Joey Irving & Just Us There's a Man / Have This World And You

Joey Irving & Just Us were an obscure Canadian band that released a couple of 45s on various small labels but never really attained any notoriety. ‘There’s a Man’ is a cover of the original version by Leroy lane and the Upstairs Maids, an uptempo dancer that hints to the funky side of Northern Soul. The original issue of this 7” rarity was pressed in Belgium on the Baltic label, supposedly because Baltic was a label that pressed "everything nobody else wanted to press" (those are the owner's words!) such as Flemish chanson and elevator music.

One of the owner’s contacts was a businessman from Canada who'd fly over every 6 months with a suitcase of master tapes looking for deals. One day he brought along a reel by Joey Irving & Just Us, who was unable to get a contract in the US or Canada. So they took a chance, pressed them up, and issued it in Belgium with a picture sleeve on Baltic and their subsidiary Golden Music. As you can imagine, funky soul stompers didn’t really go down very well with the chanson and elevator crowd, and the record bombed. Very few copies are known to this day, with original copies being snapped up for many hundreds of euros.