The champagne amphetamine's been flowing throughout 2023 in celebration of the legendary Wigan Casino Club, which launched its very first "Northern Soul all-nighter" fifty years ago - at 2am on Sunday 23rd September 1973, to be precise.

Auntie Beeb's certainly been heavily featuring this remarkable genre - the meld of obscure non-chart uptempo American black music and an underground scene that saw punters travel across huge swathes of the North of England in the middle of the night (after conventional pubs and clubs had closed) to dance their tits off until dawn! Indeed, it is a recent BBC article that has prompted me to locate and play for you the tracks on their "Wigan Casino classics" list...:

• NB Mr Wilson's record became the most sought-after, and the most expensive 7" single ever - see here for more.

And "three before eight" - three closing songs played before 08:00:

"And what do we say, Malcolm?"
"We say 'Keep the Faith', Paul!" **

Notes:

• * "Talcum Time" refers to the alleged practice of scattering talc on the damcefloor to help with some of the punters' sliding dance moves. It could well be an "urban myth" to cover up a nickname for another widely-used white powder found in the clubs.
• ** Much like the term "Northern Soul" itself, it was soul music aficionado and journalist Dave Godin whose regular use of the term "Keep the Faith" led to it - and the famous clenched fist logo first used by the US Black Panthers - becoming the slogan for the whole scene. Paul O'Grady (and his producer Malcolm Prince) used to have this exchange on his Radio 2 show after his weekly Northern Soul slot.