About | Blog | Podcast | Shop | Get in Touch | 0 shopping_cart
menu
close
0 shopping_cart About | Blog | Podcast | Shop | Get in Touch
Blog
tune Filter
Search

Category: Voices From The Shadows

Voices Post Category

  • Rod Dearlove

    Rod Dearlove

    Voices From The Shadows

    The Sam Dees Interview

    We sat there, huddled together like conspiritors, in a caravan on a windswept site on the north-east coast. For us all it was an experience we’ll never forget.’Fifteen years of relief pouring out over a mere four hour spell. We cannot publish the entire text of the interview for a variety of reasons, but below is the bulk of it.

    THE CAST
    Sam (“Are these guys for real!?!”) Dees
    Pat (“Oh yes they are”) Person Moore
    Tim (“I can’t believe this is happening”) Brown
    Jan ( Just one more photo…”) Barker
    Mike (“Oh my God” ) Charlton
    Mark (“Near to tears”) Caldcleugh
    Rod (“Unbelievable”) Dearlove
    Suzanne (“Stunned into a 4 hour coma”) Cameron
    Lorraine (“Pinch me so I know it is real) Dearlove

    Within its near thirty-year life span soul music divides into many different sub-categories and I felt that
    “The Show Must Go On” album represented the zenith of the marriage between seventies technology and sixties emotion. Other records from Sam Dees cemented that bond with catalyst of imagination and genuine quality, but more more than even that, I knew he was a songwriter and producer bar none.
    In effect, I felt Sam Dees was nothing short of a soul genius.

    (more…)
  • Rod Dearlove

    Rod Dearlove

    Voices From The Shadows

    Some time in the future…

    I had give him his due; he was where he said he would be and he was on time. In fact, he’d been early. I’d staked out the meet a half-hour before and seen two other suckers approach him and make a purchase before scurrying away with that satisfied scuffle that fool who have only recently parted with their money make. He was leaning back again the old Piedmoor Bank building, his ankle length leather coat tails dancing in the cold midnight wind. Occasionally he lifted his head from within the depths of his upturned collar to see if any more prospective purchasers were braving the elements to make a hit. Then, like a praying mantis, he reteat back into his coat. Sheltering from the wind and a fine, misty rain that had given the city streets a slick, polished look, I witness proceeding from a disused shop doorway.

    Safe within its reclining darkness I was summoning up the courage to walk across Main Street and to the junction of Mall and Circular to join the illegal to and fro because this wasn’t a part of the city you wanted to spend too long hanging around after dark. Once it had been a bustling financial centre, but now its decaying offices and high rises were the haunt of the night people; pimps, prostitutes and pushers; much like the one opposite whose only signs of life was the slow but regular plumes of breath omitted into the cold night air. Another couple of degrees lower and the fine rain would turn to snow.

    (more…)
  • Rod Dearlove

    Rod Dearlove

    Voices From The Shadows

    Perk Of The Job

    Little Milton “Don’t Leave Me” /  “I’ll Never Turn My back On You” (Checker)
    I don’t wheel out ‘incredible’ too often as music is a personal thing and what has me dancing around the warehouse and screaming WTF/OMG/FFS may leave others twiddling their thumbs and waiting for the next Tim Tam & the Turn Ons 45 to come alongThis then is not for all. However, for those who like to face the real roots of soul minus their under armour, come in friend, here’s a live on. “Don’t” is one of those sides that is so good, so soulful, I’ll wager it’s never had an airing at a venue. If it has, well, fair play to anyone who has championed it.

     It’s a staggeringly good midtempo side that defies a real terminology being attached as it isn’t Northern, Crossover or funk but just plain fantastic soul. If this had turned up by some unknown on a obscure label, there would be knicker wetting from here to, well, at least Goole. And, just to gild the lily, what do we have on the flip? An incredible (see) Deep opus that is e genre defined. Boy, I envy anyone who has not heard this they’re first toe in the water.

    (more…)
  • Rod Dearlove

    Rod Dearlove

    Voices From The Shadows

    Why do we collect records?

    Why ask me?

    I don’t know. Why do women look into a full wardrobes, sigh, and say ‘I’ve nothing to wear’.

    Why do people take cars only couple of years old and in perfect working order and change them for a newer model? Why do people spend millions on a canvas with paint splattered on it?

    It’s their money, they do what they want with it. Me? I’m happy buying records. I buy them because I like them. 1962 to 2010 couldn’t care less, as long as the vocal’s there, no problem. Get it in the collection. Photos too, especially the 60s ones, black & white photographs – magic. And the songsheets. And dentures, yeah, false teeth as worn by Sy Hightower.

    No, whoah, stop right there. Photos and songsheets. You have to draw the line somewhere

    Why do we collect?
    It’s totally obsessive isn’t it? Think about it. You buy one record and you play it to death
    and it looks pretty dumb doesn’t it, one record. So you buy another and another. Within a short while you may have accumulated 50. That’s quite impressive isn’t it 50 records. All of a sudden, you’re a collector. You’re buying because you like the song, the lyrics, the production, the overall sound and feel of the record. But you’re also buying because it’s compulsive and you’re impressing yourself. We all know people who buy to impress other, but think about it, just for one minute, haven’t you ever bought to impress you? I’ll be honest, I have. I‘ve bought turkeys and I’ve bought gems. The killers always out-weight the losers- the only thing you remember about junk records are never to buy them again.

    (more…)