Amazon currently lists 275 Northern soul compilations. Room for one more? Well, probably, if it’s as well compiled and packaged as this: a 100-track box that will cost you less than 30p a track. Not bad, considering that some of these cuts fetched hundreds of pounds when they were flogged, often as bootlegs, from the back of someone’s car back in the day.
It’s an eclectic mix spanning the 60s and early 70s, some of it provided by Sanctuary’s arch-rival in the reissue field, Ace, and beautifully illustrated with labels, photos, posters, badges and memories from DJs, fans and artists. Whether the playlist presses your particular buttons probably depends on whether you worshipped at the shrines of Wigan, Blackpool, Manchester – or London.
There’s the usual suspects: Show Stoppers, Chuck Jackson, Ronnie Milsap, Dillards, Inez & Charlie, Formations, Fascinations, Major Lance, Richard Temple, Rose Battiste etc, but also dozens of lesser-known gems. As you’d expect with 100 tracks, a fair number deserve the usual criticism laid at the floor of Northern soul – that it’s just second-rate Motown. But let’s not go there… there’s so much to enjoy and any aging soulie who dances non-stop to all 100 tracks, with or without stimulants, should get a medal. Or an oxygen mask.
