Northern Soul Music
The Road To Wigan Casino: A Personal Journey

By Tony Craig

Last September saw the 40th anniversary of the first Saturday night, All-Nighter disco from midnight to dawn, at Wigan Casino, the UK spiritual home of Northern Soul in the 1970’s. Now let me tell you, Wigan is not the most fashionable town in the UK, stuck up North, far from the metropolis of London. However, in 1976, the club boasted a membership of 100,000 people and, in 1978, it was voted the world's number one discotheque by Billboard Magazine, this during the heyday of the Studio 54 nightclub in New York City.

When I went there, an ignorant Southerner, the first thing that struck me was the enormous crowd of kids in the queue outside, which snaked around the block. All of them were carrying suitcases or holdalls and bags. I thought that we were going to a dance, not abroad! However, when I asked Mike Walker, the Manager, what that was all about, he told me to wait until two o’clock and I would find out alright for myself. Well, I didn’t have to wait that long! The minute I stepped inside the cavernous dancehall, I was struck in the face by the heat. It was sub-tropical and the carpets on the stairs squelched, so that you felt like you were walking on treacle. Even the walls were sweating! By two o’clock, I had already seen scores of the dancers there onto their second or third change of clothing. It was disgusting, sticky, heaving with noise and bodies, but great fun!

It was obvious why it was such a great place too. Everybody was there for the music and the dancing and you could sure as hell dance to the music. Unlike Liverpool and The Beatles, though, the music didn’t originate from Wigan or thereabouts. In fact, Northern Soul is a misnomer. The music played on the dance floors came from records produced in the States in the latter part of the 60’s, which were based on the heavy beat and fast tempo of the Tamla Motown sound. It was not, however, the stars on the Motown roster, like Diana Ross, who energized the kids. The stars were artists, long obscure, who recorded on regional record labels, such as Ric-Tic and Golden World Records (Detroit), Mirwood (Los Angeles) and Shout and Okeh (New York/Chicago) etc., which had sprung up in the U.S. during that period. Thousands of single records were released at that time and the sheer volume of vinyl output meant that most would die a death without exposure, irrespective of their artistic merit. They were also usually only manufactured in small numbers with a narrow distribution and often never made it into the shops on the other side of town. 

The music originally came over to the UK with merchant seamen working out of the ports in the north of England, such as Liverpool and evolved into Northern Soul via the club scene in the sixties, clubs like Manchester’s ‘Twisted Wheel’, which closed in 1971 under pressure from the police etc. due to its reputation as a drug haven. However, the start of the ’70's saw the rise of influential DJ’s, such as Russ Winstanley, as leading lights and the power behind the new club scene. Such DJ’s like Ian Levine and Richard Searling would go to the States to physically trawl through record stores and warehouses for lost gems, and, as long as it had the ‘sound,’ the rarer the cut, the more sought after it was and the more valuable it became. Indeed, the Northern Soul scene was a collectors’ paradise and many records changed hands for hundreds of pounds at the Casino due to their rarity! For some of the original artists, all of a sudden, years after their initial release, these discarded records brought them unexpected fame, though very little in the way of royalties, as few new copies were ever pressed.

To understand the development of Northern Soul, one must put the UK music scene in the seventies into perspective. Access to pop music back then was heavily dominated by the BBC with Radio 1 and BBC TV’s ‘Top of The Pops’. There was no internet or club culture as such or all the channels and outlets we have today and the record charts were largely determined by both the major record companies’ A&R music policies and the exposure gained on the BBC. The public was force fed the musical diet of these two overwhelming influences. Well, the kids up North bucked this trend and found their ‘own’ music. It was too large a scene to be called ‘underground,’ but it never really went mainstream either. Ironically, Northern Soul got its name from Dave Grodin, a music journalist, who owned the Soul City record store in Covent Garden, London. He coined the term to describe the records, which all the football fans used to seek out in his store, unsuccessfully most of the time, while down for the day to watch their teams playing in London. 

It was not just the music, though. The Northern Soul scene produced its own dance style and fashions, which are still instantly recognizable if you go to any YouTube video of that period. You certainly had to be fit to be out there on the dance floor all night with all the backdrops, spins, flips and moves often inspired by American soul acts like Jackie Wilson and Little Anthony & The Imperials, etc. I know my eyes popped when I saw some of the action at the Casino and this was way before break dancing had come to the UK.

Essentially, Northern Soul was a nostalgia genre. It was all about discovering lost sounds, masterpieces which were not recognized in their time. This often included over-looked B-sides. It was also about creating their own place and identity in society for lots of kids neglected by mainstream UK.

