Sellick 0-0 Terrors

I was reading in the paper this morning that Gordon Strachan was quite happy at the prospect of the league championship being decided in a final day showdown between Celtic and Rangers.

‘Bring it on’ said the wee ginger-haired ****.

I don’t think that’s going to be necessary, do you, Gordon?

Clicky Ba’

The second Test between New Zealand and England is underway in Wellington.

England are batting and as I write they have reached 25-0.

After the disaster of the first Test, England really need a good result here.

Theme Time

I came across this excellent caricature of Bob the DJ on the Theme Time Radio section of Expecting Rain. This is by Zach Trenholm and was originally published in the LA Times

Housing News

Via my friends Colin and Stephen, I can bring you news of tremendous bargains to be had in the Dumbarton area housing market - especially recommended for those of a nostalgic bent wanting to get back to their roots without having to incur excessive expenditure -

So what we’re gonna do is this - we’ll buy up the President and Senator Villas, while looking down our noses at the proletarians in the Berkeley slums, and then convert them into, uuuummmmmmm………….- a school would be nice !!

If you’re interested, then Colin helpfully adds the further specifications that the “Senator 2 ” comes with an underfed first year boy who doubles up as a groundsman and a lavatory warmer. The ghost of Gugs exhorting you to “tackle low,” comes in at an extra £2k pa.

Haud me back.

Be There Or Be Square

http://mog.com/Baudolino

Click on the above link if you’d like to be transported to a place where you can listen online to fabulous slices of reggae, r’n'b, and soul, much of it obscure, much of it rare, all of it terrific. Thrill to the sounds of the Prince Buster All-Stars reggaefied ‘Theme From Shaft’; gasp at Max Romeo and the Congos reinterpreting the latter’s ‘Fisherman’ tune; swoon to Prince Buster himself covering Toussaint McCall’s “Nothing Takes the Place of You” ina Rocksteady stylee; open your ears to the teenage Dr John belting out Storm Warning a la Bo Diddley; and be blown away (as I was) to hear some deep and not so deep soul and loads more jamaican music and other great stuff that I’d never heard before

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Random Cuts - Number 61

We need a bit more soul.

We need some deep soul.

We need some deep soul treasures.

Aficionados of deep soul will need no further introduction to the remarkable series of Dave Godin’s ‘Deep Soul Treasures, Volumes 1 to 4‘.

But if you don’t know what I’m talking about then you are really in for a treat.

These simply astounding CDs were released by Kent Records in the late 90’s to much popular acclaim.

Now, I’m NOT particularly an aficionado of soul music, but I know what I like and I loved these records. They were compilations by David Godin (sadly now deceased) of a particular genre of soul which he himself partly defined thus -

“Deep Soul is the logical, natural and unfeigned successor to, and development out of, the blues……deep soul is never mellow and is never bland……it sets its face firmly against emotional compromises…it reflects deep and profound emotions….it is certainly the music of the outsider……it is cathartic…..a form of therapy etc etc etc“

All Deep Soul music originates in the USA, mainly in the Southern states, and it is all made by African Americans.

Dave Godin, the principal cheerleader for the genre, was a white Englishman (born in Peckham, lived in Rotherham).

Wikipedia tells me that Godin began collecting American R&B records when at Dartford school, where he encouraged the younger Mick Jagger’s interest in black American music. After working at an advertising agency and a hospital, he founded the Tamla Motown Appreciation Society, and in time was recruited by Berry Gordy to become Motown’s consultant in the UK, setting up its distribution through EMI.

In 1968, he founded Soul City, a record shop and label on which he released such then-obscure soul classics as Go Now by Bessie Banks (featured on vol 2 of the Treasures). It was in his shop that he coined the term northern soul, a description that he would popularise through his work as a music journalist. In a 2002 interview with Chris Hunt of Mojo, he explained that he had first come up with the term in 1968 as a sales reference to help staff in his shop differentiate the more modern funkier sounds from the smoother, Motown-influenced soul of a few years earlier:

‘I had started to notice that northern football fans who were in London to follow their team were coming into the store to buy records, but they weren’t interested in the latest developments in the black American chart. I devised the name as a shorthand sales term. It was just to say ‘if you’ve got customers from the north, don’t waste time playing them records currently in the US black chart, just play them what they like - ‘Northern Soul’.’

The track I’ve chosen here is a 1966 song by Kenny Carter - Showdown (taken from Vol 1)

This is what Dave himself said about it -

“This brilliant song, written by Larry Banks and Milton Bennett, was actually penned with the specific intent of it being a follow up for the UK group the Moody Blues, who had had a world-wide hit with their cover of Bessie Banks’ original ‘Go Now’, but surprisingly perhaps, the Moody Blues turned it down………

Opening with a bitter-sweet neo-classical cello, Garry Sherman’s masterful ability to use the whole orchestra to its fullest and most dramatic effect, together with the telling story-line, has, in effect, created a mini-opera that has immense power, and expresses poignant soul-searching over the conflicts of interest that sexual love can sometimes bring……………………...”