Monday, 27 March 2023

VA [2023] - Wigan Casino Three Before Eight [Outta Sight #OS230923]


On 23 Sep 2023, the now legendary, Wigan Casino will celebrate 50 years since opening it's doors at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning of 23 Sep 1973. Inevitably there will be many different events celebrating the occasion with the 'official' one taking place over the weekend of 22-24 Sep at The Winter Gardens in Blackpool. The two main stay DJs were founder Russ Winstanley and Richard Searling who had a parting of the way many years ago and never the twain shall meet so Richard is organising the Blackpool event and no doubt Russ will be doing his own, although I'm not up to speed on them all.

Anyway, also inevitably, Outta Sight has just reissued the famous "Three Before Eight" on 7" vinyl. They were originally all featured on a single back in 1978 on RK Records and the sleeve artwork has been duplicated. They were issued again by Goldmine Soul Supply, not dated but probably late 90s around 96/97.

For the uninitiated, the all-nighters ran every Sat/Sun night for eight years until 1981 and these three songs were played at the end of every all-nighter by Russ Winstanley and signalled the end of the event. They were played in order of Jimmy Radcliffe "Long After Tonight Is All Over" (1965), Tobi Legend "Time Will Pass You By" (1968) and Dean Parrish "I'm On My Way" (1967). Fifty years on and Tobi Legend is still one on my all time favourites. I recall buying the first reissue of it on Eric which had a jump in it and spent ages carefully trying to stop it jumping and ended up with a hiss where I'd held the stylus down on it, the inexperience of youth! By the way, dear old Kylie Minogue is about the only one I know of who's tried to cover the song, on her 1994 self-titled album.

Included below is the last time they were heard at the Casino on the final all-nighter in 20 Sep 1981, although there were a few false ends much to the miff of some all-nighter goers but a joy to others as there were additional nights to be enjoyed.

I'm not quite sure who the target buyer is for this one as anyone involved in Northern Soul who collects records must surely already have these in some format (vinyl and/or CD) but perhaps it's aimed at a new, younger, Northern Soul devotee as I suppose they haven't been available on vinyl since the late 90s but are relatively cheap and easy to pick up if anyone wanted one!

Click on image below for link to where you can buy from.

Details
Rating: 8.4
Explicit: N
Genre/Style: Northern Soul
Format: Single / Reissue
Media: 7"
Label: Outta Sight
Cat No: None
Date: 26/03/2023
Key/BPM: 9A/115 / 7B/133 / 4B/128 
Price: £15
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