However, it never really spawned its own original music and artists. The few attempts to ‘cash in’ on the Northern Soul boom were regarded frostily by the purists. Marc Almond of Soft Cell recorded ‘Tainted Love’, originally recorded by Gloria Jones and a huge Casino favorite, but it was really a pop record and broke Soft Cell into the mainstream UK charts. Nevertheless, many of the original U.S. acts did play at Wigan, like Dean Parish, who is still a favored star and recently appeared at the 40th Anniversary Concert. Tommy Hunt, too, who had been on the American music scene for years as a soloist and a member of the U.S. group, ‘The Flamingoes,’ was another singer who made regular appearances at the Casino and who gained great respect from the crowds. By the ’70’s, he had relocated to England and being in the right place at the right time, it seemed a no-brainer for him to start recording again in the UK.

I guess that is where I came in, as my writing partner, Eddie Adamberry and I wrote several songs for Tommy Hunt around that time. One of them, ‘Loving on The Losing Side’ became his signature tune and is still played on the Northern Soul scene today. It even charted in the UK Singles Chart. Tommy will be 80 this year and is still going strong, doing live performances. He is amazing! For me, the really gratifying thing is that at the end of last year, after all this time, a compilation CD, “Tommy Hunt - A Sign of The Times: The Spark Recordings 1975-1976,” was released on the Shout! label with many of the songs Tommy recorded during that period. (It is available on both Amazon and the UK iTunes Stores). There are six of Eddie and my songs included on this CD. So, as you can imagine I am pretty pleased about it.

As for Wigan Casino and Northern Soul, they were always going to  be vulnerable to new trends, such as disco and funk, coming along and, inevitably, without crossing over to the mainstream, they were always going to remain a niche genre in the music industry. Maybe, though, that was how the true fan wanted it anyway. It was also very much a Northern working class movement at a time when Margaret Thatcher was just about to put the boot into the working class up North. 

In the end, it was the local Municipal Council, who finally sealed the Casino’s fate when it issued a closure order on the grounds that the land was needed for civic development. However, before it could be demolished, the Casino burnt down of its own accord and today, where it stood all those years, is a car park.

However, Northern Soul lives on! Currently, not only are there still All-Nighters and a Northern Soul club scenes which refuses to die, but a whole new generation have discovered the music, even as far afield as Japan. The Northern Soul fan motto is KTF, ‘Keep The Faith’ and there are still thousands out there who have done just that!

To listen to more of Tony Craig's music visit his website here

Rebecca Cutter
Story Editor For The Mentalist Talks Indie Film

By Karen Melgar

Independent filmmaking is where filmmakers can take risks. Rebecca Cutter is fully aware of this in her debut feature Besties. The movie tells the story of a mousy girl, Sandy, who admires the older blonde, blue-eyed girl next door, Ashley. On a weekend when Sandy's father is away, Ashley babysits and has a party and things take a nasty turn when an old flame turns up to bother the girls who are alone at the house. I have to admit I was not expecting some of the twists that Besties took but they were a pleasant surprise. The crosscutting of genres that do not always go together is a bit of a risk but a task that Cutter does quite well. A coming-of-age flick with a lot of the scenarios that could happen to anyone and a thriller are not genres that immediately come to mind as having crossover possibilities. However, seeing the movie will change your mind about that. After all, if you think back, a lot of the uncomfortable parts of growing up felt like a suspense or thriller film at the time.

The haunting parts are the realistic setting and the girls who seem like they could be anyone on your block. Kudos must be given to Olivia Crocicchia who convincingly plays Sandy, and Madison Riley who portrays Ashley. They gave life to these characters in such a way that you might imagine they've lived lives like these in the past. The truth is that Besties takes a lot of winding emotional twists and for a coming-of-age film, has a lot of surprises. It was enjoyable to watch but also to think about for a bit after –to be grateful for how you grew up. Fortunately, I had a chance to speak with Rebecca. Here's the interview:

How did the concept for Besties come about?

I was working with an agent and I had a short film at Sundance that had a little boy in it and he [the agent] wanted me to do something with young people and there were different ideas back-and-forth. I was interested in exploring this idea of a young person who idolizes an older person and will do anything for them and that kind of developed into what is the event that is at the heart of that relationship. Then, over many years it developed into what it is.

I think you successfully mixed two genres that I wouldn't have thought really go together, the coming-of-age and the thriller/suspense genres.

Oh, yeah, that's definitely what I was going for, so I'm glad.

What about the coming-of-age genre is perfect for that mixture? Because I do think that while I never would have thought they go together, once I did see it, I thought 'yeah, they do go.'

