North Carolina soul-funk group the Brief Encounter never made it much further than local acclaim, but during their short run in the late '70s and early '80s, they created some powerful, party-starting funk on par with better-known national acts of their era. The band's high-energy dance tracks and misty balladry offered a Southern counterpoint to Parliament's psychedelic soul or Kool and the Gang's pop-geared grooves, and they flirted with disco in the early '80s before disbanding in 1983. Original copies of their 1977 debut LP, Introducing - The Brief Encounter, became a highly sought-after collector's item, and the album was reissued multiple times as more crate diggers found out about the band. The Brief Encounter was formed in the early '70s in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, and consisted of Maurice Whittington, brothers Gary and Montie Bailey, Velmar Bailey, Charles Graham, Fredrick Alexander, Michael Carter, and Rufus Wilborn. The ensemble released several singles on Nashville DJ John Richbourg's label Seventy-Seven Records, and in 1977 the label released their debut album, Introducing - The Brief Encounter. The band recorded Introducing at the legendary Muscle Shoals Studios in Alabama, and it presented a great cross-section of the band's range, which swung from revved-up funk to sentimental slow songs. They would eventually issue a few disco-geared tracks with Capitol Records and release the 1981 sophomore set We Want to Play on their own Music Town label before going their separate ways in 1983. The Brief Encounter's music found new fans as the years went on, with their albums being reissued on multiple labels and their songs being sampled by producers for new rap tracks. In 2010, after copies of their 1977 debut sold in online auctions for upwards of 2,000 dollars, members of the band reunited to re-record two older songs for a new single, "Shake and Move" b/w "I Want You So Much." The songs were pressed as a limited-edition 7" and a round of autographed copies were auctioned off with proceeds benefiting a local North Carolina nonprofit organization as well as relief funds for Haiti. In 2019, Scottish label Athens of the North reissued We Want to Play, and two years later Real Gone Music re-released Introducing on several different variants of colored vinyl. ~ Fred Thomas, Rovi