This is another one of the Wigan end of the Nighter's. It is the magic that is Dean Parrish.
I can remember around 1975, listening to this on the radio, before setting out to walk the two or three miles to work in the morning, and all the way along it was rolling round in my head. By 1975, what had started out nearly ten years earlier as an underground movement, of a few thousand of us working-class kids in northern towns had become mainstream. Records that we knew even better than many people in the US where they had come from, and which virtually no one in Britain was aware of - correctly identified in the film Soulboy, were being picked up by the big record companies, and released on versions of their "Disco Demand" series. In fact, even some of the Radio 1 DJ's like Tony Blackburn had their own Northern Soul records.
That was reflected in other forms of culture too, as disco took off. Northern Soul dancer Keb Darge featured with Paul Weller in the video below was one of the first to take part in the televised dancing competition as shown in the second video, where he still had hair. He demonstrates just some of the moves that many of us used to take for granted - and which unfortunately some of us are only capable of performing fewer of nowadays!
Third is today's featured video "I'm On My Way".
The Paul Weller link is also included in the fourth video again from Dean Parrish performing, a piece of early Paul Weller writing with "Left Right and centre"
Finally, I've included a recent performance of "I'm On My Way" in New York, but also check out Youtube, for his live performance outside the Supermarket that now stands where the Casino used to be!
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