VA - Northern Soul's Guilty Secrets (2011)

This CD collects together 24 records that were hugely popular at a time when the Northern Soul scene was young, naive and anything with the right beat went.

Since then, the collector’s world has grown up and its slightly gauche past has been conveniently swept under the carpet. Nevertheless, late at night, with the curtains firmly shut, these old favourites are sneaked out of their old record boxes and played to the furtive fans who have back-dropped to them away from their peers’ condemning eyes.

Very few of these sides have been officially issued on CD since the bootleggers grew rich on the fat profits from the kids’ insatiable demand.

Whisper it not but many are great records though the soul quotient may lie solely in the drummer’s beat in many cases.

It’s nostalgia at its strongest and if you can’t relive your youth to the bouncy beat of Ann D’Andrea or the psychedelic pop soul of David & The Giants (cut at FAME’s Muscle Shoals studios), you’re still in denial. – Ace Records