18 years after my tape copy was stolen from me ("borrowed" and never returned), I've finally found a copy of Jerome Prister's magical 12 inch single, Say You'll Be.

This is seminal soul funk. It was a massive hit for Ghanaians of a certain age one summer in the late 1980s. As I recall, it also did well in London clubs and was guaranteed to get people off the wall.

Sidenote: it's always interesting what crosses over from the US or the UK and becomes popular back home in Ghana. Thus I raved about Nu Shooz's I Can't Wait when I first tried out at WHRB and was embarrassed by the consequent clowning that DJ Zik sends my way to this day.

Jerome Prister is the definition of a one-hit wonder. He isn't even listed on Amazon or eBay. The entry on allmusic is pitiful: there's only a name. In recent years he has turned to the worst kind of euro hip-house and garage - the kind that throws in some allusions to Morocco in that "why can't we all get along" mode: so globalized that any authenticity or indeed musical integrity is lost. Unfortunately Say You'll Be hasn't shown up on any compilations (more precisely the one compilation is so rare that similar completetists bid it up to CEO salary heights). Thus it has been a long frustrating search, crate-digging in record shops, scouring eBay, Amazon and the like.

Instead, ever since Napster, I fire up whatever file sharing program I can (my current favourite is Gnucleus) and type in those fateful words "Say You'll Be" and sort through lots of Peter Frampton and Christine Aguilera in the hope that there is a like-minded soul somewhere. Anyway that kind soul finally put it online and I managed to complete a download to my great joy. If you see 2 copies online, you'll guess who is sharing it.

Now I've been known to spend $75 on a record, I write about musical obsession; you might see me embark on 12 step programs with fellow travellers like Nick Hornby as we work ourselves into frenzies arguing over the 10 best songs about irritation - I dare you to beat my list. I know all the dusty groove "wreckastows" that exist - that last is an in-joke from Under the Cherry Moon in case you were wondering, from which said $75 was spent to obtain the original version of Prince's Old Friends For Sale - not the later version with insipid synthesized strings that showed up much to my disgust on the $60 Crystal Ball compilation in 1999 - like Bono said, sometimes His Royal Badness needs an editor, someone in the studio to give the occasional choice words. The folks at BMG and Columbia House keep me on first name terms with the mail men and UPS guys. Surely record companies could leverage the Long Tail and make something like this available. There is no reason for such a great song to be languishing in virtual asylum in the musical ether.