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“And you can’t listen to the music and not dance. I don’t care who you are.”
Wigan, U.K., 02:00a.m., 1976.:
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Francoise was just another body in the queue. What sort of music did he like? He didn’t know, he didn’t have a record player. Have you had any of that Japanese stuff yet? No - what Japanese stuff? How did you make your hair like that? It grew, mate, it grew.
It was blistering cold. It was September, but summer didn’t much like the North, and left as soon as it could without being rude. They weren’t coastal, but the wind felt like it - gusts that cut through even your best clothes. People stayed huddled together - that’s how you kept the heat. Bodies pressed up against each other. Penguins figured it out first. Wigan figured it out second.
Doors are open mate, doors are open, let’s move.
The mass of people started to shuffling. They were wearing clothes you didn’t normally see. Jumpers with stars on em. Yeah, the big fat collars, too. Flares and foot-boots. Waistcoasts with patterns that only some people really got, di’ya know what I mean? The whole scene reminded Francoise of the dreams he used to have as a child. People were dressed like questions they could never ask in the day-time.
But fuck, do you hear that sounddd mate!! Let’s get the bloody hell inside, it’s cold out here.
And then they stepped into the room, which was just a room, but of course, all things are relative, and it’s hard to remember what a “room” is when all your senses are switched on at once. First the sound: shrill vocals, a stage that shook the floorboards. It was definitely something foreign, something from far away, but what did it have to it? It sounded like it had been saved from somewhere, hauled away at the last minute - prevented from being forgotten, like a photograph of some far-off sunset. It was out of place, but only for a split second, because a second later, you were out of place, and then who was where and where was what. The sounddd. It was like the echo of someone screaming “LIFE!” at the rocky face of a cliff. For whatever reason, it made Francoise want to dance.
They were all on stuff, but you’ve never seen somebody move like that. They’d gotten in a few hours ago, somewhere Francoise had lost his t-shirt, revealing his athletic frame and raven-black skin. He could move freely, and he did. The splits, the jerk, the boogaloo - the electric slide. He had them down and they had him up. He actually wasn’t on stuff. The only people who could keep up with him were the ones that were. And they wriggled and writhed and locked themselves in a ring of North-Western samurais, twisting and turning their armour until their shapes were unrecognisable. But these were the people who waited in queues, who travelled across the country, who drove through midnight with the milk floats. Just to get here. Just to get together.
Francoise left exhausted, hand in hand with Jonathan - here to take on the ‘70s at eight o’clock in the morning. (What did they know? They hadn’t heard the sounddd.) The frozen gusts had mellowed into a cool breeze that nipped at your fingers. The crowds left, feeling like they’d worked out a good night’s sleep. And the grey sky that hung over the Sunday morning had a bit more colour in it than usual. What had once been the queue was now strung out across the pavement like used confetti. The final decorations of The Casino Club. Almost forgotten. But salvaged, at the last minute, in that room of shape-shifters, huddled together, on the streets of Wigan. And Francoise, chest open to the sky, was one of them. Just another body in the queue. Just another northerner. Just another samurai.
Just another soul.
Read all about the epic journey of “Northern Soul” in the original story. (BBC News)
The views expressed in this publication do not reflect the views of the author. The stories themselves are based on imagined events. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is fictitious and should not be taken as representative.
My toes are tapping!