Parish Notices #6

A coincidence last Saturday. In the car traveling down to an Open Day at Southampton University (our son is intending to go to Uni later this year) Twitter was being discussed on the radio, which led us to – er – twitter about this latest form of Internet socializing. Back home later that evening I was idly checking Feel It’s Sitemeter stats (like you do) and found a massive spike in the hit rate. On further investigation I found it had been caused by some guy(Robert Ashley) in California mentioning my Delfonics post on his Twitter page. I have never seen a hit on Feel It from Twitter before, but it would appear to demonstrate the power of the Twittering Classes.

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Souled On is in the middle of the Love Lockdown series. At least one post a day, often more, from selected contributors offering a few songs and words on a Valentine theme. I will keep saying it – Souled On is one of my favourite sites. Scholar’s own posts are always a joy and, although the Love Lockdown series are guest posts, the amount of work that must be required to collate and publish them, and to keep finding on point quotes in “A word from your Moms”, - and that’s every day - shouldn’t be underestimated. Scholar is a star, and he was kind enough to ask for a contribution from Feel It.

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Right>> you will find I have recently added a link to Soul Portrait. This appears to be an excellent blog, I can’t actually vouch for the written content because unfortunately for me it’s in Spanish (which is just one of every other language in existence apart from English that I cannot speak!), however there are excellent pictures and music links too. It is also somewhat unusual because it is hosted on Flickr. I have never seen a blog on Flickr before, but a music blog is what it essentially is. The custodian Alex has also recently asked me for a Feel It style contribution in the form of a ten track list for his monthly charts feature. I’m generally not good on the 10 this, or 10 that, type questions usually finding it impossible to pin myself down to a definitive list of 10 whatevers. In this case I made it easy for myself by choosing the 10 singles that have being getting the most plays on my turntable recently, generally because they have been my most recent purchases. You can find the list here, together with a link to a couple of downloads.

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Over at The Songs That People Sing recently Simon posted a track by the Vee Gees and wondered if anybody knew anything more about them. DavyH ("The Ghost") suggested that I might be able to help. I was flattered. My knowledge of, and obsession with, soul music grows by the day but essentially I am hanging on the coat-tails of others far more knowledgeable in the genre than me (think Sir Shambling, Red Kelly, Mr. Finewine, Colin Dilnott - and they are just a few). I had never heard of the Vee Gees but after a bit of Googling I found a forum discussion that hinted they may have hailed from North Carolina. That led me to Jason Perlmutter’s (there you are, somebody else with a fine set of coat-tails) excellent Carolina Soul site where the Vee Gees singles are indeed listed. A quick email enquiry ensued and Jason kindly replied to give a bit of a back story and the fact that the Vee Gees were almost definitely a 70s incarnation of the Versatile Gents who were active in the late 60s. Back to Google with the Versatile Gents as a search term and would you believe it I found a c1967 picture of the Greensboro, NC Versatile Gents. Haven’t turned anything up on the Vee Gees / Versatile Gents post 1974 though, anybody have any ideas?

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I tell you, I’m everywhere on the Internet right now (ha ha!).

What should I post, “Here, There, and Everywhere”? Don’t know of a soul take on this song. Instead here’s another one from my “chart” on Soul Portrait.


Ted Taylor – Something Strange Is Goin’ On In My House (mp3) 1970