Liverpool, UK | Shop where people spend ‘hours’ has been open for 40 years: “I have loved doing this from day one.” A shop where people spend “hours” inside has stood on Smithdown Road for more than 40 years. Brian Jackson, originally from Toxteth but now lives in Allerton, owns and runs shop Allkinds which sells vinyl records, audio and sci-fi memorabilia. Many years ago, the now 61-year-old walked into the store where he helped former owner David Radcliffe with the running of the shop. He is now the owner of Allkinds, which sits at number 145 directly opposite Toxteth Park Cemetery, after taking over from Mr Radcliffe after he died. Speaking to the ECHO, Brian said: “He was like a father to me, his name was Dave Radcliffe. He set the shop up in 1980. It didn’t really become a record shop until 1981. “I eventually just arrived here and been here ever since. I have taken it over now because he passed away a year ago and I have been running the place.”
Georgetown, ON | J&S Records giving Georgetown music lovers thrill of the hunt for vinyl treasures: While most businesses were just trying to find a way to stay afloat during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Steve Longmead started planning another. “I was like a lot of people during COVID, going down in the basement rediscovering their collections,” said Longmead, a co-owner of The Hooded Goblin on Main Street in Georgetown. In Longmead’s case it was his large record collection. Looking through his albums reminded him of the days of going to a concert in Toronto and visiting the record stores. “You start getting that thrill of flipping through records and finding something and thinking, ‘Oh my god, I haven’t seen that for so long.’” Knowing he had some space in the basement of The Hooded Goblin, he started planning to open a record store. “Worst case I was going to have the world’s largest record collection,” he said.
Shakopee, MN | Ramble On Records reopens at new storefront location downtown: Ramble On Records, a locally-owned record store, is reopening at a new storefront location in downtown Shakopee on Saturday, Oct. 1. The record store has been located in downtown Shakopee since March 2019, but owner Steve Shanks said the space wasn’t the most ideal for the store — especially one heavily dependent on sights and sounds. “That’s a tough spot over there for a retail store,” Shanks said about the store’s previous location. “I’m down a long, dingy hallway. Then out back, it’s just an alley. So it was a strange location.” Shanks started plans for moving a few months ago when a more visible storefront downtown opened up. The record store’s new location is at 113 Lewis St., about half a block away from its previous location. Despite the small move location-wise, Shanks said he’s excited for the additional exposure this change brings.
Bellefonte, PA | Bellefonte’s newest small business, Fez Records, opens its doors this weekend: What’s old is new again. Vinyl records are making a comeback. In Bellefonte, there aren’t a whole lot of options when it comes to buying records. Now, all that is about to change. Today, Fez Records, located at 2042 Axemann Road in Bellefonte, will officially open its doors. The new business is located just outside the popular Titan Market. The owner and operator of Fez Records is Michael Fester, who resides with his wife, Cortney, in State College. For Fester, his love of records and music started at a young age. Opening Fez Records, he said, is a dream come true. “For as long as I can remember, I would go into records shops. Wherever I lived — in Vegas or in Arizona — I would just find a record shop that I really just loved to spend time in,” Fester said. “I just wanted to be around those people who loved music as much as I did. So I would go there and spend a little money.”
IE | Good Vibrations, The Record Store That Revolutionized Northern Irish Punk: This week on The Hunt, we discover the story of a crazy glass-eyed record store that completely changed UK punk. We tell you all about this fearless man who fought John Lennon in life, organized concerts in buildings occupied by soldiers and sang on number one selling singles. The adventure dates back to the second half of the 1970s for Belfast-based record store Good Vibrations. In time, the record store would become a label that would offer a unique catalog that would remind the world that Northern Ireland remained a land of poetry, unshakable even by bombs. Each week, David Bola guides you to the corners of the world where music has changed in these places, the scene of mutations, musical revolutions, the birth of currents, movements and genres. In the episodes, we meet people whose eyes are turned in the right direction and whose ears listen to the pulse of their time.
The CD Is Dead, Long Live The CD: How artists, from Britney Spears to Metallica, and fans celebrated the now-obsolete medium. On Oct. 1, 1982, CDs began to be sold commercially for the first time in Japan, though they wouldn’t make their way to North America and Europe until March 1983. The discs were new and an enormous technological advancement at the time. They were far more portable than the decades-old vinyl record, and a sleek alternative to cassette tapes. (Plus, you didn’t have to rewind them!) The first album to be released on CD format was Billy Joel’s 52nd Street. The album reached the market in Japan alongside Sony’s CDP-101, the first commercially available CD player, which originally retailed for almost $1,000 (about $3,000 today). In the 1990s, CD album releases at record stores like Tower Records and Virgin Megastores became huge events, with lines of people often waiting overnight and a multitude of famous musicians making in-store appearances for promotional purposes. But by the late 2000s, the CD lost popularity in favor of iTunes and streaming services like Spotify. Let’s not forget, though, that for a little more than two decades, the CD was king.
Manchester, UK | We test a gorgeous digital record deck by Lenco: Gareth Butterfield dusts off his dad’s record collection and settles into some musical nostalgia. I grew up in the tail end of the vinyl era, when record decks were quickly becoming replaced with cassettes, before cassettes were quickly killed off (thank goodness) by CDs. But for some people vinyl never died. And for many others, there’s still a sentimental stash of records in their loft, gathering dust, locking away some beautiful melodies in their tracks. …But for those people who still love and LP there is another way to do it. Hi-Fi geniuses Lenco have just launched their LBT-188 turntable, which converts the record’s analogue sound to digital. It’s the size of a deck you’d have found at the top of a “stack” in the 1980s and it’s absolutely gorgeous.
