OUT ON THE FLOOR

It's been a slow week so let's chortle at these chaps attempting the art of the northern soul backdrop years before every moustachioed speed freak was doing it in the Wigan Casino.

Listen to Art Freeman's 1966 mover "Slipping Around" here

SPOTIFY PICK #3: IF YOU DANCE TO THE MUSIC YOU GOT TO PAY TO THE PIPER

Those days of sitting on the bedroom floor with a pile of Kent compilations to create Northern Soul tapes for work mates have long passed. Instead - and it’s a poor substitute really - a quick flick around Spotify can do an okay job. So, with that in mind, and with the emphasis on quality over obscurity (just as well working with Spotify’s thin collection), here are twenty tracks to glide around the floor to. Enjoy.

SOULBOY (2010)

Stoke-on-Trent 1974 and Joe (played by Martin Compston) has left school, delivers flour with a Tom Jones enthusiast by day and gets drunk in a local bar for local people who dance to Mud records by night. Then he becomes wrapped, tied and tangled in the world of Northern Soul…

Beneath the spins, acrobatics and sweaty vests of Shimmy Marcus’s SoulBoy is an ordinary coming of age film about a lad who falls for the walking-in-slow-motion-with-blonde-hair-blowing-in-the-wind Jane (Nichola Burley), whilst the (supposedly) plain bit-frumpy-at-school brunette Mandy (Felicity Jones) harbours a secret crush and teaches him to dance in his bedroom. You know what follows. It’s formulaic and clichéd but thanks to the setting, music, period detail and gentle humour actually hard to dislike and difficult to watch without a slight smile.

Northern Soul itself is the star though. Hearing Yvonne Baker, Patti and the Emblems, Luther Ingram, Jason Knight, Billy Preston, Dean Parrish and co blaring out cinema speakers instead of the rattling ones at the 100 Club brings on the old goose bumps, and whoever managed to squeeze in Porgy and the Monarchs “If It’s For Real” deserves the keys to Wigan. Set in the Casino it blends archive footage with new scenes making the joins difficult to see.

The cringe worthy moments were unexpectedly low, although I did wince at clapping in unison to “Tainted Love” and any scene with Huey Morgan as the ridiculous cartoon hippie record shop owner cheapened the overall effect. Also Jane’s boyfriend who ruled the roost with his dancing at the front of the Casino stage was too old and ugly to be dating the belle of the ball. But generally it looked good and made the scene out to be an exciting place to be, covering the dancing, records, fashions, drugs and violence with admirable believability. It's not a documentary or a gritty drama, just a nice way to spend a hour and a half. Nowt wrong with that.

If you’ve ever been bitten by the soul bug there’s plenty to enjoy and recognize; if not, this might – just – tempt you out on the floor.

THE WIGAN CASINO (1977)

The shadowy world of Northern Soul is, on the face of it, a peculiar one. Trying to explain it to those who have never experienced it, or just don’t connect with it, is tricky, yet Tony Parker’s documentary Wigan Casino gets as close to any other film in defining its appeal. Made for Granada Television in 1977 it focuses on the legendary all-nighter venue and hears from regulars and staff at the Casino Club.

One unnamed bearded soulie eloquently explains the difficulty people have in understanding why young people from all over the country travel to a run-down northern town, to a casino that isn’t a casino, to a club that doesn’t open until half past midnight, which doesn’t serve alcohol, where you have little chance of copping off, and the music is obscure old soul records no-one else gives a hoot for. The music was the driving force (and remember the only feasible way for most to hear this music was to actually go out to clubs) but the sense of community and of forming an “alternative society” with its own codes of conduct offering escapism and shelter from the dreary lives and loves of the hoi polloi was equally as attractive to many.

The best parts of the film are the dance sequences yet they’re very familiar as whenever footage of northern soul dancing is needed it’s inevitably taken from here. But if you’re hoping the entire 26 minutes will contain a steady procession of flamboyant kung fu kicks and extreme pirouetting then you’ll be disappointed as Parker intercuts with scenes of drudgery at factories, a Socialist Worker seller hawking around the market, and gives space to old timers talking about friends being killed down pit, often to the unbearable soundtrack of god awful folk music. I like the socio-historical framing but others might prefer a tighter focus on kids backdropping to MVP’s “Turning My Heartbeat Up”.

Of all the music I love and of all the ways to enjoy it, there is little to compare to the feeling of being out on the floor in the early hours, at one with the music, executing a deft flick of the foot or a landing a perfectly timed soul clap to acknowledge and empathise with the heartache, teardrops, loneliness and misery of our elder transatlantic brothers and sisters. I went to my first all-nighter at the 100 Club as a sixteen year old and I’m out to one tonight. This has reminded me – if I needed reminding – why I still do it: it gets inside you.

With its short running time, no extras and no booklet, The Wigan Casino doesn’t represent terrific value but as a record of the time, it’s nigh on priceless.

“Tony Palmer’s Classic Film About The Wigan Casino” is released by Voiceprint, priced £9.99.