Well, first of all, it's a huge wrinkle in the coming-of-age story because obviously it has a lot higher stakes than just teen angst. But I think it goes together because teenagers are really impulsive and they don't always make good decisions. You can see how they're drawn to violence sort of accidentally because of their age and lack of experience and knowledge. By virtue of being young and inexperienced and not having an adult’s perspective on the world, they make bad decisions and don't know how to handle a scary situation. Even both girls are sort of victims in their own way…and neither of them [handles] it the way an adult would handle it. The violent aspect is how a young person handles the situation rather than having the knowledge to call the police.

How long did the shoot take?

We shot it really fast. It took about nineteen days originally and then a few more days a few months later. It took a long time after that to cut the movie together because I was working full time, so I was doing it nights and weekends. It took a while for it to actually be finished but the actual shooting was wham, bam, thank you ma'am.

And where did you shoot it?

It was all in LA. It was a very low budget movie so we were depending a lot on favors and free locations and crew members working for free. So, the inside of Sandy's house is actually at the stunt coordinator's house, an hour or so north of LA. The outside of Sandy's house was in the valley. Anywhere we could basically shoot for free is where we shot. My house is part of the inside, Ashley's room is my daughter's room; my room is another room in the house.

It does seem that there are many lessons to be learned from the situation the girls put themselves in, do you think that's important in this type of movie, that the audience go away with something? 

[laughs] You'll have to wait for Besties 2, just kidding – the jail years. I don't imagine Ashley's going to jail. I mean, they are probably young enough and they were victims in their own right and it was self-defense. I think that she would get off but she is definitely going to get her punishment. What she was trying to avoid the whole time was any kind of scandal or anything that makes her look bad or anything that would upset the applecart of her life, which is really based on getting away from her mom, getting away from her life and getting in with these rich kids and her boyfriend Chad. And I think that is jeopardized at the end. That's why Chad's there and she finally breaks and yells at him and tells him to go away. It's the first time she's ever spoken up to him because her whole bread and butter is trying to be in with him and his gang. I think there are consequences, I don't think she's going to go to jail but you know, I haven't written that part yet, so I don't know. 

Is New York
The New Hollywood?

By Art Bodner

Resisting the Narrative of Loneliness
An Interview With Harun Mehmedinovic

By Mende Smith

War has more colors than a used crayon box. Concrete canyons and falling bricks, sniper fire, gasoline-soaked puddles and bloody limbs are the muse of a once nine-year old child of war. Harun Mehmedinovic has channeled the fragmented memories of war-torn Bosnia, a place that he says he will not call his home, into a process that can be called art therapy. When wide skies, rock formations, grassy meadows, and lonely beaches siren solitary figures in playful scenes, we find it hard to look away from the Bloodhoney series: the images speak volumes in the expression of his creative self, that, he says was most influenced by war.

"I happened to be born there but that is about it," Mehmedinovic says, "Even being from Yugoslavia, I never really connected with the culture of the Balkans. Obviously I learned the language we shared but the region was very tribal and sort of mired in that mindset—the only thing I connected with there was the landscape itself."

Around the time Mehmedinovic came to America he was 13 years old. He drew comic books and told stories to illustrate the horror of desolation and destruction and soon realized the hypersensitivity he felt toward many things related to the war, rather than the life that he had left behind.

"When the war ended, coming to America made the most sense because there was nothing left. Coming to a place, well, not just America, to many countries out west, there is a little more privacy than there is anywhere in Eastern Europe, and people let you express yourself here."

He eventually discovered cinematography in college and prior to his venture into professional photography, his film In the Name of the Son premiered at Telluride Film Festival and won over thirty international awards including Shanghai, Savannah, and Cleveland film festivals. It was the first live-action short film to receive an exclusive screening for the members of United States congress on Capitol Hill.

"Being from a place of war is very much like having the social fabric pulled from under you and then this new way of living and the existence is surreal and then it became just normal. And looking back now on it, this time where all was chaos and realizing that entirely crazy state of living that has influenced every part of me."

Mehmedinovic says though there is no way for survivors to get war "out of your system" but there is a way to heal from it. For him, it was the decision to create art. It helped him to grow into his new country.

Mehmedinovic was dealing with a mild case of Posttraumatic stress disorder and recalls those feelings and heightened emotions and helplessness upon leaving the place of his childhood trauma. He compared himself to a small animal with fine-tuned senses and a keen survival instinct; most refugees in camps suffer these things he admits, though it was art that sheltered him.

"I was really alone in what I had been through when I was a kid, and by the time I first moved here I was wanting to sort of process these feelings and tendencies in a different way. When I found a kind of a medium to testify to things and for me it started in drawing comic books—through pictures and telling little stories—I could let the past move through me without letting it hook me. It was translation into another medium and it was a therapeutic thing to do."

