Looking Back


 

 

OK so in this feature we are going to take a look back at, what were in my opinion, some of the best Northern Soul clubs to run regularly at sometime during the last 25 years or so. Before everyone starts groaning let me just say that, I think, more than enough has already been written about Wigan Casino, Blackpool Mecca, The Twisted Wheel and The Torch and I'm going to try to look at some of the other venues which while never reaching the heights of the above clubs still ran top class Northern gigs and gave a lot of people an awful lot of good memories.



St Giles Youth Club-Willenhall

Whilst I realise a lot of you 30 and 40 something's will have heard your first Northern in youth clubs St Giles' or Sammie's, as it was known, was a bit different in that it ran regular all-nighters for almost 3 years! When I say all-nighters I don't just mean a few kids playing records all night. These were fully blown all-nighters with just about all the major DJ's of the day appearing. I know this was Pete Smith's first all-nighter and I would suggest that it was the start of most of the West Midland early to mid seventies northern soul fans nocturnal ventures. This tiny club whose disco room was about 40 yards long by 15 yards wide played host to Messrs. Winstanley, Evison, Minshull, Searling and, on the 2nd anniversary even had Colin Curtis appearing. Annexed to the disco room was a games area with table football, bar billiards etc and it is here that holds my strongest memories of Sammie's. As so often happens in cases like these it has nothing to do with the music. I came into this room at about 3am during one of the nighters and all the above mentioned DJ's and several others, were playing cards for the biggest pile of pound notes that I, as a spotty teenager, had ever seen. At that moment I looked at that pile of notes thought about my 50 pence per week pocket money and thought " I want to be as rich as them so I'll have to be a Northern Soul DJ" Which youthful fantasies probably go some way towards explaining why I still skint myself out to buy Northern Soul records and am the director of a security company!!!!!!!



Tiffanies-Newcastle-Under Lyme

Tiffs ran regular Sunday all dayers for many years and whilst never joining the major venues it was still a very popular place. On of the reasons for this was its position, geographically speaking. Everyone from South of Wigan would stop off on the way home and everyone from North of Wigan could get a lift down with someone and only have to worry about getting home!
Again the name DJ's, of the time, Minshull, Sam, Rob Lythall, Brian Rae and Pep etc were all regulars. I can't ever remember a bad day at Tiffs and used to enjoy every minute of it from meeting in the pub over the road, The Rigger I think it was called, right up until we left. This was the one drawback with living in Wolverhampton. On Sunday nights the last train back was at 21:40. Miss this and you'd had it! Of course it's here, nothing to do with Soul again that gives me my strongest memory. Each All-dayer we would leave it later and later, run outside jump in a cab and get to the railway station in time to sprint onto the platform and jump on the train. One night, however, out we came and not a cab to be seen. Shit! Quick word with the bouncers "which way is the station mate?" and off we dashed round corners over roads until suddenly there it was the station. Well a station anyway. Not the one we wanted though! No-one had bothered to tell the boys on the door that we needed Stoke station. We had just asked for the station and they had sent us to the nearest one, Etruria. The station that closes on a Sunday. I ran across the road to the nearest house and banged on the door this bloke opened up, a real pipe and slippers man, I told him what had happened and asked for directions. He asked me how long we had to get there and when I said 15 minutes he said, "hang on I'll get me keys". This guy then wedged all 6 of us, who he'd never seen before, in his car and raced at about 60mph to get us to Stoke station on time. He did it and wouldn't even accept a penny from us! Did this guy deserve to live a charmed life or what!
Would the same thing happen today? I think not.


