"How Knotty the Whole Thing Has Become"

"The biggest similarity is that both northern soulsters and punks of color found something crucial – danger, excitement, validation, and a sense of personal freedom, among other rewards—in another culture’s music and crossed over to it. We’ve seen how that played out in jazz and R&B, when whites discovered something incredible that sprang from black culture. Punk was that rare occasion in which the exchange went in the other direction; neither side was prepared for the reactions that greeted them."

At PopMatters, Mark Reynolds reviews David Nowell’s The Story of Northern Soul: A Definitive History of the Dance Scene that Refuses to Die and Stephen Duncombe and Maxwell Tremblay's White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race.