Dean Rudland

Ah OK - thought it was only the 2 + 1. Brilliant record

Maybe, but what? These weren't over-pressed at the time I feel certain of that. The Paramount Four has for instance sold 30 times on Discogs and the price has come down £100 from its peak, and the last one was up for a couple of months before it sold. Same with the Magicians, for which there are three copies for sale from £325 on discogs, but it's highest price is £350, and every copy since then has sold for less. Virtually all of these have had standard Kent issues since their first release. The market for these is possibly not that big.

Nancy Wilcox, Sandra Richardson and Classic Example I think it's worth noting that 300 copies is a lot to be circulating when demand dips or there isn't any to start with. So for instance one of my favourites - The Magnificent - which definitely wasn't over-pressed goes for less than Sandra Richardson which was over -pressed, and is more than £25 for a copy now, I see. The one's being sold at the moment were very in demand when they came out and the prices have dropped a bit since then (or certainly those records hang around longer now). If someone had a business with over pressed stock the time to get rid of them would have been at the time. But as I say, it is almost impossible to do at a big factory and those three were the ones printed at the smaller rogue factory.

First of all my value comment was on the copies that were over pressed, which go for about £25 at most. I’ll be clear - as I thought I had been - the over pressing by the plant occurred on only 3 titles, all pressed at the same pressing plant. Whoever is selling these either had copies from the night or has judiciously gathered some up since.

Chalky was I think was asking if it was possible that these latest records that have come up for sale are being pressed from the original parts, and my answer, based on working for Ace/ Kent amongst other labels is no. Most big factories protect their clients metalwork and it is very difficult for this to happen at the time of a release. Metalwork is then destroyed after a couple of years in most plants. So it is virtually impossible that if these are bootlegs that they are coming from the original parts. The over pressing of Anniversary titles happened at one plant and at the time the record was originally pressed. But it’s great to see that Soul Source whilst less populated is still the place where people with actual knowledge of the question are shouted down as ridiculous. 😉

On these records they won’t for a number of reasons. On the ones that were already known about it could be a problem. But those one’s aren’t really worth much anyway.

It’s a good question, but these titles are older titles and never had multiple copies around before (and weren’t pressed at the dodgy plants). The seller has only 14 feedback, so I wonder if this is just a collector selling up, one who perhaps went to the 100 Club in a group of people and ended up with multiple copies.

As far as I remember it was only the two that Ady first mentioned and then the Classic Example mentioned above. Without looking on my shelf I can’t remember what those first two were, but pretty sure one was Sandra Richardson. Sorry I know that’s a bit vague

It was one specific factory that was them dropped, but accidentally used for a more recent single and the same thing happened again.

I think we have - and probably will always have - too little information. In the above do we know that the matrix is the same or different to the released record?

I think that the $4000 is more than likely for the work that he did for Getto Kitty Productions - there were two albums and one single for RCA by Sonny Til, Percy Mayfield and the Swordsmen, and two Nina singles and an album from Nina.

Chalky, when I worked at Fania I had access to the archive, and one sided test presses were done on a number of releases. They were the same as a two sided test pressing but split across two discs (at Fania they usually had generic pressing plant labels, sometimes written on, sometimes not). So I don't think the single sided TP is that unusual, although the lack of label is. As I think you said Test Pressing are often done in low numbers - I do 5 for Acid Jazz - and very rarely more than twenty. So something like the above will be rare. Oddly I found a single copy of The Seven Souls in the archive - used to work out the arrangements for 'Stranger' on Joe Bataan's soul album - sadly cracked all the way through. It was a shame because there was multiple copies of just about everything else covered on the album.

I haven't been able to get hold of the correct person at Warners, but the reason for the titles is that these are the ones that ended up being owned by UK Warners after they bought out the EMI UK catalogue in the early 2010s. Basically the Roulette catalogue and the associated (ie bought up by Levy) labels, so Calla, Port, Colpix etc. The two that were issued in 2019 came in the same packaging as all four are appearing in today. I presume that they've got a plan, and if anyone tells me what it is I will post here. Since the relaunch in 2017 there have been very few reissues, but they have included a Ray Charles Atlantic singles CD, and Nina Simone Colpix singles set, and the Candi Staton unreleased Fame tracks LP.

This was about one of the Northern Soul films that came out about a decade ago, where Ed knew the producer or director as a friend, and he found out that people on the Soul Source forum was wishing death on that person. It was less against the site, than against the mindless hate that would sometimes flare up on the forum, back in the days when there was a lot more posting and people were very hot headed. He was conflating the sites forum with a certain strain of the northern soul scene.

This is a fascinating topic and really depends on where you draw the line for the rare soul scene. I mean obviously things were re-released on Sue because Guy saw demand for them - hence not only Night Train, but also You Can't Sit Down, whilst a lot of the 1964 Pye and Stateside blues singles were the result of mods or groups covering the records - My Babe by Little Walter, and Smokestack Lightin' by Howlin' Wolf had both been previously released on UK labels - but surely those 1968 releases were the first inspired by the new scene that was deliberately trying to track down poorly selling up-tempo dancers from a few years earlier.

