SEATTLE RARE SOUL WEEKENDER

Last weekend [Nov9/10/11] my wife Heather and I rented a car, reserved a hotel and headed down to Seattle. The main attraction [for me] was the Emerald City Soul Club hosted "rare soul weekender". The event promised to be an eye and ear opener as my need to hear rare soul has long been left wanting here in Vancouver.

By the time we got past the 60 minute border line-up, near rear enders and hotel check in, Heather and I headed over to the Lo-Fi Gallery on Eastlake to check the early hours of the "all nighter" which was scheduled to go until 4am.

I knew folks were coming in from far and wide for this event. Within a few minutes I ended up chatting to a rare soul collector from Preston, Lancashire, who then promptly introduced me to none other than Paul Sadot. Paul's name was instantly recognisable as the director and choreographer of "Once upon a time in Wigan" a four member cast tribute to the life and times at Wigan Casino during its heyday. Paul spent a few minutes decrying the ills of producing two UK tours, getting ripped off and losing significant wads of pounds sterling in the second tour of the play.

Without ever seeing the play, only hearing the inspired CD compilations, I urged Paul to pursue a screen play treatment a la "24 Hour Party People" or something similar. Then again, the only other film treatment on Wigan Casino is oft quoted as leading to its demise in 1981. If they can movies about Studio 54, why not Wigan Casino ?

Later that night I got talking to a young woman from New York who had flown in for the event. After mentioning that I thought I had traveled far from Vancouver, she casually asked "do you know Mr. M and The All Nighters ? I was gobsmacked ! I had several conversations over the weekend to this end, it seems between us and San Francisco's The Inciters, we are about the only Northern Soul tribute bands in North America.

Interestingly, the dance floor seemed to split in to two parts. One half dedicated t0 the more traditional Northern Soul dancers, the other half inhabited by "salsa" type dancers who danced with a partner. Turns out these salsa dancers were regulars at the monthly soul events at the Lo-Fi; interesting enough my band has been approached by the SFU Salsa club to play in January, an interesting cross over.

Saturday saw me returning to the "all-dayer" at the Lo Fi gallery. It was sparsely attended, since most people had stayed to the wee hours [4am] and closed out the venue earlier in the morning. I had a chance to talk to some of the organisers, whilst they seemed a little offhand-ish and even distrustful of a perfect stranger asking them all kinds of questions, it did soon dawn on me this was a fairly tight knit group of people. They listened to music and danced together, shared stories and had a wariness of possible exploitive individuals; Northern Soul has a long history of such individuals.

So when I mentioned Russ Winstanley's name as the inspiration for me to return to the world of Northern Soul , turns out this may not have been my best first step as an introduction. Russ's name want down like a lead balloon, especially with the English guys. Mr. Winstanley's recent foray in to the world of newly built shopping malls and Northern Soul was discussed as an exercise in silliness. Truthfully, I could not really tell if it was petty jealousy or genuine artistic motivation that inspired the harsh words.

Saturday night I headed off to see the legendary JJ Barnes at the CHAC at Pine and 12th. Luckily I was informed ahead of time he would not be on stage until midnight. So I turned up around 10pm to check out the dj and dancers and the people in attendance. Turns out there was a good mixture of the generally knowledgeable and generally inquisitive at the event. Sadly, the Brothers of Soul, whilst inspiring to be on stage for the first time in 35 years, really need to do some more rehearsing before their next gig, if indeed they have one. JJ Barnes was an absolute blast to see. The band was made up of both younger members and older, great trumpet player as a stand out, they held together and gave a great performance. JJ Barnes himself performed for over an hour; given the half dozen labels he has under his wing, JJ had a great repertoire to fall back on. In many ways JJ is perfect for the Northern Soul crowd, he has no major hits and a long career of rare classics, making him a cult favourite.



It was good to note the improvement of sound quality compared to the event over at the Lo-Fi. Given the preponderance of 45's at this event and their "temperamental" nature, the DJ's generally don't back que their records in fear of damage, some even eyeball the que, which I found to be the DJ equivalent of walking a tightrope with your eyes closed. Several times we heard the thumpty-thump of the needle falling off the record, it merely added character to the event. Needless to say not one CD nor any 12 inch vinyl was present for the whole event, talk about hardcore ! DJ's need to spend some time listening to the audio quality coming out of the speakers, not just to the song itself and for gawds sake watch those levels.


Sunday, saw us popping in to the "swap meet" at the Lo-Fi which was a tad on the lean side. I ran in to a DJ from Vancouver who had travelled south to see about half a dozen boxes of very expensive 45's, he looked disappointed to say the least; six hours of driving for 20 minutes of record browsing pleasure. I chatted with him for a while and we talked about the soul nights I had been putting on at the Purple Crab. He seemed a bit more cheerful after our conversation - funny I had to go all the way to Seattle to find another soul fan from Vancouver.



We were soon back on our way to Vancouver, ahead of the oncoming storm that cut off power to 150,000 in Greater Vancouver. We stopped off in Bellingham and bought some used duds for me, nice little town Bellingham, especially with the loonie doing so well. After a ninety minute stop at the border, no sooner had we got back to Vancouver the wind picked up, the lights flickered and the worst storm of the season was upon us.