London, UK | hmv embarks on a new chapter as it expands into books: Retailer to open over 2,500 sq. foot literary space at 363 Oxford Street flagship store playing host to over 4,000 titles with literary events to follow in dedicated performance area. hmv is to embark on a new chapter as it expands into the sale of books this November. The move marks the retailer’s first major foray into literature as a standalone offering within its retail space. hmv is devoting an entire floor of its flagship store to its newest venture. The hmv 363 Bookshop will open on 18 November ahead of the busy festive period, featuring a live events stage among a curated range of hidden gems to excite and delight book enthusiasts. The floor is accessed via a staircase from the 1st floor, leading to a treasure trove of current and classic works across music, film, and popular culture.
Riverside, CA | Happy Birthday, Penrose Record Room! Your favorite local record shop just hit a big milestone. One whole year is no small feat when it comes to running a small business. For shops that specialize in niche hobbies of the past, like music-collecting, existing successfully in the ever-changing economy and whimsies of the public deserves more than a pat on the back. To celebrate that, the Penrose Record Room in Downtown Riverside hosted two full days of anniversary festivities right in the heart of the subterranean shop, turning the relatively smaller store into a huge space of music, smiles, friends and community. Over the two-day weekend celebration, Oct. 19 and Oct. 20, the Penrose Record Room featured a full house of record aficionados, slick-dressed disc jockeys, Penrose Records label musicians and their hoards of fans packed into the basement of the Life Arts Building.
Burlington, CT | New CT business is ‘groovy’ in more ways than one. And you might just get what you need. What would you call a store that carries vintage blacklight posters, items such as a Michael Jackson doll, an Alf doll, old metal lunch boxes, rare Beatles posters and over 20,000 vinyl records featuring recording artists from Elvis to Nirvana to Taylor Swift? Owner Mick Lawless thought about naming his store, “Flashbacks,” but that sounded too limiting — like something out of the “hippie era.” he said. “There no flashback when you’re dealing with Taylor Swift,” Lawless said recently. “It didn’t describe the store.” “Nevermind this,” he said he thought, while contemplating the name. And so was born, “The Nevermind Shop.” The store filled with memorabilia, collectibles and so many records of all genres, opened recently in Burlington.
UK | ERA honoured for longstanding success of Record Store Day UK: Digital entertainment and retail association ERA has been honoured for its work organising Record Store Day. CEO Kim Bayley was presented with the top award for Best Longstanding Event at the Association Excellence Awards, recognising the work of UK trade associations. She also collected a bronze award for ERA’s Entertainment Champion Awards in the category Best New Event. ERA has masterminded the organisation and logistics of Record Store Day UK for the past 15 years. RSD has become one of the biggest revenue-generating days for indie record shops (worth around £10 million), and it helped to bring about the vinyl revival and increase in independent record stores in the UK. The judges said: “This is a great entry for a great event which stands out because it is unique in that it is not based in one place—it is based in hundreds of places around the UK with superb results.”
New York, NY | Immortalized on ‘Seinfeld’: Bleecker Bob’s Records: ‘New York Groove’ Book Excerpt. In this excerpt from the book New York Groove: An Inside Look at the Stars, Shows, and Songs That Make NYC Rock, we look back at Bleecker Bob’s, the iconic Greenwich Village record shop. Fellow record collectors Al Trommers and Robert Plotnik opened Village Oldies in 1967 at 149 Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. It was at the record shop that Trommers, known as Broadway Al, gave Plotnik the nickname Bleecker Bob. The partners moved to MacDougal Street in the 1970s. By 1981, Trommers left the business and Plotnik moved to the former Night Owl Café site on Bleecker Street, where the shop was renamed Bleecker Bob’s. The shop — and Bob’s tough-guy persona — were immortalized in 1993 on television’s Seinfeld in the episode “The Old Man.” Bleecker Bob’s was much more than an oldies record shop. Plotnik recognized new trends in music and it was the source of hard-to-find punk rock releases in the genre’s early days.
Brisbane, AU | Jet Black Cat Announces Store Closure: “Every ending is a beginning… Our online shop will remain open 24/7,” the record store owners said. Sad news came out of Brisbane today: the beloved record store Jet Black Cat Music announced its closure. Located on the corner of Thomas and Vulture Streets in Brisbane’s West End, the brick-and-mortar store will close down next month, but the owners said there are plans to shapeshift and take on a “new form.“ Despite the sad news, the store plans to continue to grow into a “new life” that spotlights great music, hosts events, and supports touring. Earlier this year, the owners opened up about 2024 being the record store’s “most challenging yet” as a small business. Jet Black Cat Music has hosted many incredible local and international acts, from Courtney Barnett to Weyes Blood to Angie McMahon and Julia Jacklin to Sharon Van Etten, Charli XCX, Sampa The Great, Marlon Williams, and stacks more.
Owensboro, KY | Library to host first Vinyl Record Show on Saturday: The Daviess County Public Library is having its first Vinyl Records Show from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday on the library’s second floor. Jarrod McCarty, the library’s community engagement manager, said 10 vendors are scheduled to be selling vinyl records that day. “I was approached by a couple of people who are into vinyl like I am,” he said. “And we decided to try this.” Vinyl records hit the market in 1948 and ruled the music market for three decades. But things began to change in 1979, when cassettes moved in. Then came CDs and vinyl became mostly obsolete. But in 2008, sales of vinyl records began to come back. And in 2022, vinyl records surpassed CDs as the most popular physical recorded music format for the first time since 1987.
Vintage-inspired Relikcs streams ‘anti-technology’ into the digital age with high-end audio furniture: A line of West Bottoms-built, high-end stereo consoles capitalizes on a gold rush for vinyl nostalgia, said Paul Suquet, noting their vintage-inspired business bridges the gap between a digital era and “the beauty of analog sound.” “Music is something that connects us,” added Dan Posch, one of Suquet’s partners at Relikcs Furniture, a local maker of retrofitted, Mid Century Modern-syled sounds systems that pair record-playing and streaming capabilities in one sturdy console. “Those are core memories, the songs that your parents played when you were little and that you would dance to.” In a world of fleeting digital interactions, Relikcs builds quality meant to last decades, the duo said, describing their longing for the tactile richness of a recent past when music crackled and hissed, and was enmeshed with everyday physical reality.
NZ | Our Kiwi Home: The nostalgia and lure of vinyl: Former Cantabrian Mark Walton, an internationally-recognised clarinettist and saxophonist, has an enduring fascination with NZ history and writes regularly about his home country. I’m not quite sure at what age nostalgia suddenly kicks in. Maybe it’s when you suddenly realise that life doesn’t last forever, or maybe it’s when you are physically unable to do some of those things you used to be able to do. Nostalgia is not a bad thing; in fact, I rather enjoy the waves that engulf you, and for that reason I recently bought some second-hand vinyl long playing records. There would be nothing unusual about this, but I don’t actually own a turntable. As we downsized to compact apartment living in Sydney, the old turntable sadly went to landfill. We kept just four albums because they held special memories.
