Emily's Albums A to Z

Listened: Thursday July 8

This is one of those entries I’ve been itching to write. I have to thank my former coworker Mike for introducing me to a great documentary called This England, about the Northern Soul scene of the 70s and early 80s. If you love any kind of music (especially dance music & DJs, since this is where that culture originated) you should check it out. One warning though – even if you are decently familiar and comfortable with UK slang and accents, some of the people in it will challenge you with their Northernese. I think I can understand most of them upon repeated viewings, but it took me a bit.

I picked up the Blackpool Mecca album in particular because I loved the opening song in the documentary, Turnin’ My Heartbeat Up by the MVPs, and this album is where I could find it.

I love many of the other songs on this album, especially Soul Improvisations part 2 by Van McCoy, Hold Back The Night by The Trammps, Are You Ready For This by the Brothers, and Phoenix by Aquarian Dream. I need to pick up the rest of the albums in the Golden Age series and see if the songs are all this great.

One bummer is that another of the songs I love from the documentary, Out of My Mind by Rain featuring Charity Brown, is still quite rare and doesn’t appear to be available anywhere on CD. Guess I need to figure out how to use the YouTube to MP3 tools I know are out there!