believe, emails across to each other every hour for seven days, we had the deal of the century.  Later I found KTF, Pete came along as Agent Provocateur and away we went.  KTF became my Northern Soul area and I didn't have to worry about these sad gits who won't talk to anyone.

I've never looked back. Now when I go out, I don't worry about these sad gits and gradually have found old mates again and new ones.  The amount of single blokes going out to Northern Soul nights on their own is quite high. Buy 'em a pint and you've a friend for life.

I've given in now, Northern Soul is in my blood and I'm determined to really collect as many tracks as I can.  The quality is consistently incredible.  I don't care on what format, I just want the most tracks I can get and CD allows that for me (leaving the debate aside).
Mark Coyle