In his early work in cinematography, and in his current photo project, he says he has found a way to process life into art. Mehmedinovic has learned that his process of living in the present and focusing less on the past and future has also been inspiring others to do the same. To him, art is the thing that gives meaning to each day. Throughout the scope of this project, he has found his subjects' desire for an escape from their own reality and identity much in the way that he longed to leave the war behind.

"I found a way to escape. To take enormous stress and shock and even the grind of everyday life sort of always translate it into artistic form with a kind of narrative component to it, it really helped me and it still does, and now it does the same for other people too."

Mehmedinovic's first two collections in the series are titled Séance and Persona, extolling images of prom-dressed and naked females shrouded in the elements and the alchemy of panoramic landscapes across the American wilderness.

What may appear to be little more than a fashion photo shoot turns to the sublime when we find that every subject, every place, and every photograph tells the story of the children far removed from their own reality, gasping for fresh air and freedom of expression, hopscotching through the expansive adult world of long-dead mentally deteriorated working class America. Mehmedinovic's lens captures the kindred spirits of childhood in arresting photographic images.

"I thought the way that the models were dressing was interesting. I expected them to dress more casually, it was the thing that I said to them so that they would be comfortable and I was dead wrong about that. I asked them to wear whatever they want and to them it became a way to enact something, but then it became more complicated. When you see the images, some of the clothes have special meaning to the individuals; sometimes even the clothes have a story."

Each one of the models in the Bloodhoney series was given the opportunity to select a place they wanted to be and what they wanted to wear for the day and many of the ladies, Mehmedinovic recalls, were more like 'tomboys.'

"All I asked of them was that they lose their concept of time and not be looking at their phone or computer or the watch. They agreed and the project became a way for them to revisit childhood, allowing themselves the freedom to be captured doing it—I should also mention that many of them came from conservative families and were not often allowed to express themselves freely growing up, and they all suffered that conflict."

Mehmedinovic recalls he had a similar experience in the old country where being an artistic person was highly discouraged. In extreme cases he says...you were bullied or even killed. Many times, Mehmedinovic recalls, those suffering from the traumas will continually harm each other as a coping mechanism.

"From a young age my interests were art and literature and there in that place they tend to treat that like toilet paper. To them, soccer is really important. Sports are really important but arts are just garbage—nobody (in Bosnia) has any real interest in the arts—the artists are being marginalized and even in Yugoslavia were never even around, they had to pretty much conform to whatever the state told them, otherwise they would be blacklisted."

In his TED talk that Mehmedinovic was invited to do last year, he shared images of the war in Bosnia to infuse the weighty backdrop of his old life into the lightness of his new one. Of the TED experience, Mehmedinovic says he does not write speeches. He says that the talk he gave was no exception. He put together a slideshow of images and talked about the project in a way he felt matched their enthusiasm for it, saying that because they rarely get any artists to the event, he was selected for being an artist with an idea put to motion.

"There was a lot of interest in the ideas behind the Kickstarter campaign that I did for the project. People really responded to it and supported it from over forty countries and that is when an executive director for TED events invited me to come and talk about it and I did. When I think of TED I do not think much about art, because they are more interested in ideas than fine arts. They do not really want that mysticism. Art is shrouded in mysticism, not interested in anything that debatable, they like what has been laid out and proven and tested."

By his own definition, Mehmedinovic is truly an American artist now. He spoke freely about being an artist in a country where creativity is misunderstood. For many in the audience that afternoon, his manner of speaking his mind may have seemed radical, based solely on the detachment that he displayed.

"I find the U.S to be a little bit neutral. I do not find this country encourages or discourages art. I do think there was some discouragement for me for example in high school, I think there is a bit of a mantra that says 'Don't do art because you can't make a living, however, that is in no way the kind of discouragement that exists in the Balkans. There the discouragement is nationalistic and deeply rooted. They can be quite violent at times. By and large, being an artist is being outspoken, and being outspoken is met with violence—as an artist you always try to shake up the status quo—getting people to be more awake is the methodology that art embodies in the world."

Mehmedinovic is thankful he has found a home where he says no one will point a gun in his face just because he is doing something artistic—coming from where he calls a backward nation where making art is considered weakness—in the face of all the hardships he has overcome, in the lack of understanding in his home country, and the blind eye gleaning toward the vibrancy of his creative life, it is the force of this project that continues to color with eternal magic to his life's work, work that mirrors the childhood that he never could have imagined on the long road of success.

To see more of Harun's photography, click to our Photo Page which this month we featured his remarkable work.

And to visit Harun's website click here.