Its a rare obsurity 45 for a very good reason - I would not consider it soul (jazz-funk) boogie at all, its just a poor production and watered down 80s music trying to emulate the proper soul boogie - but fails miserably.

Ha ha ah HA ha .. .. . YES

Looks like there's a hot debate in here ... so here's my humble opinion. This 45 is very good, I added it to my wants list, but it certainly sits nowhere near the top of it. My personal bid for such a record would have been of $150 maximum, and had someone else placed a winning bid of even $200, I would have watched this record go away with absolutely no regret. I see 2 main reasons for it to sell at this absolutely nut price : 1) sometimes people's nerves get the best out of them when it come to last-minute bids and 2) rare and obscure records auctioned during massive sales of hundreds of records by a few very well-known sellers that I don't need to name tend to oversell. In other words, too much people interested in the same product at the same time leads to inflation, and here it occured on a massive scale. In the end, the final price here has nothing to do with quality or even rarity, it's all down to the visibility of the product and the buying decision process of some individuals. It only takes 2 or 3 more copies to surface for it to sell at its normal price of $150-$300.

If a carton of 500 originals surfaced from a warehouse find and were made available to multiple record shops [say the same number of a limited repress of a rare in demand soul record] I'd be very interested to know your estimate value of the original then. I'd say it would eventually level out at around $10-20 for those wanting to sell copies after the people who would pay above this had all bought it.

Spot on and level headed anaysis. For rarity and quality I think that's about right and for $150 youd certainly be paying more for the rarity. Personally I'd say you'd be paying $140 for the rarity and at a push $10 for the quality.

For your reference here's the clip while it's available: http://www.media.carolinasoul.com/audioclips/4555469a.mp3

Curious to know what all the fuss was about I went to listen to the sound clip on ebay which the seller had kindly uploaded to their listing and was still available after the aution had finished. Thank god he'd left it there as I now know what it sounds like and I can now avoid it like the plague unless I see it in a bargain bin for a dollar or less... This is seriously bad (meaning aweful) and a case of what I call 'Emporers New Clothes Soul'... firstly the singer is not singing soul... this is an amateur 'shower' singer of the worst kind... I can see him now infront of the bathroom mirror with shower head in hand pretending it's a mike... the style is affected... let's face it he's not singing from the soul... he's singing to try and impress his girl (and his reflection in the mirror) that he's a singer... and the lyrics and song are terrible... so how can someone think this a $2000+ tune when you can buy original sealed Marvin''s and Curtis Mayfield LPs for a tenth of the price. Sure it is rare but this does not make it good and in fact its rare for a very good reason... nobody was interested when it first came out and he probably touted it around a few local record shops and record stations... why did it not get played and why did it not get wider circulation and release... because it was piss poor... and still is. In the 80s production took a turn for the worse with the introduction of beefed up beats which were able to disguise the fact the singers and song writers were so bad... because at least there was a heavy disco beat for the hand bag dancers to crash around to... boogie in this context is also an insult... if you've ever seen real boogie dancers getting down in a club this is the commercial pap they hate... real dancers boogie to syncopated organic rhythms and the club beat style was introduced as friday night handbag dancers need a 4-4 crash beat to know where they are in the 4-4 bar. Back in the 80s in the suburban discos that were playing the commercial end of soul music like Fatback's I've Found Loving the handbag dancers were usually too tipsy from cheap cocktails to remember more than 4 steps in a sequence... real boogie is funk and syncopation and it's appalling how the term has become hijacked to encompass the crap disco-club style that so many DJs turn to in their playout box when the hand-bag dancers are on the floor... so much amazing music out there and it astounds me that there were two people out there in vinyl-biddin-land battling dollars for this? Makes you wonder if this was just a publicity stunt to hike the value of this crapola and then sell it privately... no I'm not suggesting the seller was responsible... more like an owner of the record who is sitting on a copy or two and wants to increase the value of their stockpile... damn there is no accounting for taste... tip... go and buy an original mint copy of Leo Sunships LP and have change of $1600... OK rant over... nothing to see here, back to some real digging...

LOL! TGWS... You can't be serious can you... you actually think this is good soul???

