On not-dancing, being a medical sanitation and hygiene executive, and featuring a two-hour playlist of my favourite Northern Soul and Tamla tracks

I don’t dance, much to my wife’s annoyance. At least, I don’t dance if I can possibly help it. Sore knees, ignorance of the steps involved in the more  obscure Scottish Scottisches, jigs and waltzes, and a tendency to feel sick during Eightsome Reels are to blame. Also the injuries suffered by the feet of various women over the years, and the consequent lawsuits.

And I don’t do any of that modern stuff either, gyrating in a sinful manner to rock’n’roll, soul or pop. Not any more. Not since That Best Forgotten Incident At Henry Afrikas. Or was it Mister G’s in Inverness? Or Posers in Lerwick, where they made you wear a pair of evil-smelling leather shoes if they didn’t like the look of your Doc Martens? Though white, fish-factory Wellingtons were fine, along with boiler suits covered in mackerel scales.

I am no longer of an age where dancing was an integral part of socialising or attempts to find a partner. It is no longer, as one of my Bible class leaders put it, “the vertical expression of a horizontal desire”, though on reflection that statement perhaps illustrates an extremely limited sexual repertoire.

I don’t really understand the whole live-club-DJ thing. My radio days were all about playing music, yes, but also the chat about the records, or with the people who made them. As I understand it, unless at the wedding-drunk-birthday-and-hen-night end of the spectrum, DJs simply curate the records and segue them together so that folk are swept away by the primal, uh, beat, with the occasional slowing of tempo for snogging, toilet breaks and (if that way inclined, or young, or both) ingestion of chemical or liquid stimulants. I mean, it’s just playing records, isn’t it? It’s not like being in a band, the years of practice and pain, playing an instrument, singing, physically producing the music from your lungs, fingers, feet and mind. Heart and soul.

I was recently at a really lovely and very cool wedding where there were not one, but five DJs, all but one amateur volunteers. Interestingly, the professional’s set was a seamless late-night up-to-date groove, beatmatched and assured, but very few folk actually got on their feet and did that terpsichorean thing. The floorfillers belonged to the disc-spinners (to be honest, I think it was mostly Tidal and Spotify playlist compilers) of 80s and 90s disco-pop and, with a vengeance, the great 70s anthems of ABBA. Nobody resisted Knowing me, Knowing You or Chiquitita. Except me, that is. That’s the name of the game…

There was a sprinkling of soul, but not the one genre that might, just might drag my lumbering legs into wobbly-jerk mode. And that is Northern Soul. Or to be precise, Bad Tamla Motown.

This is of course very unfair. Some Northern Soul is quite good Tamla. Detroit thump and bang from other US cities and rural enclaves, the obscure and the minor, the regional near-and-not hits that tickled the OCD instincts of collectors, dancers and DJs across the North of England in the 60s and 70s, fuelled on fizzy drinks, amphetamines and a very exclusive tribalism.

Northern Soul is the precursor to today’s electronic club culture, but its weakness is its strength, in a way. It’s organic, faulty, wayward. Some records’ charms stem from the fact that they’re so clearly imitative or joky. And exclusivity, once you’re really into the scene, is key. Only two surviving original copies of Frank Wilson’s Do I Love you (Indeed I Do), and either will cost you upwards of £100,000. For something that degrades every time it’s played.

Anyway, I like my own selection of Northern Soul to soundtrack my job as a cleaner. I’m relief sanitation and hygiene executive at my wife’s surgery, and it’s a rhythmic business, soaring from bin-emptying through toilet-disinfection, surface-dusting, vacuuming (only Numatic Henry for medical settings), mopping and general tidying. By the time I’m double-bagging and cable-tying the medical waste, I’m ready to extract the Air Pods and have a wee sit down. Pondering the penetrative power of the tambourine (designed to cut through through that old fashioned valve jukebox murk). And thankful that this playlist has the original single version of Tainted Love and not the horrible re-recording from Gloria Jones’s ill-advised album Vixen. Among other things.

And over yet another cup of coffee I ponder the sheer strangeness of Boot Hog Pefferley and The Loafers’ I’m Not Going to Work Today and Carl Douglas’s Serving a Sentence of Life; the glorious, startling white soul yelp of Dusty Springfield’s Can I Get a Witness, and, amidst it all, the shocking, unarguable power of Stevie Wonder’s Superstition.

Gets the job done. And if I occasionally twitch my ankle while scrubbing bloodstains from the floor, at least I don’t have to dance. And nobody’s looking.

Anyway, here’s a two-hour playlist I made up for hoovering and mopping purposes. Pretty mainstream with a few surprises. You may care to have a wee jig to some of it, if you’re that way inclined. Click on the links at the end for the Mixcloud and Spotify versions.

Frank Wilson – Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)
Dobie Gray – Out on the Floor
Chuck Wood – Seven Days Too Long – Mono
Chairmen Of The Board – Give Me Just a Little More Time
R. Dean Taylor – There’s A Ghost In My House
Freda Payne – Band Of Gold (Single Mix)
The Supremes – Stoned Love
Stevie Wonder – Superstition – Single Version
Four Tops – Reach Out I’ll Be There
Marvin Gaye – I Heard It Through The Grapevine
The Temptations – Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone – Single Version
Martha Reeves & The Vandellas – Dancing In The Street
Fontella Bass – Rescue Me
Eddie Floyd – Knock on Wood
Wilson Pickett – In the Midnight Hour
Jackie Wilson – (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher & Higher
Jr. Walker & The All Stars – (I’m A) Road Runner
Sly & The Family Stone – Dance to the Music
Gloria Jones – Tainted Love
The Trammps – Hold Back the Night
Carla Thomas – B-A-B-Y
Buster Brown – Fannie Mae
Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders – Something Keeps Calling Me Back
Evie Sands – Picture Me Gone
The Invitations – What’s Wrong with Me Baby
Fats Domino – It Keeps Rainin’
Boot Hog Pefferly And The Loafers – I’m Not Going to Work Today
Major Lance – Everybody Loves a Good Time
The Impressions – It’s All Right – Single Version
Carl Douglas – Serving a Sentence of Life
Barbara Acklin – From The Teacher To The Preacher [with Gene Chandler]
Bunny Sigler – Let The Good Times Roll (Feel So Good)
Robert Parker – Barefootin’
Kim Weston – Take Me In Your Arms (Rock Me A Little While) – Single Version
Don Covay – See Saw
The Flirtations – Nothing But A Heartache
The Capitols – Cool Jerk
James Carr – That’s What I Want to Know
Fontella Bass,Bobby McClure – Don’t Mess Up A Good Thing
Shirley Ellis – Soul Time – Single Version
Dusty Springfield – Can I Get A Witness
Marvin Gaye – Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home)
Della Reese – If It Feels Good Do It

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1s2VNEwdstlnZINzxdXrmh?si=f3cb939bdf194949