Soul and Hip-Hop Pirates 1984

Interesting short article on mid-1980s London pirate radio and hip-hop:

Soul pirate on the air waves

By Jaswinder Bancil (South London Press, 13 July 1984)

"Steve Devonne is, by his own admission, one of the major figures in London's hip-hop scene. As a regualr broadcaster on the soul pirate station Invicta, Steve was among the first to introduce scratch and mix sounds over the air waves in the capital.Most of the exposure given to this type of record has largely been confimed to clubs.

But hip-hop is not the only sound the 26-year-old DJ plays. His slot at the Maze club in Soho every Friday night is strictly soul. He explained, 'I'm still a soul and funk man, but I also believe I have a wide enough perspective to cover hip-hop. Already established soul artists like Herbie Hancock and Shannon are showing obvious hip-hop influences on their records. It's going to continue to have an effect on mainstream music'.

Born in Lambeth, but raised in Wandsworth, Steve has been a DJ for nearly ten years. He became involved in pirate radio because 'I was interested in broadcasting black music to London without having having to go through official channels'.

While Invicta is temporarily off the air, Steve will be broadcasting for rival station JFM (102.8 metres FM).

To date pirate stations have been the most abundant source of black music in the city. Having cottoned on to the popularity of these illegal stations among young people, the BBC have recently begun to feature more soul and reggae. But hip-hop remains largely ignored, despite its massive appeal.

Steve admitted, 'I'm one of the few people who have picked up on hip-hop. It is something that goes beyond the music - style, dress, language all count. Hip-hop goes back as far as James Brown in my opinion. It's attitude, a way of life'.

Steve Devonne will be at the Albany Empire on July 28 for our breakdown spectacular".

Radio Invicta was a pirate radio station that broadcast in London from 1970 to 1984, usually on VHF on 92.4 MHz. It slogan was "Soul over London" and it featured soul and disco. It started broadcasting from a bedroom in Mithcam, but is credited with being one of the first pirate stations to use the tops of  tower blocks (more here, including some recordings of old shows)


Here's some clops of Steve Devonne and others on Invicta from 1980:



And here's some J.F.M. from 1984:

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London (1978): Disco

From the 1978 NME Guide to Rock & Roll London, the section on Disco compiled by LeRoy Z. Jefferson, with listings and reflections on the music in London clubs:

'The thing to remember is that Southern Soul is a whole different ball game from the much- publicised Northern brand. In the North, the more obscure '60s foot stompin' scene still dominates, around London it's mainly imported flash funk and deep soul from the likes of Earth, Wind & Fire, The Commodores, Slave, Cameo, Parliament and Pockets, plus a side order of reggae and thankfully just a smattering of android Euro-Disco (Baccara and Amanda Lear) and New York aural soft-porn (Andrea True Commection)'.

The legendary Crackers (201-203 Wardour Street W1) gets a mention. I had no idea that it was the place that hosted the Vortex punk club on Mondays and Tuesdays. Bar prices are given: 50p for lager, 40p for whisky, 27p for coke.

Also mentioned is a forthcoming All Day National Soul Festival on Easter Monday (March 27 1978) at Tiffany's, Brighton Road, Purley (near Croydon), with DJs Chris Hill, Greg Edwards, Robbie Vincent and Chris Brown.

Other places listed include:

- Chelsea Drug Store, 49 Kings Road SW3
- Columbo's, 50 Carnaby Street W1
- Fangs, Praed Street W2
- Fouberts, Fouberts Place W1
- Global Village, Villiers Street WC1 (replaced by gay club Heaven later in 1979)
- Hatchetts, 67a Piccadilly W1
- Hombre, 78 Wells Street W1
- Kareba, 63 Conduit Street W1
- Le Kilt, 60 Greek Street W1
- Saddle Room, Park Lane W!
- Samantha's, 3 New Burlington Street W1
- Speakeasy & Speakearly, Oxford Circus
- Sundown, Charing Cross Road W2
- Thursdays, 36 Kensington High Street W8
- Tiffanys, Shaftesbury Avenue W1
- Upstairs at Ronnie's, Frith Street W1
- La Valbonne, 62 Kingly Street W1

See also:

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London 1978: Gay Clubs
NME Guide to Rock & Roll London: Reggae

1980 Leeds Nightlife

247TopCat has done a great service to social and cultural history by putting some old 1980s photos on youtube, including this series taken at Belinda's, a club in Leeds, in 1980.



