On listening to it LA4’s ‘Just Friends’ is a fairly anonymous piece of vaguely Latin smooth Jazz. The lineup, (Alto Saxophone – Bud Shank, Bass – Ray Brown, Drums – Jeff Hamilton, Guitar – Laurindo Almeida) is interesting but not heart stopping. It gets 3 stars from revered critic Scott Yanow, and a couple of lukewarm reviews at Amazon. So why is the only copy on Discogs £130, and at Amazon it is priced between $50 and $300?
Rarity has a lot to do with it of course. I’ve just had it come into stock over at my Discogs store and took my usual tack of selling it for a realistic price so that a) it sells quickly and b) it annoys the dealers who squirrel away albums waiting for a desperate fan to pay an inflated rate. Pricing at vertigo inducing prices always seems to me to be a self-defeating tactic. How much does it cost for the disc to sit on the shelf waiting for that high profit buyer to come along? The seller of the other copy of ‘Just Friends’ on Discogs gets 3 or 4 pieces of feedback per month, suggesting he sells maybe twice that many discs in a month. I sell on average 10 – 20 discs per day, pumping money back into the business to be turned over again as a regular, sustainable level of profit.
Anyway, I’ve listened to LA4 one last time before I seal up the envelope and send it off to its new owner. Ray Brown’s medley arrangement of ‘Love For Sale’ and ‘Love Walked In’ has its moments, mostly the ones where Almeida shuts up, but I can’t say I’ll be bothered if I never hear it again. Interestingly given the vinyl good, CD bad thing, the LP versions all sell for rather less than the average CD price, but that’s an argument for another decade.
