As evidence of this sad fact, please see a few photos from Record Store Day at one of the five record stores in my little village. This particular store only sells vinyl (with maybe quite literally a few dozen cassettes and CDs thrown in).
I got there around 4pm and the owner told me they had been wall-to-wall crowded with customers since opening at noon. I didn't bother going to any of the other record stores because I didn't want to fight the crowds looking for their Kate Bush picture disks. There were two live musical acts and a surprising amount of wine and cheese on offer as well.
So many vinyl releases are planned for RSD each year in the US that pressing plants are booked up solid for the first four months of the year. I've read several articles this year featuring independent label owners bewailing this fact and saying that they cannot release or repress any LPs until May every year.
I think I should take this opportunity to mention that the name of this blog is a direct reference to a delightful record store in East Lansing, Michigan: "Flat, Black and Circular" (FBC) opened in the late 1970s and still is in existence. I used to visit there pretty much every single day (as well as the now-gone Wazoo Records) back in the 1980s.
And, to cap off this post, a beautiful video courtesy of the AACM Library in San Rafael, CA.
I was going to stop in there about 4 myself (I was over at Oakland Gyros at the time) but I had assumed you had already been there earlier ...
ReplyDeleteA Testimony to the superior quality of Vinyl !!... even listening to great rips on a computer or burnt disc is at best a flawed simulacrum... nothing like the LPs played on a good unit... but better than nothing... the record die hards got lucky back in the 80's when cd mania , pushed fearful gullible record store owners into super sale mode!
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