Hackney Wick, UK | Vinyl Destination: Rook Records. Launching as an online store in 2016 and a YouTube channel in 2018, Rook Records has spent the last seven years finding its identity. Now, armed with a collection of US imports and a variety of second-hand treats, the store has opened its real-life doors to London’s vinyl community. Rook Records’ first physical location has coincided with a pivot in its specialisation. “Last year we started importing a lot of bulk stock from the US and changed the focus of the business into much more secondhand records,” explains Julian Gascoigne, co-owner of the store. …Having moved its base of operations to a Hackney Wick storage unit last May, Rook was faced with the decision of whether to open up its basement space to customers. “We were already in the online space, we’ve now got this space that we’re already here processing stuff,” Gascoigne says. “It just seemed like a no-brainer for us.”
Coeur d’Alene, ID | Coeur d’Alene record store the Long Ear celebrates 50 years of kickin’ out the jams: The Long Ear began with love at first sight. Deon Borchard went to an audiophile swap meet in Southern California in 1971 looking for 8-tracks by the band Spooky Tooth, but she left with much more than that. “I was walking down an aisle on the lookout for those 8-tracks,” Borchard says. “At the end of that aisle, there was this guy standing there, and he just had a spark. Everyone around him was smiling, too, like his energy was rubbing off on them.” That’s all it took. “I stopped dead in my tracks,” she says. “I was instantly in love.” Borchard went home that night and told her cousin that she had met the man she was going to marry, and she was right. Six months later, Deon and Terry were married. “In that first summer we must have gone to 40 concerts together,” Borchard says. “Music was so integral to our life.”
Liverpool, UK | Liverpool’s Dig Vinyl expansion sees opening of Wirral store: Liverpool’s Dig Vinyl announced its latest expansion with the addition of a new shop on Banks road in West Kirby. The new shop marks a milestone in Dig Vinyl’s decade-long journey, having undergone three expansions including it’s move within Bold Street, Liverpool. The shop will stock the usual diversity of genres, eras and sounds that its customers have come to expect including rare finds from American, Japan and beyond. In support of curating stock that caters to the preferences of local customers, the West Kirby store will see an extension of Dig Vinyl’s partnership with Birkenhead music venue Future Yard, committing to stock releases by the emerging artists and local talents who grace Future Yard’s stage. Dig Vinyl will also continue to partner with Future Yard on the organisation of the quarterly CRATE Vinyl & Craft Beer market.
Mansfield, OH | Operation Fandom & Blackbird Records celebrating 3rd anniversary: Operation: Fandom and Blackbird Records are celebrating three years of business in downtown Mansfield. The stores opened in October 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, so owner Josh Lehman said the staff didn’t get the opportunity to design the store as it was originally planned. “A lot of the shelves and displays we wanted were all on backorder, so we just made do with what we had,” he said. “But we’ve been working to set up new shelves and bring more light in here, so it looks a lot nicer.” …Lehman said staff are adding new Pokémon cards to their shelves, new and used vinyl records and thousands of $1 stickers. “It will be exciting to freshen things up and give our customers more merchandise,” Lehman said. “The floor is definitely more shoppable now and we have plenty of new and exciting items.”
Grand Rapids, MN | KEBS Records and Radio in Bovey—an adventure in vinyl and vintage music: Bovey is home to the famed picture Grace from Enstrom Studios. It is also home to the world’s smallest record shop – KEBS Records (pronounced like radio call letters) and a very small (tenth of a watt) radio station that serves Coleraine/Bovey on AM 1620. Not just for boomers, owner Tim Verthein, will tell you, phonograph listening is on the rise. He and his business manager daughter Stacia Rom joined forces seven years ago with a mission: Move the vinyl. In their own uniquely tiny storefront with no online services, they do just that, two weekends per month. They have a cult following of regulars hoping to procure from the backroom studio and storage of thousands upon thousands of vinyl albums. Verthein said, “We sell you records to play and enjoy. We are not in this business to make collectors; we want you to play and listen.” The micro-sized store also carries phonograph accessories, like playing needles and snap in adapters for 45’s. A KEBS Records belief is “every record somewhere has a value to somebody.”