Locarno-Birmingham

Another great all-dayer, which was made even better for me knowing I could be home 30 minutes after walking out of the door, which actually became so popular that on the Sundays when it didn't have an all day session at least opened up for a few hours on a Sunday night. It also held regular Thursday evening Soul nights for quite some time. It was a huge venue, which was underground, and it was the first "proper" nightclub that I had ever been in! I know this may sound weird but the toilets were amazing!! After all the stories told about the state of the blokes khazis at Wigan these were a revelation. A huge changing area as a separate room in the Gents with full length mirrors and Chesterfield armchairs and, if you were one of the first to get down there, complimentary Brut and Old Spice on the shelves. I'd never seen anything like it. 
Again the central location helped with it's popularity but it was also there at the right time and was the first club, that I can remember, to open a separate room for the "modern" or "funk" sounds. The big room still played the likes of Cathedrals and Like Her but the Bali Hai, as it was called, went for the even funkier sounds of Fat Larry's Band and the like. 
A couple of memories from the Locarno are, once again, nothing to do with Soul. The Locarno was, first and foremost, a nightclub and on a notice board outside were pictures of its regular DJ's on "normal" nights. One of these DJ's was Chris King, who was just breaking through onto the Northern scene, and it was lovely to see him on this board resplendent in his lace up, red satin, shirt. 
Another memory is at one of the all dayers we were sitting on a table at the foot of one of the staircases that led to the upper level of the club. This first floor was never open, officially. We heard several "pssssssts" coming from the top of the stairs and when we looked up their were two lads on their stomachs and the one whispered "catch these, put 'em in your bags and we'll see you alright when we come to fetch them" at which point they both started to lob bottles of spirits at us, that they had nicked from the upstairs bar. When they came over to us, later on, they took away their haul but left us bottles of Bacardi, Vodka, Whisky, Rum, Brandy etc etc. The one, and only, time I have ever been pissed at a Northern do.



Tiffanies-Derby

This was an all-nighter that became very popular for one reason and one reason only. At the time it started up it was the only all-nighter to run on a Sunday night. You only have to look at how popular the Ritz all-nighters are nowadays to realize how much of a necessity a bank holiday weekend Sunday night gig is. The major weekends for the northern fans were always bank holidays, especially Easter, and with the advent of the Sunday nighter it meant that a Good Friday all-dayer could be followed by an all-nighter then up to Blackpool for the Saturday all-dayer (which was also a one off, as far as I know) onto Wigan for the Saturday nighter, another all-day session on the Sunday which could then be followed by the Derby all nighter leading you into the Whitchurch all-dayer on the Easter Monday. Makes me knackered now just to type it!! The first ever Derby, Sunday, all-nighter looked as though it was going to be the last as the local piss heads turned up in force and a lot of peoples bags were robbed and coats etc were stolen because the Soul fans had been used to just leaving their stuff around and not having to worry about it being nicked. But the drunks and other divs thought they were onto a good thing and must have made a small fortune. The management used their heads though and the bar was serving soft drinks only at the next nighter and a large cloak and bag room was provided. The divvies were still there in force but as the message that there was no booze on sale made it through to them they started to drift away and by the time the next all nighter came along the place was pretty much full of soul fans.
The one big draw back with this venue was the amount of people who went to sleep in there!! As I have already said the Sunday night was probably the fifth gig on the trot for a lot of the attendees and if they were not chemically aided the pace would almost certainly be telling and you would find bodies kipping wherever there was enough floor space.

Walsall Martial Arts Centre.langfe1033{\fonttbl{\f0\froman\f

Me and a mate were the resident DJ's at this small club on the outskirts of Walsall and the most amazing thing about it was that at the height of it's popularity we ran packed Northern Soul nights three times a week! Can you imagine anywhere being able to sustain that nowadays? Back then though people seemed to want to go to gigs every night of the week if they could. Not like today where, it seems, once a week is enough for most people. Again though the main memories I have from this club are nothing to do with Soul music. The first thing I remember was that the bouncer (a black belt 5th Dan karate practitioner) was 64 years of age and used to bring a full bottle of Vodka with him to every gig! This he would demolish in about an hour and then he would start trying to dance. Believe me he might have been graceful at the martial arts but dancing to Northern was just to much for him to handle. The second memory has stayed with me for almost 20 years and still ranks as one of the funniest things I have witnessed. As me and my partner were setting up the turntables one night we heard a low moaning noise coming from the training area of the club. When we went to investigate we found one of the instructors hanging, by his foot, from a hole in the wall. Strange training technique, I thought. He then explained he had tried a full power flying kick at the hanging bag, missed it, and gone into the wall. His foot had gone straight through the plasterboard and his body weight had left him hanging by the ankle until we arrived and lifted him down. On a slightly sadder note this club was where I caught the coach from for my very last trip to Wigan Casino.

So there you have it. Just a few of the "lesser" clubs that still made major contributions to the Northern scene but never quite managed to get up there on a level footing with the, so called, major venues. I suppose I should mention Goodyear's soul club in Wolverhampton as this is the venue that got me back "on the scene" after about an 18 year lay-off but I will cover this in the coming back section when I look at the places I have visited in the first 12 months of returning to Northern Soul.

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