stai visitando "un raggio di soul", il sito .. very, very impressive !
SOUND of SOUL
Questi articoli sono un vero e proprio pezzo di storia e provengono dalla soffitta di David Cole - attuale responsabile della rivista "In The Basement" - il quale una trentina di anni fà curava una fanzine a tiratura limitatissima che si occupava di soul.
Il giornalino in questione si chiamava "Soul of Soul" e dal Gennaio del 1978 prese il nome di "Ebony Sounds". Chi è riuscito a trovarne miracolosamente alcune copie si sarà certamente reso conto del suo tono fortemente "polemico", motivo per cui è divertente - oltre che estremamente interessante - rileggere i pensieri giovanili del famoso Dave, che a dire il vero, ancora oggi, non ha perso (proprio per niente) la caratteristica di dare giudizi estremamente "schietti".
Attenzione : Dopo un faticoso lavoro di ricerca delle fanzine e dopo una altrettanto laboriosa riscrittura delle parti illeggibili, David Cole ha chiesto di pubblicare questo avvertimento : " I would appreciate that you add a disclaimer to say that these might not necessarily reflect my thoughts in the light of soul music today. I was a VERY angry young man in those days!!! "
DISCO MUSIC - HOW MUCH IS REALLY SOUL MUSIC ? ( June 1977 )
Happy, though of course we are, at the acceptance of soul music by a wider audience in this country, we continue to be concerned by what is commonly accepted as "soul" music.
It seems just about everything that can be danced to is nowadays thought of as "soul", thanks to a saturation of disco dross and a mass sell-out by a large number of black artists and producers. We would be the last to deny blacks who have paid their dues for years seizing on an opportunity to at last better themselves financially but is it really necessary to bastardise their talents to the extent of, for example, Van McCoy ( the artist, rather than the producer )?
We hoped that, by this time in 1977, disco for disco sake would be on the wane but sadly this looks far from the case. When outright muck such as "Get Your Boom Boom ( Around The Room Room )" - the title along smacks as apalling enough - by La Pamplemousse can even get a review in a soul publication, things have come to a bad state.
And why do some producers and arrangers think that a number, which works well over three minutes, can be extended to about ten minutes by a series of instrumental clichés and thereby become a disco masterpiece?
They would appear to be as mindless as the undiscerning dancers in accepting this as fact. Soul music has always meant different things to different people but very little intelligence or feeling is necessary to determine just what is merely plastic ( for example, very few soul music lovers buy records by the Stylistics anymore.)
What is also certain is that soul is roots music. It needs emotive vocalising and raw interpretation. There is no place for a bank of a thousand and one strings zipping away for eight minutes in the name of soul and this is where rock fans - who have mistakenly put soul music down for years - are now able to say "Told you so!"
All the time soul music is allowed to be corrupted in this fashion, mass acceptance - good though it may be, particularly when it allows such recent hits as those by Deniece Williams and Joe Tex to slip into the net - will only be acceptance on a false premise. Astute money-makers such as Simon Soussann, currently the man behind the successful Shalamar, realise only too well that, in the mid-sixties, Motown music was THE disco music.
It never compromised its soul, never extended itsef over three minutes - the psychological time limit whereby popular music tends to become boring - and always ensured a crowded dance floor. That is why eight or ten Motown classics lumped together can make a perfect disco record ( even if, in the case of Shalamar, the vocals are pretty bad ).
Even Motown itself, a dozen or so years later, seems to have failed to realise the potential of its classics themselves. So we say this: good luck to the discos - they will always be welcome - but let¹s put the soul back into up-tempo soul music.
And if you hear someone referring to the unadulterated shit perpetuated by the likes of D.C. LaRue as "soul", put them wise and try to persuade them to listen to some REAL soul music sometime !
RIGGING THE CHARTS ( April 1978 - la fanzine ha mutato nome in "Ebony Sounds" )
There has been a great deal of talk lately concerning rigging the pop charts, including the exposé that considered even the chart compiled for the BBC and "Music Week" by the British Market Research Bureau was being got at.
