Author and website owner Dave Rimmer gives us the low down on his literary contributions to the rare soul scene, including the undertaking of some of the biggest soul label and artist vinyl referencing projects to date:
"...I’m an anorak ! There, I’ve admitted it, Not just an ordinary anorak, but a full blown hooded, zipped up to the top anorak.
Why else would I spend years compiling discographies and label listings. Well, it’s simple really. I’m a soul music fan of some forty five years standing now, and it’s what a lot of us do as a hobby. I just seem to be a little more obsessed than most. I’ve always been an information gatherer though, and that’s partly what fuelled my soul music obsession. I’d always want to hear other releases by the artist whose single I had just bought, and this of course was pre internet days, so you couldn’t just type a name in Spotify or Youtube. So you has to really search for information in those days, and it made logical sense to me to write things down. That’s why, in 1989, I started Soulful Kinda Music.
The magazine ran for twenty years, and I put out 72, 40-plus page ‘normal’ issues, and 16 ‘special' issues which were all discographies. The website, www,soulfulkindamusic.net came later, and became an extension of the magazine. Eventually I dropped the publication of the magazine and concentrated entirely on building Soulful Kinda Music website into the world leader in Soul music discographies and label listings that it is today.
In 2002, thanks to the kind efforts of Bee Cool Publishing ‘The Rare Soul Bible Vol 1’ was published. A thousand copies were printed, and all sold within the first year. Demand has remained high for second hand copies. I had Volume 2 almost completed, but Mike and Stuart at Bee Cool went their separate ways, and this was well before the days of self publishing. So it went on hold.
By 2014 I’d taken early retirement, and the desire to get Volume 2 written and published was growing. I still had all the old files and photos, so I started looking at self publishing the book. By 2016, I was ready. Fourteen years after Volume 1 was published, Volume 2 arrived. As soon as it went on sale, I started receiving almost as many enquiries about whether Volume 1 was still available. That got me thinking.
You know I said I was an anorak earlier. Well, I’d still got all the original files and photos from fourteen years ago on my PC! I decided to update all the discographies, and to my surprise this almost doubled the size of the book. It's amazing how much more information was added during those fourteen years. Consequently, to make the book viable I decided to exclude all the photos and some of the articles, and republish Volume 1 as ‘The Rare Soul Bible Volume 1 - The Reissue’
Sales of both books have been better than I could have imagined, and if you’ve bought both, you have 831 pages of pure anorak heaven (and thank you for buying both books). If you haven’t yet bought them, you can handily buy them both here on A Nickel And A Nail...."
Sales of both books have been better than I could have imagined, and if you’ve bought both, you have 831 pages of pure anorak heaven (and thank you for buying both books). If you haven’t yet bought them, you can handily buy them both here on A Nickel And A Nail...."
The Rare Soul Bible Volume 1 - The Reissue (£21.99) and The Rare Soul Bible Volume 2 (£24.99) are both available at the time of writing in the new book section.