Last night KEXP's weekly soul 'n' funk 'n' R&B show, The Roadhouse, hosted its annual Spring Soul Jamboree Radio Show: An Invitational!! Now, I'm sure y'all know the Roadhouse is mandatory listening, but the Spring Soul Jamboree is even MORE mandatory-er mandatory listening. The jams played always makes for a most awesome evening as boss with the hot sauce, Mister DJ Greg Vandy invites "6 local Soul DJs (to) play their 5 fav soul jams of all time. Records must be under 4 minutes and recorded before 1976." Uh...exclusive TOP 5 faves y'all, so every track played is guaranteed GOLD! I ALMOST wanna rate last night's installment as "BEST EVER" 'cause the local and well-sussed soulies lineup featured: DJ Supreme La Rock, Nitty Gritty (Sophisticated Mama), Matt Greasy (DUG), Cherry Canoe, Gene Balk (ECSC/Talcum), and DJ Funkscribe (KBCS). Now THAT is a SOLID line up of heavies! If you missed the live broadcast, you can still listen to the program, as KEXP keeps its shows archived for two weeks.

Oh, I also wanna mention, perhaps more than in past years I heard a couple of the DJs refer to the records they played as Northern Soul. Northern Soul is a term for some soul records, which, in America, can be slightly confusing as their being "Northern" has nothing to do with where they were recorded, so I'm often asked, "What makes this soul song 'Northern?'" The short answer is, it's forgotten American soul 45s which were played on a club circuit in the North of England during the first half of the 1970s. Easy, right? The long answer—well, watch this cool, concise BBC documentary, Northern Soul: Keeping The Faith; it does a real good job of explaining, properly, the Northern Soul culture.