Forty years ago,in industrial Lancashire, young people found an escape from hard lives in the music of black America. As a recent film tells the uplifting story, or Paul Mason recalls his heady days and nights at Wigan CasinoThe scene is a packed school gym full of shy,ungainly people shuffling around to Gary Glitter. It is 1974. At the front are a group of perennial delinquents – the only black kid in our town, his tough Italian mate, and others we’ve lost sight of since the 11-plus. They don’t dance; they mock the other dancers.
And then the DJ plays regain Out by Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes. The dancefloor clears and the self-selected underworld of adolescent Lancashire jumps on to it to strut their jerky stuff.
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Source: theguardian.com