THE
KOREAN BLACK EYES
A:
Higher
(Sly Stone) | Burning Love () B: Who's Making Love | Boo Booly
Boo
7" 45rpm "Stereo" * EP - Vitoria VEP-0011 (Portugal) 1972-4?,
style: soul/pop/bizarro
listen to 96k mp3 (right-click
to save): A1: Higher
A2: Burning Love
Here we have quite the mystery on our hands... This one turned up at a vinyl-only store in Lisbon (Portugal) and was purchased for the grand sum of one euro! At first I thought it was just a Portuguese pressing of some European (French or German) exploito pop EP-- you know the type: gimmick cover, usually involving chicks, bad disco covers of current hits with the same old horrible session men.
But no! Here we have err... what do we have? It seems that at the very least we have a Korean chick singing over barely competent studio session men playing classic American soul (no disco, no synthesizers!) -- she's a bit hard to understand, there's the stereotypical L / R linguistic problem, and she's no Sly Stone, Elvis, or Johnny Taylor (who made the first song on side B famous for Stax in 1972). Was this supposed to be good, or just a bad joke? The picture has our "band" standing in a park in Lisbon -- although several friends have suggested that it was airbrushed. Difficult to tell (new picture soon I promise!)
Musically, we have a virtually unrecognizable cover of Sly Stone's Higher (from 1969, right?) and then a sped-up, almost punk version of Elvis' Burning Love (1972). The B-Side features an (at-the-time) unknown-to-Portugal Stax song, also from 1972, which makes you wonder who the producer was. Well, all the names involved on the back are Portuguese, bringing us back to the question of whether this could actually have been made here (and maybe as early as 72/73, before the end of the dictatorship?!?!) The second song on the B-Side by the way is a typically horrendous Euro(trash) Pop song (Euro-Bubblegum) whose most valuable contribution to musical history is its own FADEOUT!
* note: while the record is marked "Estereo" it is one of those stereo records that have virtually identical left and right channels, thus making it "stereo-mono-compatible" as was frequently advertised in those days... clips above feature ONLY the left channel)
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Here's the actual text as on the record:
VITORIA
ESTEREO
VEP-0011
FACE A
HIGHER 2:03
Sly & Family/Stones
BURNING LOVE 2:40
Elvis Presely
FACE B
WHO'S MAKING LOVE 2:37
D.R.
BOO BOOLY BOO 2:48
D.R.
SOM: MANUEL CUNHA
FOTO MONTAGEM: APOLLO
SUPERVISAO: CARLOS ALBERTO <<NAYTES>>
REALIZACAO: MANUEL SELEIRO
EDICAO VITORIA ___________ AGENCIA MARQUES VIDAL _____________ MADE
IN PORTUGAL
Rua da Quinta dos Bonecos, 9-2.Esq -- Telefone 25860 -- SETUBAL
Avendia Almirante Reis, 106-2.Dto -- Telefone 823236 -- LISBOA-1