Kool & the Gang to Funk-Up eBay Live!

Legendary group to 'Celebrate' Closing Gala

More was announced today about the upcoming eBay Live! confab, which is slated for June 14 - 16 in Boston. The company announced that a number of suit-and-tie folks are going to make the event educational and profitable, personal finance guru Suze Orman is on the guest list and eBay chief Meg Whitman will host the weekend. Heck, you might even have some big fun and squeeze in a game at Fenway (the Sawks host the Rockies and Giants that weekend). Yet with all this on tap, what caught our eye was the announcement that Kool & the Gang are gonna bring their funky stuff to the event. Notwithstanding a peremptory wince at the thought of a room of eBayers making like Karl Rove last week, we just think its cool (make that Kool) that the legendary group is gonna be "Hollywood Swinging" at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.

Sadly, it won't exactly be the soulful swingers who taught us how to "Jungle Boogie." Last summer, founding member Claydes "Charles" Smith passed away, adding a tragic underscore to the career of a group whose celebration of good times has been dampened over the past two decades by the defections of many key members, including vocalist James "J.T." Taylor, whose spirited baritone was the centerpiece of many of the band's biggest hits, such as "Ladies Night" and "Fresh."

Okay, we're like really big fans. So we went to the group's web site and couldn't really recognize the key players. We cherish the fact that Dennis Thomas and Clifford Adams are still in the line up, but we don't know the rest of the Gang. Like a Franklin Mint repro, the group is still Kool & the Gang but not really like the original. Yet, in the tradition of some great R&B groups The Temptations and the O'Jays, the group founded 43 years ago in Jersey City, New Jersey lives on. And no matter what group shows up on stage, anything is bound to be better than some netrepreneur dolling out advice on small business branding strategies while you chew on some over-done chicken.

We present this story so that you won't be mislead by eBay's official P.R. (So how many K&TG songs did we really mention in this story? Blog us with your guess.)

(Pictured: a copy of Kool & the Gang's eponymously-titled 1969 debut on DeLite, as it is currently up for auction.)