Northern Soul: Still Burning Review – the biggest celebration of the underground music scene | Video

ALan Byron’s film is a fascinating celebration of northern life that flourished from the late 1960s to the end of the 1970s. It was an interesting group, a well-known youth group and a kind of open secret of the area: the culture of the club, the culture of the anene, the culture of music and the way it created itself without the need of any svengali person from London to keep the show on the road. The spirit of the north fans were interested in the influences of mid-60s American soul, a style of music that kept alive on the dancefloor all night long by doing spectacular spins and drops, while the official voice of the music business dictated that disco or MOR rock or glam or heavy metal was where it was.

DJs travel to the US to collect boxes and piles of 7-inch vinyl discarded by Motown and radio stations – mostly in search of gold – and bring them back to the clubs of North England. The museum was the strongest of the Wigan Casino which was full of famous people from 2am to 8am, attracting life lovers from the land who knew that this was the only place where certain music could be heard. (No Spotify or Apple Music in those days.)

Licensing rules mean that only Coca-Cola can be served, but the dancers took amphetamine, a part of the northern scene that may have become known recently, and is not being looked at seriously here. It continued into the 1970s, all but ignored by traditional Southern conservatives; that is, until documentarian Tony Palmer brought his cameras and lights into the club to film The Wigan Casino as part of Granada TV’s This England strand, an outsider intrusion frowned upon at the time but now revered as a unique archive.

What is interesting about the northern spirit is how it has escaped under the media-cultural radar and seems to defy mainstream interpretation. It wasn’t overly political, unlike punk or reggae, and there’s no agreement here about what the consumers of northern soul are. Were they unemployed, poor, distant and angry? Not really. Many people here remember that they had good jobs and learned things that they would not be able to do now.

As for whether it was a change in any conception of sex, commentator Paul Mason suggests that there was something about male sexuality. Perhaps, yes: but no one has the opportunity to share about it. As for Wigan Casino itself, the building’s lease was terminated by the council in the late 70s before it was demolished; when the farmers objected to this, the house burned to the ground. (Maybe we need David Peace to write a book about this.) Northern Spirit is obviously the god of the band and the sports scene of the 90s and beyond, but for me, the question remains: What did the American system think of this? Have you ever been tempted (or invited) to play at Wigan Casino?