The cast of Northern Soul, or extras from Life on Mars?
According to wikipedia, the term Northern Soul came from football fans from the Midlands and the North West, in London to watch their teams, stopping off at a Soul music shop in Covent Garden to stock up on records. They wouldn’t like the new stuff that the soft, shandy drinking southerners were into, but more obscure stuff from years before. Eventually, the owner started referring to it as Northern Soul. I’ve told my Dad that story and he says it sounds about right, and he was the sort of bloke who liked both soul music and football. It’s worth noting that these places – the Midlands, the North West, are the places that gave us the Industrial Revolution and League Football (possibly the only good thing about going to see your team play at Wigan is that they play Northern Soul records at halftime, which beats the fucking Super Bowl).
There seems to have been a bit of a Northern Soul revival lately; it featured in the climax of Cemetery Junction, there was a film a few years ago shot in Stoke and starring Alfie Allen called Soulboy about the scene, various music videos have featured Northern Soul style dancing, and the economics journalist Paul Mason presented a Culture Show special about it. I guess this is because those who grew up with the music are now those making films and in good jobs in the media.
The film tells the story of a teenager in a fictional Lancashire town (a mix of Burnley, Blackburn and Bury) in 1974, he struggles to fit in until he discovers Northern Soul, striking up a friendship with someone from the wrong side of the tracks (do they have the wrong side of the tracks in Lancashire? Isn’t everywhere north of Hampstead the wrong side of the tracks?) as they start DJing in their town, planning a trip to the US to find more soul records, there’s a subplot involving a crazy drug dealer who may or may not be on the run from police in London.
I wanted to like Northern Soul more than I actually did. It has nice moments (schoolkids will love the lead character walking out of his exams, telling his teacher – played by Steve Coogan – to fuck off). It’s hard to make a bad film featuring Northern Soul – at least some scenes will get your toes tapping. Lisa Stansfield gives a decent performance as the lead’s mother. Its great to see a recreation of Wigan Casino, but it doesn’t tell us anything new. I liked it, but it wasn’t great. Too much of it looked like an extended episode of Life on Mars, given its setting and era. It’s had an interesting release, with cinemas having to increase the number of screenings. It’s good, not great. It’ll appear on the TV and you’ll sit down and have an enjoyable evening, but it won’t change your life, which is more than could be said for many films.
films in middle depth 