Of course, to cynics such as ourselves, this is no news. It is always hard to understand how an obvious regional seller ( such as a pop "song" by a football team ) can make the chart when a KNOWN national seller - usually by a soul artist - fails to make the pop fifty.
Discrepancies in charts are, of course, inevitable but when these are of a major rather than minor nature the whole validity of charts, in any shape or form, comes into doubt. Unfortunately, chart positions can make or break an artist and those guys that book people for tours or those guys with their restrictive playlists at the BBC are naive enough to believe the charts are the be all and end all of gospel truth.
With this in mind, we took a look at the charts published by UK soul publications, "Blues & Soul" and "Black Echoes" ( because "Black Music" is a monthly we decided to leave this to one side on the basis that no one can seriously believe the accurancy of a monthly chart! ). Looking at the UK singles chart for the last week in March, only fifteen of "Blues & Soul"¹s top thirty feature in the top thirty published by "Black Echoes" and not one disc of those fifteen is at the same position in both papers. There are some remarkable variations too. At number five in the "B&S" chart is "Time Will Pass You By", a northern favourite by Tobi Legend on RK Records; at 22 in the "B&S" chart is "Turnin' My Heartbeat Up" by the MVP¹s ( Buddah ), another northern favourite.
Try to find either of those in the "Black Echoes" chart - you won't !
Bearing in mind the known northern bias of "B&S" and the matter becomes interesting. Now it is just possible that a #22 on one chart could miss the top thirty on another but surely not a #5 !
Another amusing situation concerns "Singing In The Rain" by Sheila B. Devotion. In the "Black Echoes" chart it stands at #9 but "B&S" don¹t feature it in their entire Top 100 !
"³Ah," you say, "that is because "B&S" realise it is in no way a soul record." "Ah," we counter, "but ŒB&S¹ reviewed the disc when it was first issued here and their SOUL Top 100 includes Andrea true Connection, El Coco, Le Pamplemousse, Space and Cerrone. Hardly discriminating soulsters!² (In actual fact, ŒBlack Echoes¹ is usually far more discriminating than ŒB&S¹ over the term Œsoul¹.)
Now, what is the answer ?
"Black Echoes" maintains its charts are compiled from "specialist shop returns" and "Blues & Soul", whose chart used to be compiled from sales over the counter at their Contempo record shop, now say they take a wider choice of outlets into account when compiling their charts.
Now it could be that a soul chart is of interest to nobody but the likes of us but, with soul music making bigger inroads to mainstream pop, sooner or later those guys in the booking agencies and at the BBC are going to start taking these charts as seriously as they do the BRMB weekly Top Fifty. The fact then is important. If there is such a diversification between charts to imply that they are being rigged, the time to put the matter straight is NOW - before your favourite soul star misses a hit record or a trip to Britain, possibly due to someone¹s underhandedness.
BREVE RIFLESSIONE FINALE DELL'AUTORE
"I was an angry young man who probably took life - and soul music - a lot more seriously in those days. Now I realise it's not good for the blood pressure !
Yes, in common with a lot of 'soul purists', I perceived disco as taking the 'depth' out of soul music. It meant the singers either had to adapt - to their credit, folks like Loleatta Holloway or Thelma Houston did so successfully and quite well but, on the downside, the likes of Joe Simon doing disco was a disaster - or fall by the wayside.
'Chitlin Circuit' venues for performers closed down in favour of big city dance halls and in general I felt the soul industry was losing the plot. So I was "a n t i".
With regard to northern soul, I've always been annoyed with the importance placed on both the deejays and the 'rarity over quality' when it comes to the records. It has always seemed to me that the artists as people come way back in third place. Add to that, it was beats per minute rather than relevance to what you and I call 'soul' that really counted, which makes the whole thing a nonsense.
Fortunately, things have got better - perhaps we have simply ALL got older and mellower ! " ( Saturday 4th September 2004 )