boba

From the new not yet published volume of soul harmony singles: SOFT TONES, THE (also as The Softones) (Baltimore, MD) Marvin Brown (lead and first tenor), formerly of The Unifics on Fountain; Steven Jackson (second tenor), Elton Lynch (second tenor and baritone), Byron Summerville (first and second tenor), left sometime before 1977, but rejoined on Parkway. On H&L: Brown, Jackson, Lynch, Clarise Smith and Yvonne Jones. ** As The Tones: Marvin Brown, Steven Jackson, Elton Lynch. The "New" Softones: Elton Lynch, Kevin Muldrow, Darnell Carter, formerly of The Inclinations. ** and vaguely related, the inclinations were pretty much the same group as the optimistics, and one of them was in Beverly and the Del Capris

ok, you're just saying that the talent today is embarrassing compared to what it was back then, got it. There's probably a lot of reasons for the situation today but the most annoying one for me is autotune. Nobody can be a good or bad singer anymore because it will take out the qualities that make someone's voice soulful and unique and it will make crappy singers sound just as good.

anyone here have both 45s and can describe what's in the deadwax of each one?

SUPER SUPER underrated group. Some of my favorite singles: Any Street / How did I lose Guns (very hard to find group funk track) What is life extra-ordinary people girl we've got to keep on and all 3 parkway 45s and the new softtones on exact change does anyone know if their 12" on whatever's clever ("listen to your heartbeat") was released as a 45? Thanks.

Hi, I'm confused by the first part of your post. I understand from your last sentence that you are asking for singers who used to lead a group and then went solo. I think a lot of this was inspired by a move away from vocal groups in the 70s (as well as overdubbing in the studio), spearheaded by people like Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Minnie Riperton, etc. What are you saying is "embarassing" though? Anyways, another one for your thread is Phillipe Wynne. Also Minnie Riperton was in the Gems right before she cut her first solo record as andrea davis ... of course she then spent time in the rotary connection before going solo again.

I agree with this with the one caveat that most obscure, collector uploaded tracks on youtube sound like total crap. I don't know if it's youtube screwing it up, the collector not recording well, or it being an nth generation dub, but most music really is not radio quality.

no problem at all, thanks

with records like this, there might never ever be a clean copy for sale in the future... you sort of have to take what you can get.

yes, and it's similar to the college radio example.I think it's almost like a gesture to show that they somehow are recording the lesser artists (even though they aren't). with mainstream radio, audio fingerprinting has made it much, much easier for them to track artists / plays. It might not work for obscure college radio or obscure DJ sets but it could work for a lot of DJ sets I would think.

If you compare both versions of "I can't believe", it's pretty much exactly the same recording, except the vocals sound like they have been doubled on the chila record. They definitely weren't a band, they were a vocal group, and still sound great harmonizing which is rare.

yeah, what happened was that walter smith was living in cabrini green on the north side and was a member of the Admirations, who had a hit with "wait till I get to know you". There is a dual lead on that track, he was one of the two guys. He ended up transferring to a south side high school and he met the other group and Ted Daniels produced them, initially trying to capitalize on walt's previous connection with the Admirations (but spelling the group name differently, I guess for legal reasons). Anyways, the group stayed together and Andre Williams started to work with them, resulting in most of the rest of their output (except for the high society 45). Walter lives like 4 blocks from me now.

do you even read posts before responding? I'm just kidding. anyway, this is what I was talking about, they are supposed to make payments to artists (e.g. dividing up their whole chunk of fees) based on the playlists... but the PRS really don't enforce it or attempt to get a list of tracks. But they do force the venue to pay their fees. So basically they are collecting money that they keep themselves and paying some of the money to totally different artists (pop stars) that didn't even earn that money.

no, that's like their last recording. their first recording was walter and the admerations on lacindy. then they recorded 3 singles as the green berets on Uni. then they recorded one single as high society. Then they recorded that first Velvet Hammer single on Polydor. Then they recorded the whole LP. The first cover was the one with the girl, but apparently it was ric williams' girlfriend and he got mad so they changed to that weird design cover. Their last released record was just an earlier recording, it was the velvet hammer on chila. Phillip Davis their guitarist just remixed the high society track, it's not a new recording.

OK, so after 4 years of looking (for a completely non-indemand random record) I finally got a Polydor stock copy. The flipside is terrible, it sounds like Andre Williams drunk and singing out of tune, like he wanted to make sure that that side was never played. I guess this ends the run of awesome polydor b-sides on rare stock copies.

I'm sorted on this record, thanks everyone. I don't know about any increased popularity, but I hadn't heard it before and then decided I really wanted it because it was the Rent is Too Damn High party guy. re: information being lost and not documented (e.g. Kev's story), I totally agree that this will happen as time goes on. It's already sort of happened with this one sweet / funk record by a group called the Rappers. The label owner repressed it in the early 90s with the original labels, but the vinyl is obviously 80s style vinyl. The repress always went for $10-$20 and the original was much much rarer and went for a lot more. Now people don't even note original vs. repress in their sales and sell it for the same price. It's vaguely annoying since I got true original recently...

I've heard that the french post is good and the "lost" packages are mostly chargeback scammers. I've heard that italy post is not that great. My only piece of advice here (not that it would help necessarily) is to try to use paypal's phone support, as they may be more helpful or more able to do things like search the user's account for a history of chargebacks, etc.

I read the whole thread before posting, including your posts, and thought I was going into more detail. I will try to give you more credit in the future. Thanks.

I know, but In reality they do very little to go out of their way to collect on small clubs, small radio stations, etc. Different countries' PRSes are also supposed to cooperate in collecting and forwarding royalties but they are even worse about doing that, especially BMI.

You're cranky. What did I miss? That you mentioned Paul Mooney first? I don't see how my post isn't responding to the post it's responding to. I read through the thread, if I missed something important that contradicts my post, I'm sorry.

theoretically...

Most PRSes don't put in much work into distributing money to artists played in clubs, restaurants, etc. It's almost just like extortion of the clubs, and the money goes back to the PRS and terrible mainstream artists who didn't even earn the money. My college radio station has a 2-day BMI logging period every year, so they aren't trying to put much effort into paying the artists played on the station, and I imagine they throw away a lot of the logs that get sent in. Someone was telling me that their record got played on John Peel's radio show and they did get a check though.

I'm pretty sure playing the record on youtube doesn't qualify as fair use under the above criteria, and putting that phrase there won't prevent anyone from taking down your video. To make it more confusing, this is US copyright law, different countries have different copyright laws, different performing rights societies that collect broadcast royalties, many of whom even use different criteria than the US PRS' (ASCAP, BMI, etc.) to determine who gets paid and how much. Also, to make it more confusing, at least in the US there are two different copyrights that apply to each youtube music video posting -- there is the copyright of the actual written song (which is not a statutory rate as it is in pressing CDs) and there is the copyright of the recording. Someone like Paul Mooney could explain everything in more detail but it's so complicated that it's not the type of thing that someone could figure out from a simple message board posting.

someone already beat you to it in post #8. you gotta work a lot harder at this point in the thread.

The sleeve damage isn't specific to styrene, certain types of sleeves will result in offgassing, hazing up your record (vinyl or styrene) and causing surface noise... This is unrepairable. At least for the bags unlimited sleeves, they say their polyethylene and polypropylene sleeves are tested to not offgas but the polyvinyl sleeves (which are generally the weird stiff sleeves that are slightly translucent) will damage your records.

bt express - express jbs - monorail