Wall, Raine & Smith/The Northern Soul Scene, 1. Long After Tonight is All Over

Published five months after the closing of the Wigan Casino, this article (first published in Collusion in 1982) represents one of the first journalistic analytical studies of the scene. The writer, Stuart Cosgrove, begins with a summary of the mythologized role of the Casino and its enduring legacy for the Northern Soul scene. The writer discusses dancing, record collection, drug use and the venues itself in one of the most contemporaneous articles. He describes the scene as including not only the British dancers, DJs and record collectors, but also the African American record companies, artists and producers, representing Cosgrove’s ‘Black America’, the ‘single most important feature of Northern Soul’. This article represents a knowledgeable insight into the scene as it was at the beginning of the 1980s and the ways in which Northern Soul ‘aficionados’ conceptualized the scene.