Time's a Wasting

I spent several hours the other night surfing the web when I came across the Night Owl Northern Soul Club. Not only is it one of the best home pages I have ever seen the content is just what the Northern Soul devotee wants. It prompted me to write to Mick and offer this story. I was suprised when he jumped at the idea. Why was I suprised? Well what you are gonna read may not be in line with the other stories in fact it is written by a person who in the 70's thought that the Northern Soul scene was weird!!! Before you make an attempt at tearing this page up please read on, as it has a happy ending.
A lot went on in the 70's. The 60's started the youth fashions the seventies took it to the extreme. If you wanted you could change your mode of dress every other week and still be in line with some sort of vogue. I was main stream myself, that being disco and pop music etc. Just about everyone I knew slotted into this category. I was born and raised in Preston Lancashire so I suppose I was in the right place to become a Northern Soul follower; but I didn't. We used to look upon the Soulies as a bit eccentric to be honest. They would spend hours traveling to a club when they could have been sat in a pub having a few pints and a good laugh with the gang. Then have more fun down the local disco doing what comes natural to young people. They never really bothered with anyone except their own, which always made us curious. I used to die laughing when I saw them with a box of 45's and a changing bag waiting at the train station to go to some club miles away that didn't sell any beer. Yes it is fairly accurate to say we thought they were mental.
Then things began to change around the mid 70's. Everywhere you went you heard whispers of a music called Northern Soul that was sweeping the North West. My first real encounter with these people happened at the local club when the DJ put on a couple of Northern Soul records and a few people drifted out of the crowd and began dancing to it. We were totally mesmerized with what we saw. There was about 12 blokes and a couple of girls dancing like we had never seen before. It was bloody amazing. A lot of people were converted to Northern Soul that night. What put me off was the lack of contact between males & females and when their music finished they would not dance to any thing else, the word 'posers' did cross my mind a few times as well.
After a few years we stopped hearing about Soulies and we heard that their club had closed down in Wigan. We didn't give it a second thought, we considered it just another youth fashion that faded away. The big change in my attitude came in '87 (by this time I was all grown up and married with 2.4 children). My local working man's club had a small flyer on notice board advertising a Northern Soul night upstairs in the dance room. I promised myself I would attend. I was expecting some sort of fancy dress party or a 70's Night type thing. How wrong I was. The place was filled with people of various ages dancing just as good as I saw those people all those years before. There was no attempt to capture the 70's fashion at all. Everyone was being themselves and enjoying the music. The music was real nice and the people made me very welcome I even tried a few dance steps, it was a bloody good night.
When I got home that night I was a wiser man. How wrongly I had judged these people during my arrogant youth and I was annoyed with myself that I was so narrow minded that I never had the bottle to venture outside my home town and visit those now Famous Clubs. I can't change the past, but I decided to visit every Northern do possible and I still do today (when I can).
I have been a total Northern Soul devotee for over ten years now. I have even stood on the ground where the Casino used to stand and had a lump in my throat saddened by the fact I never went there. I am delighted to see that the scene is growing all over the world. The simple matter is you are never to old to learn and you can't keep a good music down.
SOULING INTO THE NEXT MILLENIUM..........Simon Butler