The wife and I popped to the pub on Saturday evening with a couple of old friends. As the night wore on, more and suspiciously well dressed young persons kept turning up. Each wandered through the public bar before disappearing downstairs to a basement room. It turns out the pub had a resident northern-soul deejay, who was down there spinning discs furiously.
It leaves me absolutely cold, northern soul. Any sub-genre that so wilfully wallows in obscurity is on thin ice from the off. And NS aficionados do love to score points with the rarity of their vinyl. They might deny it, but it's what drives them One can only imagine the self-satisfied sashaying that goes on when the deejay plays a track so overlooked by history that even the recording artist it can scarcely recall murdering it.
The reason the tracks are obscure is that all were originally considered second-rate at best, so that only seven copies were pressed. (In fairness to Barry Gordy's musical judgement, most did then go down like the Hindenburg upon release). Worse still, some didn't even get that far - the record company deciding that upon mature reflection, one might just as well try and market bowel gas. Whatever your take on soul music, I think you'd agree that Motown knew its onions. They produced wonderful, joyous and accessible pop music. When, therefore, they decide something stinks, stink it does. All the expensively-shod preening to the contrary won't change that.
Also, if NS were objectively any good, the phenomenon would have spread far and wide - at least as far as the Capital. No. Apart from the occasional misguided pub in Clerkenwell, northern soul's spiritual home consists of wretched northern mining towns and Butlins in Caistor.
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