How Bandcamp makes more money than Spotify: What the vinyl renaissance says about delivering true value—and not just in the music business. In the mid-2000s, amid declining revenues from slumping CD sales, the music industry was offered two possible futures. The first was created in 2006 by Daniel Ek, whose new product, Spotify, streamed music from the cloud instantly, as if the music had already been downloaded directly on your device. Users could pay a subscription price—today it’s $10.99—and listen to as much music as they wanted. The second came courtesy of Radiohead with the release of its album, In Rainbows, in 2007. Listeners could pay what they felt was a reasonable amount (the average was $5) to download the album, or they could purchase the physical album as a richly designed disc box including an LP, a bonus CD, and an art book—for $80. Ethan Diamond, an entrepreneur who had created an email platform called Oddpost that got absorbed into Yahoo Mail, turned this model into Bandcamp in 2008, a platform where artists would set their own prices and offer a variety of digital and physical goods, and the company would take a 10% to 15% cut of the sales.
Metallica’s US coloured vinyl collection to get international release from November: The previous US-only limited editions of Kill ‘Em All, Ride The Lightning, Master Of Puppets, … And Justice For All and the Black album will launch internationally from November. Metallica have announced they’ll release coloured vinyl editions of their first five albums across international markets starting in November. Kill ‘Em All, Ride The Lightning, Master Of Puppets, … And Justice For All and the ‘Black’ album were previously only available in the US exclusively through Walmart, but that’ll change on November 3 with the release of Kill ‘Em All pressed on Jump In The Fire Engine Red vinyl. That’ll be followed on December 1 with the launch of Ride The Lightning on Electric Blue vinyl and Master Of Puppets will arrive on January 5 on Battery Brick vinyl. February 2 sees the release of … And Justice For All on Dyer’s Green double vinyl, with the ‘Black’ album pressed on 2LP Some Blacker Marbled vinyl arriving on March 1. All are limited editions and have been pressed on 180g vinyl—and they’re available to pre-order now.
Andrea Corr on streaming, vinyl and why The Corrs will always play the hits: Andrea Corr is a traditionalist. She likes records she can touch, with a crackle she can hear, lyrics she can read and photographs she can pore over. So much of the joy of the tactile nature of engaging with your favourite music has been lost in the era of streaming. “Some young people don’t even know they’ve lost something,” she says, mournfully. It has been more than 30 years since Dundalk-born Corr (49) rocketed to fame as the lead singer of the Celtic folk rock and pop group The Corrs, with her three elder siblings Caroline, Sharon and Jim. …But much has changed in the music industry since they were catapulted on to the world stage. “I thought it was a huge loss, to lose the album and for things to be just singles. In my life when I loved a band, or an artist, I couldn’t wait for the record to be released, all of the artwork, to read all of the lyrics, the photos.
INXS releasing ‘All Juiced Up’ limited edition colored vinyl remixes: INXS is releasing remixes of some of their biggest hits on colored vinyl. The new collection, All Juiced Up Part 2, will feature nine limited edition colored 12-inch vinyl releases, featuring remixes of INXS classics like “Need You Tonight,” “What You Need” and more. The collection kicks off October 20 with volumes one to three; all songs were remixed at Abbey Road Studios. A blue, pink and red vinyl will be available, with each volume containing four different songs. Remixes on the first three volumes include such songs as “Listen Like Thieves,” “Bitter Tears,” “New Sensation,” “Original Sin” and more. All volumes can be ordered separately or as a three-LP bundle. They are available for preorder now. These will be followed by two more sets of three; the next is expected to drop in February 2024, and the final set is scheduled for May 2024.