My review was based on this being advertised and catalogued as a 'soul record'... therefore the review was based on it being part of this category and in relation to 'soul'. I agree as a novelty relatively unknown obscure independent club production its OK-ish but when it is elevated to 'soul' this guy sucks as a soul singer. His delivery is totally affected and he sounds as though he's over doing the emotion to the point of being 'theatrical'... the really bad lyrics and naff song writing doesn't help his cause and only emphasizes this is an amateur artist rather than an authentic soul singer. So I stand by my review in relation to it being reviewed as a soul record. If it had sold for $20 it would have gone by unnoticed but if your forking out 2000 dollars then I think you'll agree this is piss poor soul for your bucks. The review was relative to the price and relative to the quality of soul you actually get for the amount forked out. Lets face it if a friend called you to recommend you bid up to 2500 dollars on a soul record but you could not hear the sound file but totally trusted his judgement and then this record arrived you'd be pretty annoyed in relation to what you could have received and therefore for the price paid I believe most people would class this as a piss-poor choice. Now lets say your friend called you and Brief Encounter's 'Human had just been discovered and listed for the first time and there were no copies anywhere [as in this case] and then you followed his tip without hearing it and when it arrived you put it on your deck and heard 'Human'... in this scenario you'd think you were the luckiest soul buyer alive on the planet... the difference in quality, expectation and value are relative to the bench mark that really great records like 'Human' set, which are both rare and of a quality that transcends your expectations. For me I set benchmarks and then price is relative to the benchmark. What drives me as a digger is finding new records that meet those benchmarks and rarity is a plus but quality is a must. In this case, I believe in this case, rarity clouded two people's better judgement. I was forthright in my words as I wanted to initiate debate and hear other's views.

Hi Bayou... saw you replied to my comment and that you are also the submitter of the record to the discogs database... is this a record you have in your personal collection or is it the photo lifted from ebay? Just wondering as it was posted near the beginning of the ebay auction.

I can confirm that I certainly did not bid on this... was just curious when I saw the auction result posted on the home page at collectors frenzy so I investigated... the reason I wrote a long review is that I'm passionate about real soul [especially when it is combined with organic funk] and wanted to make a point and also alert anyone who thought it was actually worth 2000... however two people obviously did think it worth the dollars... my gripe is not actually the record itself, which of it's own particular genre obviously has some merit as a rarity and obscure indie club clacker... however to market it and catalogue it as 'soul' is in my opinion an insult to the heritage of soul... Often rarity blinds people to quality and if you use Marvin and Curtis as your bench marks and the Magic of Leo Sunship [Give Me The Sunshine] as your reference of how a harder club beat can sound when produced to perfection then this type of record ends up being just a second rate obscurity. Some people want to hear a track as better than it is just because it is so rare and their ears end up deceiving them caught up in the fact it is rare... I have a thousand 80's club style soul tracks for sale on LPs here on discogs that are better than this and cost under a tenner... but no one buys them as they were on main stream labels so no one is interested... put a second rate or third rate track on a self released piece of vinyl that came out on an unknown American label, that no one bought at the time because it was second rate, and suddenly some collector's love it and desperately want it for their collection... my point is they want it and will fight for it because it is rare and not because it is quality... so sorry this read was not pleasurable and it moved you to the point where you found it offensive... but it's the truth... it's a sad fact that so many people favour obscurity over quality. I've also noticed that boogie has become an all encompassing term that now catches a lot of bad club funk which is also another point I was making... for me personally boogie is the funkier and more organic side of disco... when I was DJing in the mid 80s boogie never had the harder 80s club beat that took away from the organic cross rhythms that got the best 'boogie' dancers funkin down on the dancefloor... we actually avoided playing that stuff as the boogie dancers wanted the funkier boogie tunes and not the commercial club sound... but hey times change, trends change and the nuance of word definitions changes so guessing I'm just out of touch of what real boogie and soul is. Also my review was done to spark debate on the subject which it obviously did and reading peoples varying opinions is fascinating so thanks for the input.

nice onesider . . . . . . . . just sold for 2,2 k at the bay

nice auction chat ^^ . . . . . . .

haha, I knew you would come here and post about it :)