Newcastle, UK | A now-vanished Newcastle record store was getting ready to open its doors: The retailer was one of dozens, big and small, that would soon begin trading in Newcastle’s new giant shopping centre, Eldon Square. …It was February 27, 1976, and the staff at WH Smith were making last-minute preparations for the new store’s opening a week later. The retailer was one of dozens, big and small, that would soon begin trading in Newcastle’s giant pioneering shopping centre, Eldon Square. Opening on Thursday, March 4, the sprawling complex at once revolutionised the retail experience on Tyneside. Billing itself at “the most modern shopping centre in Europe – in the heart of Newcastle”, it brought the indoor American mall experience to North East England. …WH Smith would be situated on the left, just past the main Grey’s Monument entrance to Eldon Square. It sold newspapers, books and magazines on the ground floor – and there was also an in-store travel agent. Upstairs you would find records and cassettes – and countless thousands of us would flock there.
Frederick, MD | Record Exchange owner ready to play new tune; store to open Feb. 4: When the Record Exchange was damaged during a fire in August, owner Sam Lock said, he was ready to work at Home Depot. “I was like,‘You got to pay the mortgage in six days,’’’ he said. “’What are you going to do?’” But the Frederick community rallied behind him. Overnight, the GoFundMe page he started racked up $15,000, he said. With that money, Lock could rent out a new storefront at 410 N. Market St. He’s been fixing it up since September 2022. He said the new Record Exchange is scheduled to open Feb. 4, coinciding with the Fire in Ice First Saturday event. “There’s been so many kind gestures from every angle,” he said. “I couldn’t have done it without any of them.” On Aug. 24, 2022, a fire tore through a building in downtown Frederick, damaging apartments, the Record Exchange and Tiara Day, a store at the corner of North Market and West Second streets. The damage in the store was not from fire, but from water that seeped through the ceiling and poured into the store.
Empire Records Started With A True Story Told To Carol Heikkinen: Creative people can find inspiration from a wide variety of places. Stepping out of your comfort zone, nature, personal or physical obstacles, and the arts are just a few areas that could lead to your next great creation. But more often than not, you need not look further than the people and places around you to find your next story or characters. And that’s exactly what screenwriter Carol Heikkinen did when she wrote the script for “Empire Records.” The cult classic teen movie about a group of young people that work at a record store was based on her days as an employee at the Tower Records in Phoenix, Arizona’s Christown Mall. The first draft was written on spec over the course of a few weeks and was sold about a week after completion in a bidding war. But that version of the story was pretty different from the one that ended up onscreen. While it was still a character-driven teen dramedy, some of the film’s most memorable moments and themes didn’t come until the second draft.
Fort Wayne, IN | Jan. 25 – Smoky’s Fort Wayne record shop for sale: Cheri Toscos knows a diamond in the rough when she sees it. And last year she saw the potential in the late Charles “Smoky” Montgomery’s Smoky’s Records & Tours building on Wells Street. “When I went in, I felt a great vibe from the location,” Toscos, the owner of Toscos Properties, said. She bought the building at 1632 N. Wells St. in October 2021, much to the amazement of her contractor who saw the roughness of the inside of a building that sat vacant for over a decade. “I love the history,” the Fort Wayne native said. “I invest in a lot of different properties in downtown, so I bought it so I could renovate it and renovate the (upstairs 2-bedroom) apartment” for rental income. She owns several properties in the West Central area along with the Charles F. Muhler House at 604 W. Wayne St. …The sale listing includes vinyl records from the store. She currently has about 200. Several hundred more weren’t salvageable, with mildew on them or they were broken, she said. “Most of the records had been taken out prior to the sale,” she said.
Auckland, NZ | Pressing need for NZ businesses: Holiday Records: fibre vital in carving out a global reputation. Holiday Records co-founder Joel Woods is lapping up the culture living in Amsterdam – but the latest technology means he’s still keeping a close eye on his fast-growing vinyl record pressing business in Auckland. Since August, Woods has been operating out of a shared office in the Netherlands capital via his laptop and high-speed internet, managing the company in sync with his business partner Ben Wallace and staff. “It just means later nights and early mornings, but it hasn’t hampered my ability to do the job by working online in real time,” he says. “Chorus installed ultrafast broadband into the Wellesley St West premises in Auckland; we are constantly dealing with large audio and artwork files, downloading and uploading them to our audio engineers and printers.” Without that, Woods says, his ability to be based overseas while growing the business would have seen both severely curtailed. Internet connection is crucial for the seamless operation of the pressing plant – and that connectivity is more important now than ever before with Woods in Amsterdam.
The Best Turntables & Record Players to Suit Any Budget in 2023: Enthusiasm for music on vinyl shows no sign of stalling. Sales of vinyl records continue to climb year-on-year, with revenues now out-performing CDs in what can only be described as the comeback of the century. Despite the convenience and abundance of digital streaming, it can never replace the joy of owning a physical piece of music and the full experience associated with playing a record. For the best experience, you need a great setup. Buy the wrong record player or turntable, and you could easily be left wondering what all the fuss is about. Get the right deck, however, and your records will sing. You might even be left wondering why you went all-digital in the first place. To help you get off on the right foot, we’ve compiled our pick of the best turntables and the best record players to suit any budget.
Rare John Lennon vinyl being raffled by Belfast music centre to raise money for writing bursary: A Belfast music centre is currently raffling off an extremely rare John Lennon vinyl gifted to them by his son in order to raise funds for a writing bursary aimed at women and non-binary people. In December 2020, the Oh Yeah Music Centre in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter was gifted one of only fifty limited edition acetates, hand-cut at Abbey Road Studios, of the 2020 Ultimate Mix of Happy Xmas (War Is Over) by John Lennon & Yoko Ono. The famous song was first released over fifty years ago in December 1971. The gift came from Lennon and Ono’s only child Sean Ono Lennon, who asked the charity ‘to sell, auction, raise money to help your charity or to fund your Christmas party.’ The music centre then decided that the most fitting way to honour this incredible gift was “to reinvest it in a programme of support for emerging talents.” “We are incredibly grateful and excited to make available to the public a piece of iconic music history,” said Charlene Hegarty,- the charity’s Talent Development Manager.
