Historic record store finds new life in RR: A historic Albuquerque record store has found new life in the City of Vision, as Cristy Records celebrated its new home in Rio Rancho last week. Cristy Records, at 1670-A NM 528, celebrated its reopening Thursday with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The record store, owned and operated by lawyer and musician Michael Sanchez, features CDs, vinyl records and cassette tapes from local and international musicians. “What we’re doing here is trying to promote New Mexico musicians,” Sanchez said. “We encourage people to come in and look around, have themselves a Coca-Cola and just look at all the bands.”
New record shop and bookstore, 2 Bridges, opens in Manhattan: A new boutique and exhibition space called 2 Bridges has opened at 75 East Broadway Suite 205 in Manhattan. Founded by New York native Simon Gabriel Greenberg, the shop offers new and used vinyl as well as cassettes tapes, books and art. Musically it skews towards leftfield electronic and dance records, with a broad inventory that includes house and techno 12-inches as well as free jazz, ambient music and rap. Greenberg opened 2 Bridges with the idea of “putting music, art and books into conversation with each other, the way they are at someone’s house,” he told RA over email.
Vinyl enthusiasts celebrate Home for the Holidays in Morris with exchange event: Jayme Cameron and her son, Matthew Cameron, walked through the event room doors at Clayton’s Tap on Friday afternoon with a bag of vinyl records in tow to swap. “Matthew is my old-soul child. He loves records and has a record player where he listens to records from his great-grandparents and grandparents, so I saw this event on Facebook and I thought he would love it,” Jayme said. From 4 to 6 p.m. Friday, the back room at Clayton’s Tap was transformed into a vinyl record exchange organized by Jamie Barbeau as part of Morris’ Home for the Holidays.
Kiki and Henry’s popular record fair returns to Stourbridge High Street venue The Talbot Hotel: Organisers of a popular Stourbridge record fair will be returning to the cosy confines of the town centre’s Talbot Hotel for their upcoming event. Kiki and Henry’s Record Fair returns to its spiritual home in the Talbot next Saturday (December 10) giving music fans the ideal chance to pick up some Christmas gifts, or just treat themselves during the cold and rainy winter weather. The event will feature two rooms at the historic Talbot crammed with quality vinyl records, CDs and music memorabilia, all sourced by the pair’s trusted traders.
Dallas record label stands poised to rule the world of vinyl: Hand Drawn Records is poised to become the king of the vinyl world. In early December, the Dallas record company will take delivery of 2 new state-of-the-art vinyl press machines that will give them the ability to press over a million records a year. In 2015, the label launched Hand Drawn Pressing to fill the demand of the booming vinyl revolution. It has already been pressing vinyl on a contract basis from a facility in Toronto. The arrival of its new machine (built by Viryl Technologies) at its 10,000-square-foot facility will offer the capacity to produce records three times faster than vintage automated record presses.
Vinyl Confessions: Talkin’ “Schmilsson” with the Son of Nilsson: In late-1971, Harry Nilsson tasted his greatest success. Within a year, many thought he had thrown it back up. Nilsson Schmilsson is my all-time favorite album. It’s a tight, catchy, ten-song collective balled up into 35 minutes of Harry in all permutations – he’s up, down, high, low, tender, rocking and everything in between. I can’t think of another album that contains a song (“Jump in the Fire”) so catchy it would be destined for cinema screens (remember the “May 11, 1980” sequence in GoodFellas?) and LCD Soundsystem’s Madison Square Garden “final” concert set-list.
The Grateful Dead set to reissue entire discography in chronological order: The Grateful Dead are set to reissue their entire discography in chronological order, starting with a 50th-anniversary reissue of their 1967 debut album. Rather than releasing every album at once, the band will be re-releasing them as their own 50-year anniversaries come up. Each album will be fully remastered and available in 2xCD and vinyl picture disc versions. The CD version will include a bonus disc of unreleased recordings. The band have also announced a 7-inch singles subscription that allows fans to order reissued singles in the order they were originally released.
Five Monumental Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention Albums To Be Reissued On Vinyl: Following this month’s release of three new Frank Zappa albums, the Zappa Family Trust and UMe are continuing their extensive reissue campaign by releasing five iconic works of the musical innovator on vinyl for the first time in decades: Cruising With Ruben & The Jets, Joe’s Garage, Lumpy Gravy, Weasels Ripped My Flesh and We’re Only In It For The Money. The albums spanning Zappa’s incredibly fertile late ’60s-late ’70s period will be pressed on 180-gram vinyl and available December 9.
