Mesa, AZ | In Far East Mesa, Uncle Aldo’s Attic Is a Vintage-and-Vinyl Paradise: In a nondescript strip mall in east Mesa, Uncle Aldo’s Attic advertises itself with a large banner that reads: Vintage Records. Inside is a pop culture wonderland offering not just a sizable amount of vinyl, but an impressive selection of books, board games, figurines, and comic books — inventory fueled by the proprietor’s passion for nostalgia. In a nondescript strip mall in east Mesa, Uncle Aldo’s Attic advertises itself with a large banner that reads: Vintage Records. Inside is a pop culture wonderland offering not just a sizable amount of vinyl, but an impressive selection of books, board games, figurines, and comic books — inventory fueled by the proprietor’s passion for nostalgia. …“I didn’t have any money, and I didn’t want to work at Walmart,” he says. “I’m a big collector, so I figured maybe people would buy collectibles.” Once he noticed his vinyl sales beat out all other items, he opened his own record store. Uncle Aldo’s Attic, which has been around for about three years, is located at 6016 East McKellips Road.
Canton, OH | Hoover grad achieves longtime dream of opening a record shop: Josh Harris has vivid memories of his dad playing Alice Cooper and Deep Purple records for him when he was 5 or 6. “I couldn’t get enough of it,” he said. Later, as a teenager at Hoover High School, his future goal was clear-cut: “I had no intention but to be a rock star.” Harris, now 39, never became a rock star, although he did play in a few area bands and still records music in his basement. But last June he achieved his longtime goal of opening a record shop, Dr. Frankenstein’s House of Wax, where he sells albums, used and new, by a who’s who of rock ‘n’ rollers. “This is something I wanted to do for the last three or four years,” Harris said. His machinist job at a shop in Stow had slowed to a crawl due to COVID-19 — “I was pushing a broom eight hours a day,” he said — so he decided to take the plunge.
The best record player of 2021: In just the first half of 2020, there was $232.1 million in vinyl LP and EP sales in the US, far exceeding the total revenue for CD sales during the same time. Vinyl records have had such a resurgence, in fact, that brands like Vinyl Me, Please now offer record of the month subscription services, you can buy your own personalized LP and there’s even an annual Record Store Day when limited-edition vinyl releases can be purchased from local shops. Heck, even Barnes & Noble sells records. But why the popularity in 2021? Well, for starters, manually playing a record can be an extremely satisfying and intimate experience — a feeling that hasn’t changed in a century. It lends itself to being more engaged with the music and listening to albums in their entirety as opposed to skipping around tracks. And many audiophiles will argue that you’ll get a fuller sound from playing an album on vinyl versus digitally, perhaps even hearing more instruments, tones or other minute details that sometimes get lost in compressed formats (though this is hotly debated).
Quebec, CA | A new vinyl press in Quebec: Vinyl is popular! In the United States, in 2020, sales of 33 rpm’s even exceeded those of good old compact discs. Imagine! If this is not yet the case in Quebec, the craze is indeed there. Until recently, to get their precious retro-looking albums pressed, local artists had to do business with companies located in the United States, Europe or even Toronto and Prince Edward Island. Good news, our musicians can now have their vinyls pressed in Quebec City, in the Saint-Roch district, at the Société des Loisirs located on Dorchester Street. We bought a lot of vinyl outside Quebec City because we couldn’t necessarily find a record store that looked like us. We started to think about creating a new place in Quebec and quickly took on the idea of a café, says Olivier. Jean-François Bilodeau, Olivier Bresse and Audrey Lapointe are lovers of music and their neighborhood. With the SDL, the three investors wanted to create a place of meeting and exchange.
KISS’ ‘Killers’ Set To Return In Strictly Limited Double Disc Vinyl Edition: Released on March 12, ‘Killers’ marks the very first vinyl reissue by KISS to be released as a half-speed master. After the band recently made headlines with their record-breaking New Year’s Eve livestream event (“KISS 2020 Goodbye”) and the launch of their own rum, the KISS fan community can now look forward to a very high-quality, exclusive vinyl edition: Killers, the band’s second best-of album from 1982 will be released on 12 March as a strictly limited and numbered 2LP edition. This is the very first vinyl reissue by KISS to be released as a half-speed master. Following on from the reissue of their first best-of album Double Platinum in summer 2019, KISS’ Killers compilation is now finally following on vinyl. The new edition – which is strictly limited to 4,000 copies worldwide – is based on the remastered CD edition that was last available exclusively in Japan. Killers will be released as a lavishly-designed 2LP on translucent pink heavyweight vinyl (180g) in a gatefold cover (printed on silver foil), and includes a fold-out Leporello art print and a bonus sticker.
