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The Anvil


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I was once given a tour of The Anvil complex, with a view of applying for a projectionist's job. If I remember rightly, two of the auditoria were served by 35mm projectors and the third was 16mm. A great deal of thought had gone into the screen presentation - as well as being able to alter the size of the screens to either wide screen or scope, they were also able to alter them to the old 'Academy' size (the old screen size of the forties and fifties, a perfect square, before wide screen became standard. I don't mean Cinemascope). Comfort for the Patrons was also excellent. However, the projection rooms were under staircases and it was impossible to stand up in them. Having said that, the entire programme was on one reel, so it was a case of getting the film on screen, and then going out to stretch to full height. This put me off and I did not pursue the application. It was however, a wonderful complex.

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Guest tsavo

I was once given a tour of The Anvil complex, with a view of applying for a projectionist's job. If I remember rightly, two of the auditoria were served by 35mm projectors and the third was 16mm. A great deal of thought had gone into the screen presentation - as well as being able to alter the size of the screens to either wide screen or scope, they were also able to alter them to the old 'Academy' size (the old screen size of the forties and fifties, before wide screen became standard. Idon't mean Cinemascope). Comfort for the Patrons was also excellent. However, the projection rooms were under staircases and it was impossible to stand up in them. Having said that, the entire programme was on one reel, so it was a case of getting the film on screen, and then going out to stretch to full height. This put me off and I did not pursue the application. It was however, a wonderful complex.

Surelythis started off under a different name and not Council backed, but can't for the life of me remember the name. Help!

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Surelythis started off under a different name and not Council backed, but can't for the life of me remember the name. Help!

Was it called The Cineplex ? I managed to get in to see Young Frankestein despite being too young at the time.

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Guest tsavo

Absolutely right! Funny how some details of the past just disappear. Thanks, Grinderbloke spot on call.

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I have very fond memories of the Anvil - when I left University in 1984 and didn't have a job I spent many afternoons in there. They only charged £1 if you had a UB40! Often I was the only person in there.

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Guest tsavo

Was it called The Cineplex ? I managed to get in to see Young Frankestein despite being too young at the time.

Bang right. It was opened by ex Rank Organisation exec, David Williams.

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Guest janice844

I've 2 different connections to the Anvil - I'm a Northern Soul fan, so I know it was run by Dave Godin. My Mum used to go to the Anvil, she went nearly every week, I went with her once or twice:

'The name Northern Soul was attributed to Blues & Soul writer Dave Godin who in an article for the magazine in the early 70's claimed that the soul music that the kids in the North of England were dancing to was different to soul music elsewhere in the country, it was he said 'a form of northern soul music' & the scenes name was born!'

'Champion of black music who coined the term 'northern soul''

In the 1970s he moved north, taking a degree at Sheffield University and later becoming the first director of the Anvil arts cinema.

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"Champion of black music who coined the term 'northern soul"

I came across the following obituary of Dave Godin in the Daily Telegraph dated 27/10/2004. It seems to be a very fair appraisal of his contribution to both music and film

Dave Godin, who has died aged 68, was a leading champion of black American music in Britain; a prolific writer on the subject, he coined the term "Northern Soul" to describe the highly-danceable 1960s rhythm and blues which became a cult in such improbable musical outposts as Wigan, Stafford and Stoke-on-Trent, and which continues to form a vibrant strand of radio programming to this day.

During the early 1960s, at a time when soul music was strictly a minority enthusiasm, seldom to be heard on radio or found in the charts, Godin founded the Tamla Motown Appreciation Society to celebrate and promote the work of Berry Gordy's Detroit record label. Godin became the label's first British representative, and brought the first "Motortown Revue", which featured the Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, to Britain in 1965.

David Godin was born in London on June 21 1936, the son of a milkman. He claimed to have first become aware of rhythm and blues music as a teenager when he heard a Ruth Brown record, Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean, being played in an ice-cream parlour at Bexleyheath. It ignited Godin's Messianic insticts. Among the first of his converts was Mick Jagger, a contemporary at Dartford Grammar School.

After working as a consultant for Tamla Motown, Godin went on to became a regular columnist for Blues and Soul magazine, and in 1967 opened Soul City - the first record shop in Europe to specialise in black music. By the end of the 1960s, soul music was undergoing a transition from the light, "uptown" dance music, often featuring sweeping, anthemic orchestrations, typified by Motown, towards the darker and denser syncopations of funk.

The flame of the retro dance music was kept alive by all-night marathons in such northern outposts as the Wigan Casino and the Golden Torch in Stoke-on-Trent, where devotees would trade rare records like religious icons. Godin christened the phenomenon "Northern Soul", and his Soul City shop became specialists in the genre, subsequently developing into a label of the same name, excavating and releasing rare American records that would otherwise have gone unheard in Britain. The label enjoyed a surprise Number one with its first ever release, Nothing Can Stop Me by Gene Chandler, but Godin's attempt to run the business as a workers' co-operative led to its early demise.

In the 1970s, rueing his lack of further education, Godin took a degree in Film Studies and went on to work as a senior film officer for the British Film Institute and became director of the Anvil, Sheffield's civic cinema. A man of trenchant opinions and a fierce opponent of film censorship, he enjoyed many lively conversations with the then film censor John Trevelyan.

Godin was also a passionate animal rights activist, a vegan, a fluent speaker of Esperanto and, despite his avowed atheism, a supporter of the Jain religion. But soul music was his abiding interest, and Godin's view remained that of the purist, always tending to favour the obscure over the commercial, championing the cause of many artists who might have made only one or two recordings, but which he regarded as classics.

In recent years, he compiled a series of albums of just such rarities - Dave Godin's Deep Soul Treasures - for Ace Records, which featured such artists as Loretta Williams, the Just Brothers and Jimmy and Louise Tig. The albums were greeted with universal critical acclaim, and Godin described the series as the proudest achievement of his life.

Dave Godin died on October 15. He never married.

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