One of my lifelong passions has been the Northern Soul scene. In a nutshell, Northern Soul is an underground dance scene that's been around, predominantly in the North of England, for some forty years. It's based on thousands of largely black American up-tempo soul songs that never saw the light of day in the charts but have been rediscovered (rescued) by avid soul fans. The dance style has to be seen (take a look here) but could be described as a cross between Riverdance and Kung Fu! We were breakdancing before most of the breakdancers were born. The fact that we're still doing it in our 40's and 50's is testament to the quality of the music and the scene.
Anyway, the point is that going to a soul night is a brilliant way of keeping fit. Dancing at a rate of knots for 4-5 hours (or 8-9 hours if it's an all nighter) is a fantastic form of aerobic exercise. I keep meaning to take my heart rate monitor one of these nights.
So that was what I was up to last night. A trip out to a new venue near Cambridge with my mate Brian. Had a great time and made lots of new soulmates. Back to the running tomorrow.
Keep the faith. (Old Northern Soul expression).
2 comments:
Hey Mick when I was a teenager "Northern Soul" was popular amongst the MOD types. Would that be the same thing?
Would Georgie Fame be Northern Soul (or is he regular soul)? I had a live album once (vinyl of course!)
I'd love to hear your report after wearing your heart monitor on a soul night!
Hi Aisling. It is indeed the same thing. The 1960's Mod scene evolved into the NS scene and there are still a lot of overlaps in the two scenes. Georgie Fame isn't really NS (although there may be one or two of his tracks that qualify. There's even a Tom Jones record in there somewhere).
A lot of the up-tempo Motown material is counted as NS.
Interesting you mention vinyl as NS is religiously a vinyl only scene. Someone once paid £15,000 for a single and that was in the 70's.
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