There was a time...sometimes I'd dance...Bats In The Belfry at The Belfry Hotel, 1976, outside of Oxford, middle of nowhere place, we'd drive the 27 miles on a Saturday night...James Brown's There Was A Time was one anthem - came to me cycling home today...
...there was a time...folks wearing mohair jumpers and plastic sandals, the pre-Punk Punk look - Northern Soul was fine but the way it's talked about you'd think it was the only Soul scene in the 70s - us Southerners know better...
...there was a time we'd queue in the corridor of the building joined to the main hotel, hearing music coming from the hall, get in, see who's about, the rush of some Funk tune, buy drinks, stand on the edge of the small 'floor, blokes playing pool at the back to the right, sometimes things got out of hand, the cues used as weapons but mostly it was a peaceful scene - girls - they played slow tunes back then, a chance to dance, perhaps, as I did once until she said she had to sit down, which I took as a refusal but later found out she was just tired so that was all right...
...none of us found proper girlfriends there...it was as if the music and dancing meant more...Gil Scott-Heron's The Bottle...some kids got into the military look, perhaps that cue came from Bryan Ferry, or he nicked it from the club scene, I don't know...boys in smart khaki, ties, hair slicked back - style pioneers - get the look, it didn't matter that you couldn't dance like James Brown, no-one could...
...there was a time - seems like a lifetime ago, a lifetime of Saturday night fever before the term was known, before it gave birth to countless bad Disco dancers on TV, the big sell of a Disco lie which said 'men can't dance, here's how you do it' as if we were all stuck in some 50s ballroom, as if Mod never happened, as if no-one but us had gone to Soul clubs in the early 70s...
...there was a time...I recall, thanks to James Brown...
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