Hi Chalky the cheapest we are paying seems to be closer to £1.50, plus shipping (and in reality for most small labels plus 8 1/2 % of Published dealer price for mechanical royalties paid on pressing not sales.) And in fact, most pressings that are higher than 500 units are not selling out, and very few releases sell over a 1000 in a short period of time. Dean

Hi Paul Just because someone says it happened, it doesn't mean that it did. What Berry is suggesting is only applicable for the US market - you have to pay a fixed rate in the UK and the publisher can't make it smaller for you, they also can't block the usage of the song. When I'm dealing with US publishers they often translate US rules to the way the rest of the world works, but it just isn't the case. But more importantly, I'm not sure why, in mid-1963 he would be convinced of the argument that the Beatles were so big that they needed special treatment, and Brian couldn't have withheld the tracks from the album as they'd only recorded enough tracks for an album at that point.

Billy Valentine - We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue (Flying Dutchman / Acid Jazz) View full article

I get that, and with the example I gave we made very clear there was more stock coming at every point. Truth is all of these records are limited. I doubt many sell more than a 1000 copies, and the best sellers usually top out at somewhere close to 2000. I also think that a proportion of those sales are always from people that hope that the record will go up in value. I do get the feeling that buyers then feel disappointed and under-value a record if that sits in the racks at the same price it was initially sold for. As if the record is a disaster because the label pressed enough stock .

It is, and of course it means that it is incredibly tempting for labels to create artificial rarities and charge over the top amounts for them. I've seen some records being limited to a 150 copies at £50 which is more income than we can take for 1000 records at a more standard price. There's no excuse for prices that high, but I understand it. Most 7s sell between 400 and 1000, so it might be easier to create a rarity and earn the money on lesser numbers rather than being left with stock. I hate the idea of artificial rarities, but I understand the temptations.

Chalky You know that everything you say is correct, and I have quite a lot of thoughts about this, probably too many for a bank holiday Monday, so instead I'll give an illustration of the madness of collectors. When we did the first Kevin Fingier record we ordered 300 - I can't remember the reason, probably over-caution - and it quickly became obvious that we had got this badly wrong. So before release date we had ordered another 300 and then another 300, and then finally a final 300 that arrived a week after release date. Every record was from the same stampers, and looked indistinguishable from any other record in the batch, yet some people heard that there was a second pressing and I had people demanding that we tell them the difference and insisting that they got the first pressing. We also saw people selling copies of the 'first pressing' at an inflated rate - which was interesting as I had 900 in our office before the first copies were in more than a handful of people's hand (maybe 10 people). People are so keen for rarity it seems they'll do anything to convince themselves that it is out there

The same happened with In The Basement by Sugar Pie & Etta James. No backing vocals, which I think gives it a harder edge

Good point. As an established label, we can afford all this, and in many ways it would be to our advantage if there were no new entrants to the market. But whilst I think 6 months up front is silly - it's really down to customers not to lay down money that far in advance.

Interesting Gary, and at 5 months-ish, I think you're doing better than most people are right now. And a good point on pressing numbers and people buying it. I never want to created artificial rarities, but some punters seem very keen for them, but I was interested on the reactions we got with a record we made at the start of 2020 when you could get a 3 week turnaround on a repress. We seriously misjudged the demand for this single and pressed in two runs. This somehow got out and some people were determined to try and claim that there was a first and second pressing in an attempt to attract rarity.

There's a number of things here I think. Firstly there is the fact that the normal record industry works on a pre-order basis. This ties in with how the press and promo works for an artist based album. Which means that announcements are made from 6 weeks to three months up front. Most sales in the industry today are from pre-orders, so it isn't surprising this has crossed over to specialist reissues. There is no excuse for six month, but I think it is probably the result of a lot of 'hobby labels' popping up, where turnaround times are operating on as much as a 9 month period from order to a finished record being delivered and the owners of these new labels probably have to pay upfront to even have their order considered at the moment. I think you're right on the numbers for a pressing. There is rarely any need to press only 300 records, the cost per unit of that and the fixed costs for the release will probably make it more expensive to press 300 that 500 (or the difference will be marginal). However it is much easier to sell out 250 units at £20 than it is to sell out 500 at a £10, because the buyers are to a certain extent thinking that they will be able to make a profit on the record. Looking at the past decade of 7 inch sales, it is quite rare to burst through the 1000 marker for a 7 inch but it can be done - our Leroy Hutson Positive Forces did nearly 2000, and two of the Kevin Fingier's have done between 1200 and 1500. But most do between 400 and 750. At Acid Jazz and with our Fingier and Miles Away subsidiaries we like to try and do a two to four week pre-sale, which allows us time to do promo campaigns, but sometime it stretches out a bit from there for reasons beyond our control.