Good music Dissensians haven't heard

Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
Definitely a northern thing

Line dancing was big where I grew up too.

Northeners feel more affinity with small-town America than they do with london. London is still stuck in the Victorian era. Dank little pubs and cobbled streets. The north is all strip malls and multiplex cinemas and massive buckets of chicken. It has embraced the American future
 

luka

Well-known member
That's very interesting. My sisters boyfriend is from Doncaster he wants to take me up north to help me get over my irrational phobia of it.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Northern soul. In fact, the more nerdy byways of most black music will have gone unheard - funk 45s, modern soul, old R&B. Doesn't fit with the future focus.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
Lana Del Rey's newest album is quite good.

She's a good example of this thing we were circling in another thread about how authentic love songs seem a bit inconceivable at the moment, so she does this trick of temporal displacement and appeals to a lost sensibility of 50's Hollywood or something. But the songs work, except for when she tries to get a bit clever and diagnostic and exposes her perspective as trivial.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Thing is, it was retro even when it was an active scene and now, it's even more deeply so. Seems kinda anti-Dissensus in so many ways. Absolute refusal of the present. I used to go to the Capitol Soul Club in Tufnell Park and I remember chatting with an up and coming DJ there and the look he gave me when I told him I liked rap as well as soul - just blank incomprehension. It was like I'd propositioned him in Esperanto.

Worth watching

 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Like really worth watching. It's such an amazing period piece, even the hamfisted linking of class politics to the scene. Proper 70s Marxist sociologiy teacher vibes. Weird thing is, you go out on that scene you meet people who went to Wigan etc. Was obviously the absolute high point of their lives and they're still out 30-40 years later.

Probably not anymore - I was going to Capitol Soul at least 10 years ago.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
oh man there's a crazy amount of things, mostly related to guitars

but "good" is relative, and I long ago decided I didn't have time/effort/inclination to fight that losing battle here
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Northern soul. In fact, the more nerdy byways of most black music will have gone unheard - funk 45s, modern soul, old R&B. Doesn't fit with the future focus.

nah i know about it. 100 club and all. not that i've ever been there but I'm known to sometimes post tony clarke landslide in here.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Yeah, I dunno. Nothing really. Not ever really looked into it.

check the in crowd compilation from 2001 i think. mostly all killer.
can send it to you.

love this one on it.


and of course


better than the soft cell version even.


but yeah. great music, mostly horrible dj personalities and somewhat annoying fans. i just enjoy it as rare soul rather than *northern* which is a bit of a bogeyman term really only really refers to Wigan. although Gloria Jones ain't really rare by now.
 

bassbeyondreason

Chtonic Fatigue Syndrome
but yeah. great music, mostly horrible dj personalities and somewhat annoying fans. i just enjoy it as rare soul rather than *northern* which is a bit of a bogeyman term really only really refers to Wigan. .

That's the big split within the scene itself, "upfront"/rare/connoisseur soul (so digging for "new" rare and underplayed stuff, usually open to a broader sound pallette than your 60s stompers) vs the oldies/top 500/handbaggers/nostalgia crowd. Of course on the ground it's not a rigid split, but they're definitely distinct tendencies.
 

the ig

Well-known member
yes to vegas-era elvis! the story may have been ultimately tragic, the impersonators made it into a big joke, but some of the work's great!

this is a fave:


i mean fuck what a voice! would be wrong to say it's his best period as singer (all great really for v diff reasons) but poss at that point his voice at most developed/richest, before ravages hit bit further down the line...

that album 'that's the way it is' well worth a pick up, in a bargain bin near yooouuuuuuuu

represents a distinct strand of pop i kinda like, a sort of edge-of-mor/easy thing, mainstream, not hip, but with a sort of sophistication that grew alongside the rest of the whole 60s pop surge. maybe stringy, expansive, but also v well-turned songs showing a certain restraint and delicacy. borrowing from broadway as well as soul or country, i guess bacharach/david would be the prime exponents, and jimmy webb, ('wichita lineman' right on the money) also poss neil diamond at peak.

or this randy newman-penned beaut for dusty:


or more folk-based, gord, when he really, erm, 'knocks one out of the park' (soz):


that poise, the sense of ceremony around the singer, the hush around the song, i guess i'm talking about 'torch songs'. but yeah, getting that right with enough control to make it work despite degree of (necessary) sentimentality, avoiding sheer schmaltz, i like it..

& can i have a lil badge for being brave enough to post gordon lightfoot on dissensus?
 
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