Northern Soul: Still Burning is a new documentary which recently had a cinema release, for a musical phenomenon which I missed this by about 10-12 years, with Frank Wilson’s Do I Love You? being cited as one of the most popular songs of the time.
With the term coined by the late journalist Dave Godin, the film mostly centres around the Wigan Casino, where from Sept 23rd 1973 to Sept 19th 1981, their big night would take place after their rock evening ended, so everyone queuing up had to wait until 2am, with the music going on on until 8am. Hence, no surprise that the combination of music, booze and drugs kept everyone going, the doc telling us how the amphetamines they took were original made for World War II, to cause violence in men!
A lot of songs were flops in the USA, but were picked up by UK DJs, who sourced what they felt to be gold, and each one would want to find exclusives that no other DJ was playing, and get a few weeks of bragging rights out of it.
If this was a time for social media, clips of the first night would be onscreen from day one, but it took until 1977, when ITV’s This England made a programme about it, albeit in order to film people, they had to do it with lights on, which is awkward in a nightclub!
For some of the music at the time which I *do* like, there’s Bob & Earl’s Harlem Shuffle, R. Dean Taylor’s There’s a Ghost In My House – later covered by The Fall, and Gloria Jones’ original version of Tainted Love – that one featured in the brilliant Sightseers, later covered by Soft Cell, and there’s comments from Marc Almond, who worked in the cloakroom at the Leeds Warehouse in the ’60s.
Probably less popular, was Tony Blackburn‘s recording, I’ll Do Anything, where he had to change his name to Lenny Gamble, so no-one would know it was him, and thus buy it!
Northern Soul: Still Burning shows such nights are still around today, even with a lot of nightclubs having sadly closed down, especially since COVID, but for this film, even without me not being a massive fan of this genre, it does make for interesting viewing, so it’s worth checking out when it comes to streaming, as that’s inevitably the next destination for most such documentaries.
Contributors to the film include fashion bloke Wayne Hemingway, ex-Channel 4 News faceache Paul Mason, and the lovely Levanna McLean, who hosts such evenings, and you can find out when the next one is via her Instagram.
Oh, and as for the Wigan Casino, that finally closed in December 1981, but since it was a listed building, it couldn’t be demolished, and was just left up as an eyesore… until 1982 when the building burned down. Ooh, I wonder who did that? Hmm….
Northern Soul: Still Burning is in cinemas now, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 100 minutes
Release date: May 15th 2026
Studio: Neon
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Rating: 6/10
Director: Alan Byron
Producer: Alan Byron
Writer: Alan Byron
Participants:
Tony Palmer
Tony Blackburn
Elaine Constantine
Ian Levine
Steve Jeffries
Lauren Fitzpatrick
Richard Searling
Wayne Hemingway
Kev Roberts
Dave Evison
Will Foot
Marie Gillespie
Keith Gildart
Neil Ashton
Dave McAleer
Julian Palmer
Thomas Hassett
Craig Birchall
Frank Orrell
Levanna McLean
Christine Fiddler
Paul Mason
Stephen Riley
Lee Jeffries
Ady Croasdell
Ian Dewhirst
Steve Caesar
Tim Brown
Lewis Henderson
John Bratton
David Nathan
Francesco Mellina
Derrick Birdsall
Brian Rigby
Judith Searling
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.