This Friday let's go back to October 2002 and the Cala Grand holiday park in Fleetwood Lancashire.
Eight of us used to make this pilgrimage to the Togetherness Soul Weekender where a weekend of dancing to Northern/Modern Soul would ensue. The itinerary consisted of an all niter on the Friday night, an all dayer Saturday, an all niter Saturday night, a Sunday afternoon session and finally the Sunday farewell, when all the classic and better known northern soul would be spun until around 2 am. In between all of the dancing, record buying and drinking we would catch the odd couple of hours sleep in a static caravan which ideally would house four adults.
The first time I heard Don't Send Nobody else was around 9 pm on the Friday night of the 2002 campaign. In my eagerness to get the weekend underway, I ditched my bag in the van had a quick bite to eat and then told the rest that I would meet them in the main hall. After milling around the record dealers area and getting my bearings I heard the intro to a track accompanied by a couple of hundred people clapping in time that stopped me dead in my tracks and for 3minutes 20 seconds I was transfixed watching the dancers moving in time to the music. Why had I never heard this track before? It had everything a northen anthem needed from the handclap interludes to the rousing choruses.
The track was so popular that the rush of dancers to the floor caused the custom made sprung dancefloor to move resulting in no further dancing taking place for the next couple of hours as the wooden floor was repaired.
Over the next 2 days I was to hear the track a good few more times between the main room and the smaller modern room. I was however unsuccessful in acquiring a copy of the single and it would be a further month before I tracked it down on cd, sadly still the only copy I have as every time it has came up on eBay it has either been out of my price range, current price between £40 and £60, or I have been outbid in the last minute.
Ace Spectrum - Don't Send Nobody Else
3 comments:
Ooh. Never heard this before. I'm not so big on the more 'modern' northern stuff; mostly because the people who imparted their wisdom on me back in the day were all old school.
You may be interested in this - and the rest of the blog it's from.
http://www.funkmysoul.gr/?p=194
I've been lovin' this ever since you first sent it to me a while back. Thrillingly Philly!
Thanks for that Simon. I like some of the modern stuff, although it is a bit smoother than the 60s stompers. A lot of the older Northern Soul fraternity ie the ones that were around back in the day and prefered the Casino to the Mecca frown upon the modern stuff.
I tought you would like it Davy H.
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