The Working Life of The Blue Note DJ, Manchester

A Blue Note DJ and an empty dance-floor at The Blue Note Club Manchester. It’s just before the club opens. There are two mod girls in the cloak room to take the overcoats of the punters coming down the stairs. I put on a slow record onto one of the twin Garrard record decks: The … Read more

The CONA Coffee Bar Manchester – Modernists CD

The CD called Modernists has a picture of some ‘Mods’outside the Cona Coffee Bar on Tib Street Manchester. Whether this is a spontaneous photograph or (as we suspect) a posed ‘scene’, is open to debate. The Cona Coffee Bar was a Mod hangout for Manchester Soul Mods. My one recollection concerning the Cona was going … Read more

Blackpool Mecca

Ian Levine was the primary DJ at The Blackpool Mecca with Colin Curtis. The HIghland Room became a northern soul hub from 1967 to 1979. Later it became the Commonwealth Sporting Club. Blackpool Mecca – Wikipedia There is another Mecca dance hall that has held Northern Soul all-nighters The Mecca Manchester.

Wigan Casino – where allnighters went to die…

The venue that brought back Soul music all-nighters after the closure of other locations (primarily The Twisted Wheel in Manchester) was the Wigan Casino. It became the 1970’s epicentre for Northern Soul all night dance sessions. Richard SearlingĀ  And Russ Winstanley were the most famous DJ’s at the venue and Russ was the guy who … Read more

Blackpool Twisted Wheel

The Blackpool Twisted Wheel? Yes, there was a Twisted Wheel club in Blackpool. I remember a group of mods on scooters parked outside who decided that the fashion of the day was to wear school caps. The sight of these guys in parkas and various coloured and striped caps was bizarre will stay with me … Read more

Blue Note Club Manchester – top soul club

THE BLUE NOTE CLUB Gore Street Manchester Second only to the Twisted Wheel, the Blue Note Club Manchester carried the torch for Soul music in the city from 1967 to 1970 (it did continue to 1971 but at that time it became more varied and more Jamaican music influenced).  It was a typical cellar soul … Read more

MODS and Soul

Mods and Soul went together like peaches and cream. Mods were a youth fashion and style movement that started in the 1960s in London England: the Mods adopted SOUL music as their own music. In those days Soul was underground and this had great appeal to Mods who were arrogant and had real attitude when … Read more

GOLDSOUL Website

   For the latest up-to-date list of venues visit the GOLDSOUL Website. GOLDSOUL Website

Chitlin Circuit

The Chitlin Circuit was the name given to a series of venues in the USA deep South States in the 1950s and 60s. These locations were often cotton bale warehouses that were emptied of the bales and could hold thousands, usually black people only. The artists would tour between these in small towns. More often … Read more

The Twisted Wheel – The New Story

The first night at the very first Twisted Wheel had the Manchester pop group The Karl Denver Trio performing Wimohwey. The club would become famous as the place that started off the movement that became NORTHERN SOUL. By early 1964’with its new DJ Roger Eagle, it was all about the music. One track that was … Read more