DRUG SCENE
Within the Northern Soul era, drugs were a very important and big aspect of the scene. As the partying, dancing and having fun would go on all night long, people would need something to keep them awake and to keep them going and having fun and not getting too tired that they had to go home and miss out on the fun of the regular events.
Northern Soul was the birth of the crate-digger, the start of modern clubbing as well know it and a fully-formed drug subculture some 20 years before ecstasy arrived in the UK. Some time in the mid-60s there was a sharp divergence between soul lovers in the North and South. The original London mods dissolved into the new dream of LSD and Jefferson Airplace, swapping Italian suits for kaftans, while in the North they kept the faith driven by a hunger for unearthing new and old soul sounds from labels in the African-American underground like Ric-Tic and Golden World (Detroit), Mirwood (Los Angeles) and Shout and Okeh (New York and Chicago).
The term "Northern Soul' was coined by soul writer Dave Godin in a piece he wrote for Blues & Soul Magazine in 1970 as a way of describing the divergence in styles between the north and south. Northerners would come into Godin's London store, Soul City, and ask for completely different tunes to his regular southern customers. 'What I noticed was that people who came from the north were not buying what was subsequently called dunk', said Godin, The sound was uptempo and mainly based on the stomping beat personified by the Four Tops' 'Cant Help Myself' and other Motown productions. This sound was largely fuelled by increasing amphetamine use at all-nighters, where Northern Soul was forged and thrived.
Northern Soul was the birth of the crate-digger, the start of modern clubbing as well know it and a fully-formed drug subculture some 20 years before ecstasy arrived in the UK. Some time in the mid-60s there was a sharp divergence between soul lovers in the North and South. The original London mods dissolved into the new dream of LSD and Jefferson Airplace, swapping Italian suits for kaftans, while in the North they kept the faith driven by a hunger for unearthing new and old soul sounds from labels in the African-American underground like Ric-Tic and Golden World (Detroit), Mirwood (Los Angeles) and Shout and Okeh (New York and Chicago).
The term "Northern Soul' was coined by soul writer Dave Godin in a piece he wrote for Blues & Soul Magazine in 1970 as a way of describing the divergence in styles between the north and south. Northerners would come into Godin's London store, Soul City, and ask for completely different tunes to his regular southern customers. 'What I noticed was that people who came from the north were not buying what was subsequently called dunk', said Godin, The sound was uptempo and mainly based on the stomping beat personified by the Four Tops' 'Cant Help Myself' and other Motown productions. This sound was largely fuelled by increasing amphetamine use at all-nighters, where Northern Soul was forged and thrived.
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