Soul Experience – I'm So Glad I Found You / Who's Lips You Been Kissing

Friday Soul ends with a banger, and honestly, I’m still riding the high from the day I accidentally stumbled into owning a pricey 45 like some kind of clueless vinyl raccoon who lucked into a bag of gold-plated Doritos.

So picture me at this special record auction in Burlington, NC — the kind of place where the air smells like dust, old cardboard, and quite frankly vinyl geeks like me. I’m chatting with this guy I know in Greensboro. We’re not “talk every week” friends, but we’re “nod knowingly at each other over stacks of obscure soul 45s” friends, which honestly feels more intimate.

There are, I kid you not, 5–10 thousand 45s piled everywhere. Some on tables, most boxed, all whispering buy me,… buy meee. We’re digging through them, finding weird gems, oddballs, and stuff that probably hasn’t seen daylight since Nixon was in office.

Enter the auctioneer — a man so crooked he could stand in a doorway and still block the whole thing. He’s making back‑door deals left and right, including one with my friend, who gets to pick out 8–10 boxes for a set price. I’m watching this like, “Ah yes, crime. But make it vinyl.”

The auctioneer is unloading everything in massive, chaotic lots — but the individual records were “curated” by a guy who supposedly knows this stuff, when in reality he was about as clueless as a Discogs bot trying to grade a G+ copy in the dark. When the boxed 45s finally hit the auction block in one big lot, I end up bidding against my friend. It gets hot. It gets heavy. I get swept up in the frenzy like a seagull chasing a french fry. Eventually I tap out, thank the vinyl gods, because I absolutely did not need to win that mess, not to mention trying to explain to my wife how much I spent.

Afterward, my friend tells me, “Man, I hope there’s a Soul Experience 45 on Smoke in those boxes.” I’m like, “Cool, cool, I have no idea what that means.” He explains there’s one super expensive one on Smoke, one not-so-expensive one, and he’d recently found a cheaper Smoke 45. My brain — which is basically a colander with aspirations — only retained the label Smoke.

Cut to a month later: a guy I know messages me saying he bought a mess of 45s and asks if I want to dig through them. Of course I do. This is my version of peaceful meditation.

I’m flipping through boxes, vibing, and suddenly — there it is. Soul Experience. Smoke label. My swiss-cheese memory lights up like a cheap neon sign: “HEY, YOU KNOW THIS ONE.” But really, I didn't.

Into the “yes, I’m buying this” pile it goes.

I get home, play it, fall in love, and then look it up.

Holy smokes. I got the good one.

Not the “oh neat” one. The expensive one. The “you only find this once every few years if the universe is feeling generous” one.

These kinds of finds are not normal. They’re cosmic accidents. They’re little miracles wrapped in cardboard sleeves. And this South Carolina band — bless them — dropped a one-off 45 so good it deserves every bit of hype it gets.