Entrance to the club in Leeds, on Briggate
(see discussion at Secret Leeds)

I've never been out dancing in Leeds, but these images are very evocative of the whole British early 1980s soul/funk/disco scene. 247topcat has also posted similar photos/films of an all-dayer at another Leeds club, Tiffanys in 1983 and at various other places at that time

Jackie Wilson's Melisma - 20 notes for the word 'for'

'The extent to which the music is integrated with the literal meaning in soul is apparent in some of its basic stylistic conventions, the call and response structure, for instance, where a phrase from the lead vocalist - which may not even take a verbal shape - is as often echoed by the band as by other singers. Or the distinctive use of melisma - the concentration of several notes into one syllable - by soul performers. The effect of this technique is often to give the impression that the singer is none too sure that the words exist which could adequately convey the power of what he is feeling. When Jackie Wilson packs more than twenty notes into the word "for" in his version "Danny Boy", the literal meaning of the song is virtually superseded' (Ian Hoare, Mighty mights spade and whitey: soul lyrics and black-white crosscurrents, in The Soul Book, edited by Ian Hoare, London: 1975)

Check out the closing bars of this song for the example given - 20 notes for the word 'for':

Starchild RIP - Teena Marie

US R&B singer Teena Marie died yesterday at the age of 54. Lots of love to her on the internet already, such as this piece at Soulwalking, so I will confine myself to appreciating her fine slice of space funk from 1984:



'Starchild' is in the 'dream lover from outer space' sub-genre of space-themed dance music (see also I lost my heart to a starship trooper and Spacer) with a dash of Earth Wind & Fire-style Egpytology:

Gazing into outer space
My telescope sent me to another planet
Since I was a child I yearned
To wear the rings around Saturn
My fingers burned

But when you hold me baby
That's the only time
I'm content, element, so sublime
Don't it make you wonder that your universal lover
Could be wearing the same smile

Ooo you are my Starchild...
Baby beam me, baby beam me up up
Drink the milky, from the Milky Way cup

Hold me tighter, touch me, then do
All of the sweet things
That star lovers do

Visions of another time
A strong pyramid, where secrets of life hid
Ancient Hieroglyphics told
of one man touching like Midas
He turned my love to gold

And when you hold me baby and I wear your magic ring
I feel you like no one in this world I've seen
Don't it make you wonder that your universal lover
Could be wearing the same smile

Oooo you are my Starchild...
Baby beam me, baby beam me up up
Drink the milky, from the Milky Way cup

Hold me tighter, touch me then do
All of the sweet things
That Star Lovers do

Take me to your heaven
I'll lay your odds to seven
And the Stars up in the sky
I can see them in your eyes
Oooo you are my Starchild...
Starchild...Starchild...

(Teena was often-sampled, most famously by The Fugees)

Songs about dancing (6): Out on the Floor

From 1965, this Northern Soul classic by Dobie Gray has been an anthem for many years for some of the most committed dancers ever to have graced a dancefloor. There is something incredibly joyous about this song, to actually be out on the floor while listening/dancing to this record is such a buzz, a perfect beautiful loop - listening to 'on the floor' a joyous song about dancing while dancing joyously on the floor to the song...

'I am on the floor tonight, I feel like singin'/ The beat is running right and guitars are ringin'/ I'm really on tonight and everything swingin' / The room is packed out tight, light at the door/ I Get My Kicks Out On The Floor' (full lyrics at the excellent awopbopaloobopalopbamboom (from where I also sourced the scan of the label).

