I’m afraid I didn’t discover northern soul back in 1965, nor did I hitch hike to the wigan casino aged 12. I came across northern soul back in the mid 1980’s when I hit my mid-teens and thanks to a raft of fantastic compilations that started to emerge, and continued to flow from the likes of Inferno, Grapevine, then Kent, Soul Supply etc. many of us who weren’t around in the 60’s and 70’s were exposed to the amazing sounds of northern soul.
I bought as many albums as I could – but collecting original singles was still some way off. Fast forward to the mid-1990’s and thanks to the invention of the internet, I was able to hook up with other like minded souls to share information and excitement. Many of whom HAD been to the casino and the twisted wheel, but they shared their knowledge and experiences and excitement with the rest of the people who I connected with via a northern soul email discussion list called “Keeping the faith”. Eventually we had members all over the world, and the list was responsible for kicking off many real world friendships, quite a few relationships as well as a lot of new northern soul nights as a 90’s internet fuelled northern soul revival started to emerge, helped along by a number of other great websites like the Night Owl, Soul-a-go-go (my own site) and of course, the last man standing, Mike Hughes’ superb Soul Source (my username on there is MartinT if you want to check me out).
Fortunately, I found myself in a job where I had permanent online access, so I was able to start buying original records from the states and in the early days of the web, it was possible to get lucky and find some real bargains. It still is, but it’s now much harder. Back then the dollar was two to the pound, and shipping a pile of US 45’s over to the UK probably cost around $6. The only hassle was having to go to buy dollar money orders to make the payments, as paypal hadn’t been invented.
In the late 1990’s I was fortunate to join Jo Wallace and the late Paul Thomas-Peter to start and DJ at These Old Shoes which ran from the River Bar in Tower Bridge London for a number of years. I also DJ’d at Soul in the City and at Solid Hit Soul and elsewhere from time to time. I now live in Cheshire but have many great memories of the London scene from the mid-90’s until I eventually moved away.
I’ve had this domain registered for over 20 years believe it or not and I’ve now decided to start to move my online sales over to here rather than paying out large fees to PayPal and Ebay. I’ve finally got round to setting this up and adding the first few records and other products, and more will follow. Thank you for visiting my site and I hope you find something of interest.
regards
Martin