Lawrenceville, GA | Calling all vinyl lovers to the brewery: Annual Lawrenceville record show set for this Saturday, Jan. 18 from 12pm – 5pm. Depot Records is getting ready to rock out this weekend with their third annual record show. The shop located in the Depot District of Lawrenceville launched the event three years ago to promote area vendors and those passionate about vinyl records. The show will take place right next door to the shop at Slow Pour Brewing Company on North Clayton Street. The event is free for attendees and will last until 5pm. Booths featuring vinyl records, cassettes, and other music memorabilia will be set up throughout the day. Featured beers will also be available for purchase at Slow Pour Brewery. Vendors interested in setting up a booth can rent an 8-foot table for $50 and pay $40 for each additional table. Depot Records is located at 470 North Clayton St., Suite 200, Lawrenceville. The store is open on weekends only — from noon to 10 p.m. Saturday and noon to 8 p.m. Sunday.
Chicago, IL | Longtime Reckless Records buyer Jim Magas quits to spend more time with his music: If you’re a Chicago record hound, you’ve probably bought an LP from Jim Magas: in the early 2000s he co-owned Weekend Records & Soap, and for the past 15 years he’s been slinging wax at the Wicker Park Reckless Records. But late last month, Magas announced that he’s leaving the record-store life—his last day at Reckless is Saturday, January 18. “I’ve absolutely loved all my years behind the counter, but I feel like I’ve got a lot of potential and want to challenge myself in new ways,” Magas says. He’s also a fixture on the midwestern experimental scene, and he owns the label Midwich Productions—pursuits he’d like to devote more of himself to. “Creatively, I feel like I’m firing on all cylinders, and I want to see where that energy takes me. I just want total freedom to pursue what life has to offer.” His first album as James Marlon Magas drops via Midwich in the spring.
Plastics News: Kickstart: The vinyl revolution, now available in hotels: Back in 2007, I interviewed a record store owner about the unexpected resurgence of vinyl records. Steve Bergman, who owned Schoolkids Records in Ann Arbor, Mich., for 31 years, said: “Vinyl is still the most romantic manifestation of music that you’ve got out there.” Sales have only climbed since then — growing 131.8 percent 2011-12 even prompting machinery makers to begin producing equipment specifically to make vinyl albums. Here in Detroit, Jack White’s Third Man Record began producing vinyl albums on new Newbilt Machinery presses in 2017. So would vinyl tempt you to pick one hotel over another? Clarion Highlander Hotel in Iowa City, Iowa, is including a record player in every room as part of a renovation. When you check in, you can also check out vinyl albums from the hotel’s front desk, according to a new story from The Gazette. Vinyl not your thing? That’s OK. The record player also has bluetooth so you could stream your music instead.
Tool’s Fear Inoculum was the best-selling rock record of 2019: When Tool released Fear Inoculum last year after 13 years of false-starts, rumors, and conjecture, the rock world knew it would be a massive hit. That said, the album was coming out in the same year as huge records from Slipknot and Rammstein, making it part of a crop of big-name releases. But now, a new report shows that Fear Inoculum not only sold more than those albums, it was the best-selling rock album of last year. A report by BuzzAngle Music about consumer trends within the music industry showed that Fear Inoculum was easily the top-selling rock album of 2019, coming in as the #8 best-selling album of the year with 344,285 albums sold, which only came up short of artists like Billie Eilish and BTS. The next-closest rock album on the list was Queen, who came in at #15 and #18 for the Bohemian Rhapsody soundtrack and their Greatest Hits album respectively. That said, Queen’s Greatest Hits came in at #3 on the Vinyl Album Sales list.
Los Angeles, CA | Innovative Leisure Records celebrates 10-year anniversary: From Jamie Strong / co-founder Innovative Leisure Records: “There was a time in the not so distant past when Nate Nelson & I decided to leave our well paid jobs and health insurance working for a legendary label (Stones Throw Records), in order to explore greener pastures – aka starting our own label. At first, we were working out of an apartment in the un-gentrified era of Echo Park, packing up orders of artists that nobody ever heard of in an unbearably hot month-to-month storage unit. No seed money… no salary and no health insurance. At least we had a pocket full of drink tickets from The Echo and a vision to pursue what we believed in. That good music can come in all forms… psych-rock to soul, house to hip-hop, jazz to electronica. Our ethos was as long as we continued to put out the music and artists that we believed in, the business side of things would work itself out. Shortly thereafter, Hanni El Khatib left his job as Creative Director for skate/streetwear brand HUF to focus full-time on music and partner up with us. Welcome to the pillars of Innovative Leisure Records…”