Pervis Jackson and Detroit

Pervis Jackson, the bass singer in the Spinners (or Detroit Spinners as they were known in the UK) died last month. Jackson's family came from New Orleans to Detroit, where the Spinners started out singing doo wop before signing to Motown and then Atlantic records where they found success with the early 1970s Philadelphia soul sound.


Unfortunately I couldn't find any footage of my favourite track by The Spinners, Ghetto Child, but you can listen to it here: 'when I was 17 I ran away from home, and from everything I had ever known, I was sick and tired, living in a town, filled with narrow minds and hate'. Also check out their 1970 version of Message from a Black Man ('No matter how hard you try you can't stop me now') with Pervis Jackson doing the spoken word sections.

But here they are from 1975 singing They Just Can't Stop It (Games People Play), with Pervis Jackson singing the middle '12.45' part:

The Detroit music explosion of the 1960s was underpinned by the migration of black people (like Pervis Jackson) from the Southern states of the US to Detroit, partly prompted by the demand for labour in the Detroit motor industries - and the desire of those moving for a better life. By 1943, when a racist backlash by white workers led to major riots in Detroit, 200,000 black people had come to live in Detroit, most of them to work in the motor trade and its wartime spin-offs of bomber engine and other military production. It was the children of this wave of migrants who gave us Motown, and some of their grandchildren who later gave us Detroit techno.

It's interesting how the motor city aesthetic filtered down through the black and white musical cultures that emerged from Detroit. Just look at the names - Motown, The Spinners (apparently named after Cadillac hubcaps), MC5 (originally Motor City 5). Think of Underground Resistance's early characterisation of their sound as “Hard Music from a Hard City”.

Interesting too, how Detroit has exercised a particular place in Europe’s imaginary America: Gramsci in his prison cell dreaming of the modernizing wonders of Fordism sweeping away the dead culture of old Europe; the 1960s dream of the Sound of Young America inspiring boys and girls in London and Liverpool; the continuing love affair with Detroit techno.

The actual relationship between place and sound is very complex. Ultimately it is patronising to assume that people’s cultural expressions are just a reflection of their surroundings. Music doesn’t spring spontaneously from the soul - it takes creativity, imagination and effort. But of course it is influenced by the music makers' experience, including where they live. So once again, put your hands up for Detroit, as well as for Pervis Jackson and The Spinners.

How Does it Feel to be Loved?

I went down to How Does it Feel to be Loved? at the Canterbury Arms in Brixton last month, which describes itself as a 'a london club night playing indie pop, northern soul, tamla motown, girl groups, and sixties heartbreak'. The guest DJ was Celtic Soul Brother No.1 and ex-Dexys Midnight Runner Kevin Rowland (pictured here on the night), and the dancefloor was suitably busy.

Rowland played a mixture of (mainly 70s) soul, r'n'b, reggae and disco classics, highlights for me including The Love I Lost, Walk Away Renee, Young Americans and Everything I Own (full set list here). I would have expected a bit more Northern Soul, but resident DJ/promoter Ian Watson did oblige with some of this mixed in with Motown and indie pop (Smiths, Camera Obscura, Belle & Sebastien etc.)

There's something quite singular about the music policy of this club, rewriting pop history around handclaps and heartbreak rather than more familiar categories like 'soul' and 'indie'. As I wrote elsewhere after an earlier visit 'a lot of indie/alternative music is based on an imagined rockist trajectory back to punk which denies soul/pop influences. For me there is a definite thread of broken hearted yearning for a better life from a female (or non-blokey male) perspective linking Diana Ross and Dusty Springfield to Morrissey and Stuart Murdoch.'

Rowland's last track was 'No Fun' by The Stooges and played in this context even this didn't sound so much like a punk precursor as a mutant take on the motown sound (they were a Detroit band after all) - just listen to those handclaps!

Northern Soul dancing

'I was in a shit environment that I hated doing stuff I didn't want to do. I loved dancing, it was the first time [for] northern males it was OK to dance'. Great short video on Northern Soul dancing, reflections of impact of jazz dancing and martial arts on the dance styles of the '100 mph dancers'.