London, UK | Independent Label Market London announces annual Christmas event at Coal Drops Yard, King’s Cross with the London Brewers’ Market, Saturday 30th November: 2019 has been another stellar year for Independent Label Market. ILM crossed the channel to host a record number of events in Paris, Berlin (x2), Taranto, Brussels and Barcelona as well as announcing a new home for its flagship London events at Coal Drops Yard, King’s Cross. On Saturday 30th November, ILM hosts its final market of the year, the Christmas event in partnership with AIM – the Association of Independent Music. An all star crew of labels will be joining on the day including !K7, 4AD, Bella Union, Brownswood, Erased Tapes, Heavenly, Hospital, Late Night Tales, Lex, Lucky Number, Moshi Moshi, Mute, Secretly Canadian, Strut and Transgressive. ILM’s other main partner for the London Winter event is the London Brewers’ Market which will be representing quintessential names in the London independent brewery scene. There will also be fantastically eclectic label DJ sets throughout the day in the ever-expanding beer garden.
Kingston, UK | Banquet Records urge Kingstonians to register to vote ahead of election with banner drop: Kingston’s Banquet Records unveiled a banner on Monday (November 4) urging residents to register to vote in the upcoming General Election. The store posted a picture to Twitter showing a giant banner, hanging above the shop, directing Kingstonians towards the government’s voter registration website ( www.gov.uk/register-to-vote ) ahead of polling day on December 12. The renowned record store pride themselves on engaging with social issues beyond selling records. Earlier this year, the Comet reported on Banquet’s support for a homelessness charity appeal in the borough run by Kingston Churches Action on Homelessness (KCAH). Banquet Manager Jon Tolley told the Comet that he hoped Banquet could reach potential voters who might not otherwise have registered. “We have a unique platform here to reach young people who might not be reached by other media. “It’s not party political, it’s not about pushing our own thoughts or beliefs onto people, it’s about encouraging them to get involved and sign up,” he said.
UK | Blue Note Records marks 80th anniversary with UK pop-up store: To celebrate the 80th anniversary of the legendary jazz record label, Blue Note Records will open its first ever UK pop-up store this month. The pop-up opens at Coal Drops Yard, Kings Cross on November 15 to coincide with the opening night of the EFG London Jazz Festival 2019. The store will feature exclusive framed canvas artwork, Blue Note 80 prints, audio and visual installations, exclusive merchandise, plus vinyl, CDs, DVD and Blu-Ray copies of the film Blue Note Records Beyond The Notes. There’s also a revised 80th anniversary edition of the celebrated book, Blue Note: Uncompromising Expression: The Finest in Jazz Since 1939 by the late Richard Havers. An array of additional events at the store will be announced across the week with special guest artists, music, cultural speakers and label representatives. The Blue Note roster has included John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Norah Jones, Art Blakey, Donald Byrd, Cannonball Adderley and Dexter Gordon, among hundreds of others.
Popular C 558 Turntable Gets Unique Makeover for Black Friday: NAD Electronics, makers of award-winning high-performance home audio equipment, unveiled a limited edition turntable featuring a custom design by Toronto-based illustrator, Brandon Serbec of Mystery Meat Design. Eight of the brand’s popular C 558 turntables were given the vinyl-wrapped treatment as part of NAD Electronics’ partnership with Record Store Day Canada. While these limited edition turntables will not be available for public purchase, Canadian vinyl listeners will have the opportunity to win one of these unique turntables in a contest being run jointly by NAD Electronics’ Canadian distributor, Lenbrook, and the Record Store Day Canada organization…“Rather than rely on a lot of stereotypical tropes of Canada and music, we wanted to pay homage to the iconic live music venues around the country that are ground zero for talent development,” says June Ip, Vice-President of Marketing for NAD Electronics. “Live music can be found just about anywhere, from concert halls to church basements and everything in between. And while we may not always acknowledge it, these venues are part of the musical heritage of our communities and our country.”
Maymont, CA | ‘It’s a good disease’: Maymont man’s love for music yields far-reaching record collection: “It’s an obsessive-compulsive thing; it’s sort of a disease,” says record collector Dave Doolittle. “But it’s a good disease.” The building’s tattered and a little torn, and the children disappeared a long time ago. But there’s still learning to be done here, amidst stacks of records — vinyl, shellac, styrene — with 83-year-old collector Dave Doolittle curating it all. There’s no power in the place, no heat, and the thermometer sits just above freezing one fall morning when two visitors stop by this Saskatchewan town of 138 people. Doolittle runs power in from outside so he can listen to his records. “My cousin told me about this place,” says Doolittle, whose collection — 35,000 records or so — was stored in the town’s former bank until a few months ago, when he had to move because of other plans with the space. “It’s reasonable, and I can play the music loud if I want.” This isn’t the whole collection. Around 4,000 sit back in his house, some real nice ones, but this is a fine place to start. Doolittle talks about the anticipation of listening to what lies in those grooves. He points to a Glenn Gould record, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor. “I could play that every day, and there’s always one spot on there that the hair on my arm goes up,” he says.
The Watchmen soundtrack liner notes are full of new world-building and backstory: The tragedy in New York changed music, but not culture as a whole. The 34-year gap between the events of the original Watchmen comic and the events of HBO’s new series leaves a lot of history to fill in. While the show takes care of some of the bigger points, creator Damon Lindelof and his team have been carefully filling in the blanks with things like its weekly news drops that explain all the ways the show’s world is different from our own. The latest of these extra-textual materials is Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ first Watchmen soundtrack vinyl, which comes with liners notes filled with “historical” context. As you might be able to guess, the focus of the liner notes are mostly on music, and the way the Interspatial Toxic Event (ITE) — Veidt’s fake squid attack — changed the scene. The album itself is presented as a reissue of a controversial in-universe album called The Book of Rorschach by a band called Sons of Pale Horse, named after the band Pale Horse from the original comic. The liner notes are an essay on the history of the album on its 15th anniversary.
Oklahoma City, OK | ‘I burst into tears’: Woman finds dead father’s records 7 years after they were stolen: A woman left heartbroken by the theft of her late dad’s record collection, has been reunited with some of his “prized vinyl” in an incredible twist of fate. Shyla Norton’s dad died when she was seven, and along with most of his possessions, she inherited his record collection. When she was 21 however, someone stole all the records from her home in Oklahoma City, in the US state of Oklahoma, in an act that left her “heart broken”, particularly because she never got a chance to listen to them. Having recently purchased a turntable of her own though, she had taken to perusing vintage and second-hand stores to add to her personal collection. In one expedition, she almost couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw her dad’s name scrawled on a record cover. “I’m flipping through the records and I see something written on the front of an album cover but it doesn’t click. I literally thought, ‘surely not’ and I kept moving. “Three flips later, I see another. And clear as day I read it. My dad’s name, Steve Norton.”
