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Hi, Welcome to my website ROUND BLACK RECORDS. My name is Robert Pheasant, I'm married with 2 boys, a cat and a few gnomes in the garden! I'm over 35 and under 99 and I live in the West Midlands in the uk. I've been collecting soul music on vinyl since 1972 and there's hardly a day go by in my life when I don't play my cherished soul music. The first 45 I ever bought was Archie Bell's - Here I go again on uk Atlantic. - I love the sound of American Soul music from the 60's onwards inc: Uptempo/ Midtempo/ Girls/ Girl Groups/Beat Ballads/R&B/Motown/Male Groups dancers etc...oh yes...and I just LOVE Instrumentals too, I adore some of the American label artwork on their 45s (The Producers 'Lady,Lady,Lady' below is one fine example)
YOUTH CLUBS
Like a lot of people, I first heard 'Northern Soul' music via the youth club (ours was called 'The Mouse Hole'...great name eh!) Every Friday the dj would play stuff like; Bobby Paris/Personally, Velours/I'm gonna change, The Mob/Open the door to your heart, Barbara Mills/Queen of Fools and the dj's theme tune while setting up was The Kid/Andre Brasseur (which I found absoultely fascinating!) - Dim the lights and dance to those sounds YEAH! this WAS the stuff! You never realised it at the time...but those WERE the days wasn't they!
WIGAN CASINO
Yes, I'm happy to say I WENT to Wigan Casino around 30 times and was 'educated' by LISTENING to the titles the dj's said (although I didn't know it at the time, every other one was probably a c/u) but you still got to know the majority of sounds. I used to love sitting on the balcony staring at those long purple flourescent lights beaming down on the dancers and watching the dj's checking each others 45s out. Afterwards we'd go downstairs and sneak my tape recorder out of my big blue Adidas bag (which I actually sold only recently on ebay) change into my white Fred Perry t-shirt with all my badges on and tape the sounds on your crap BOOTS C90s then play it back on the train home (to the other passengers dirty looks) We'd look at em' and think...NAH! We've been to Wigan Casino! but nothing else mattered then did it.... Some of the older passengers used to find it absolutely fascinating when we told them that we traveled all that way just to listen to some old music, but after all... this was our 'Special Music' and it WAS special to us...it STILL is at this moment of my life (and hopefully....for many more years to come)
TAPING THE SOUNDS
Remember when you used to play your tape of sounds you'd recorded when you got back home and there was always 1 or 2 good tracks that you could never make out the title what the dj called them and you'd spend ages keep rewinding the tape to try and catch the title, it used to take me ages (sometimes years!) to actually find out the correct title of a sound only to find out that it was covered up! (ha ha...IT STILL DOES!!) Plus you'd always get some loud guys/gals walk past which of course their voice ended up on your precious recordings! Who would have thought that 30+ years later these tape recordings would end up being sold on a thing called 'the internet'.
Also the question is: 'does it harm anyone by taping the sounds?' to a collector probably not, but to a dj your taping HIS sounds so I guess it's personal really, I mean would you actually walk up to any dj and say: 'hope you don't mind mate but I'm gonna tape your set ok?' so is this offensive to him? ...to a degree yes I suppose but I know we've all been naughty and done it in the past (still?) .
GEAR, SPEED, DRUGS ETC..
Call it being naive, sensible, strong willed or whatever but this is a fact,
I can honestly say that I never EVER took one tablet in ANY shape of form at an all-nighter and I say that with pride readers, I'm not knocking anyone who did take 'stuff' but that was their choice, but in my book you don't have to use drugs to appreciate soul music, sure I fell asleep but who did'nt at some time? Like in a lot of scenes it's the 'fashion' to have some speed etc.. fortunately, (for me) my crowd of mates were not into the drugs scene and if my 2 kids ever read this, I hope they're proud of their dad for not touching 'the tablets'. Actually I was only offered drugs on a couple of occasions and I must admit to not seeing much 'activity' around (I must have been too busy taping the sounds...ha!)
EBAY
It now seems as though 'the bay' is the forerunner of finding rare Northern Soul vinyl in the world. The other ways of finding rare 45s is either: (A)Going to the U.S to dig them out yourself. (B)Attending all-nighters/relying on sellers boxes. (C)Sales Lists. (D)Record Fairs. (E)Car Boots/Flea Markets etc..(F)Ebay of course.
(A)=Costly and no guarentees of finding them.
(B)=Not everyone can attend/work commitments etc.
(C)=You have to be quick on the blower.
(D)=A good place to find them.
(E)=You have to get up damn early and be VERY lucky.
(F)=Still a goldmine if you know where to look.
I'm afraid it's (F)(D)+(E) for me. Who would have thought we'd be sitting on our computer's hour after hour looking for rare vinyl in the safety of your own home probably with a beer and also PLAYING soul music while were looking for MORE! (terrible life isn't it..) So enjoy it while we've got it and don't moan the next time you lose a bid....just keep on searching! Anyway, we soon forget that we just lost that £200 rarity by a couple of quid....don't we? AGGHHHH! YOU LIAR ROB!! (excuse me while I quickly put another snipe on..)
I hope to put lots of rare record label scans on ROUND BLACK RECORDS for you in the near future. ALL the label pics you see on my site are my own 45s.
*TIP* Just click on ANY of the record labels or pics if you want to return to the home page quickly rather than scrolling back up to the top.
I also wanted to add a bit of humour to the site, so if you like a laugh, then check out 'Start your day...with a record' pages 1 - 16
Finally, when your feeling down/had a bad day/feel nothing is going right for you/depressed etc.....just think hard about all our great soul music we love/we own/we crave etc...and all the great soul artists/fascinating little labels/Motown sounds etc....maybe we can ALL escape this rat race for just a moment in time (well for a little while anyway..)
