Northern Soul

Winter sucks.  In the summer, you don't need to put so much effort into basic happiness.  If I'm feeling a little down in August, I just look outside at the sunshine and that usually does the trick.  In the winter, I find that a normal level of mental stability requires constant maintenance.  It's just so...gray.  And Long Island winters can be quite bitter.  Your skin gets scaly and your lips are so dry that they crack with each attempt to smile, so then you don't want to smile because you'll start bleeding from the face, and then your mood grows dour, and unless you moisturize the cracks out of your lips every twenty minutes you become depressed.

Listening to good music is always wonderful, but in the winter it is essential.  It's like moisturizer for my soul.  Maybe not the best metaphor, but the point is: I just found some new music that I really love, and here it is.

Northern Soul is actually not new at all, but it is new to me.  It's music that became popular in Northern England in the late 1960s -- Motown-kinda records that never made it big in the U.S.  It's a little bit soul, a little bit R&B, and a little bit hipster.  NPR recently did a program about it, and the music still has a following.  As far as I can tell, most of these records were made in the 1960s but didn't get a wide release, so the music can be hard to come by.  Fans search through the annals and still discover new tracks, apparently.  And there are dance moves (they look totally doable, yes?) that goes along with it:

I get a groove going every time I listen to this music.  I can't help it.  I grew up on Marvin Gaye and The Four Tops and The Temptations, and it's delightful to discover that I've hardly tapped into how much of this genre is out there.  I blasted Frankie Beverly & The Butlers today at the gym while I was on the elliptical, and I grooved so hard I nearly broke the machine.  Who are Frankie Beverly & The Butlers?  I have no idea, but they're friggen awesome.