When over in Belfast the other week, I was finished kind of early on Thursday, so after I checked into the hotel seeing as it was late night opening I thought I would wander round the shops and maybe stop by a couple of pubs in the area in the search for the elusive Guinness Red which until a few weeks ago many of us believed to be a figment of DVD's over active imagination.
Anyway, as I walked through Victoria Square, I spotted a record shop I had never seen before and so decided to check it out. It appeared to be just a variation on the Virgin, HMV type store with rows and rows of cut price cds and DVDs, I did however spot an arrow pointing to the back with the word vinyl written on it so proceeded to the rear of the store as instructed. There I was confronted with racks upon racks of 12" vinyl and about twelve crates of 7" singles on which it stated all 7" singles £1 & buy two get one free.
So the digging began. While sifting through these crates I dug out singles by the likes of Asobi Seksu, The Last Shadow Puppets and Broken Records. The hit rate of good to pish was quite high and when I came across a copy of French Navy by Camera Obscura, which I had paid something like 5 quid for when it came out I could not believe my luck, that was until the next crate revealed a copy of It's Christmas So We'll Stop and the original 2007 release with the choral version which I have been trying to find at a reasonable price for ages but to no avail.
At this point I decided that the nine singles I had picked up was enough of a haul for one day and got up off my hunkers and go to the checkout but when I got up a label on an as yet un-excavated box caught my attention, the label said Soul 45 which I had seen on the Fat City mailshots but didn't own anything on. I decided to punt a further pound and added it to the treasure I had already unearthed.
The single is by O.C Tolbert and is a rather good piece of modern soul, well worth the quid, was originally released on the NYC label Rojac Records in 1982 and which appears even in the repress as this single is quite rare.
Tolbert - I've Got It (pt1)
