Loving On The Flipside (Sweet Funk And Beat-Heavy Ballads 1969-1977)

21 rare and unreleased tracks. Long overlooked ballads from the flip sides of the funk 45s in the Now-Again vaults. We at Now-Again unearthed so much information about the bands that recorded the definitive disco and modern soul contained in our recently launched Soul Cal anthology that we decided we had no choice but to release an album and a book at the same time.

Well, following that line, the music contained on Loving On The Flip Side music is too damn good to be anonymously relaunched, decades after musical visionaries blended the best of heavy funk and sweet soul into a unified whole. And simply telling the stories of these vocalists and bands without allowing their lovelorn pleas to be heard again wasn’t an option. Thus, Loving On The Flip Side again offers the enthused a chance to listen to, read about and reflect on another great burst of black American creativity: the creation of the sublime genre we like to call “sweet funk.”

It seems laughable to skip past Thomas East’s “Slipping Around” 7” for the cheesy funk of ‘Just A Trip,” or to listen obsessively to Lou Ragland’s instrumental funk on the Hot Chocolate LP and ignore his indolent-yet-stirring “We Had True Love.” Yet we did just that, until we first heard the Darling Dears and Funky Heavy’s beautiful twosider nearly ten years back. This was the record that set Loving On The Flip Side in motion, as the Darling Dears and Funky Heavy’s two songs precipitated the sweet funk genre: the dichotomy of Funky Heavy’s skull snapping rhythm section and the teenage Dears’ angelic harmonies didn’t sound like anything we’d heard before.

That discovery set off a decade long search for the band and culminated in their discovery, the documenting of their stories, the emergence of their master tapes and the inclusion of their songs on Loving On The Flip Side. The excitement we felt while listening to the Darling Dears and Funky Heavy’s masterworks forced us back into the field, in search of other sweet funk swooners and beat-heavy ballads to round out this anthology. The opportunity to present anew such wondrous soul music made the exhaustive process that produced Loving On The Flip Side worthwhile, and allowed us to collect one-offs that escaped prior investigations into the deep funk and sweet soul genres.

Tracklist

A1. Darling Dears “I Don’t Think I’ll Ever Love Another”
A2. Eddie Finley & The Cincinnati Show Band “Treat Me Right Or Leave Me Alone”
A3. Thomas East “Slippin’ Around”
A4. Hot Chocolate “We Had True Love”

B1. The Equatics “Merry Go Around”
B2. Black Conspirators “Love”
B3. Jazzie Cazzie And The Eight Sounds “Young Girl”
B4. Rhythm Machine “Whatcha Gonna Do?”
B5. Ed. Nelson “I’ll Give You A Ring (When I Come, If I Come)”
B6. Darling Dears “And I Love You”

C1. Symphonic Four “Who Do You Think You’re Fooling (Part I)”
C2. Lee Bonds “I’ll Find A True Love”
C3. Black Exotics “What Am I Waiting For”
C4. Black Velvet “Is It Me You Really Love”
C5. The Conspiracy “I Believe (Our Love Has Gone Away)”

D1. Little Janice “Since You’ve Been Gone”
D2. Primitive “You Are Everything To Me”
D3. Eunice Collins “At The Hotel”
D4. Hunts Determination Band “Are We Through”
D5. Disciples Of Soul “Together”
D6. Symphonic Four “Who Do You Think You’re Fooling (Part II)”