Loveland, CO | After more than a decade, a Colorado vinyl shop is leaving for a new town: Like the old song goes, “The Beat Goes On,” just not at this address in Loveland. The store, which has had a couple of owners, sees a better future, elsewhere, in Colorado. Loveland’s only record store has had an (overall) good run in Downtown, but Downtown Loveland is just not the right fit any longer. With them leaving, perhaps another brave music lover will open a new vinyl shop. …It’s been a great little record/music store on the east end of Fourth Street since 2012. They had just what a place like that should: Records, CDs, 45s, sound equipment, instruments. Downtown Sound will join a long list of “businesses that used to be on Fourth Street,” when they finally close up and take the “music” out of Loveland, completely. The current owners took ownership of Downtown Sound in the spring of 2023, but things have been tough; towards the end of July of 2023, they posted an appeal: “To be blunt, we’re in a pickle.”
Ballarat, AU | Vinyl store to spin music lover’s dream: Whether you’re a dedicated collector or a casual appreciator of music, Ballarat now has a new location for everyone to flick through piles of vinyl. Kank Wolverang Records is set to open next Friday at 30 Main Road in Bakery Hill, founded and managed by local musicians and longtime friends Justin “Hap” Hayward and Dan Kalken.“I’d wanted to do this for a while,” Mr Hayward said.“I’d been mentioning this to Dan for a while, and I had a dream of owning a record shop and something popped up on his phone about a record store in Germany all on the same day.“It seemed like a spooky message to give it a crack, and then this place became available.“The name came from a creation of a good friend of ours. Kank is an example of a musician that’s so obscure, no one knows him. We thought it’d be a good mystery.”
Atascadero, CA | Neil Young releases new album and signs autographs at Atascadero record store: Traffic Records is a small, independent record store in Atascadero, so imagine the surprise of both the store owner and fans when music icon Neil Young asked if he could hold an event there for the release of his new album, “Before and After.”Store owner Manuel Barba announced the event a couple of days ago and word spread quickly with a line of people stretching around the block early Friday — about a thousand fans all trying to get their hands on 300 copies of the vinyl LP of Young’s new album. They were also trying to get a chance to meet him in person. Starting around noon, Young met fans and signed copies of the record but was at the store for only about an hour before the records were sold out. Then it was back on the bus and he headed out of town. So why Traffic Records?
Madison, WI | Owners of Strictly Discs to retire after 35 years: New owner shares three goals for iconic Madison record store. Just off the University of Wisconsin campus, a retro record store sits on the corner of Monroe and Harrison Street. The store is immediately striking from the outside because of its vibrant colors and brightly colored lights. The inside of the store is equally nostalgic. The walls are covered in old vinyls and CDs, with shelves and stand-up racks throughout the room. But the store doesn’t end on the main level. After exploring the vinyl selection upstairs, customers can walk down the store’s stairs, the walls of which are covered in old newspapers and retro art. In the basement, the space is tightly packed with rows and rows of more CDs, vinyls and even a few cassette tapes. On its 35th anniversary, Strictly Discs announced on Facebook that owners Ron and Angie Roloff had sold the store to new owner Rick Stoner in early November. Angie Roloff said they love the store, but they are excited about the transition.
San Antonio, TX | Pecos Records brings unsung heroes of West Side Sound back for another spin: The wistful lyrics of San Antonio musician Robert Gomez’s 1968 song “But That Was Then” were about lost love, but they might just as well have foretold a promising music career that turned sour. I can remember when / You loved me / But that was then. It’s not that Gomez went unloved as a guitarist or songwriter. His two-decade career began with the Eptones and continued with touring band Turning Point, fronted by singer Sheri Nolan, whom Gomez eventually married. But during that time he never received credit or royalties for his songwriting. Unscrupulous producers and managers at the time often failed to shepherd ambitious but impressionable young clients like Gomez through contracts that might have secured proper recognition and compensation had they known to secure publishing rights for their songs. So when Rae Cabello, a young San Antonio music aficionado, approached Gomez four years ago with the idea to rerelease the song for a new specialty record label, Gomez declined, still feeling the residue of old bitterness. “I actually passed,” Gomez said.
Liverpool, UK | Oldest record shop in Liverpool reopens with museum to celebrate city’s musical heritage: One of the region’s oldest record shops has reopened after 14 months – creating a small museum to pay tribute to its long-standing musical connections with the city. The Musical Box Record Shop in Tuebrook, Liverpool opened just after the end of the Second World War and is still going strong. To celebrate its longevity, and the impact it has had on the musical scene in the city, it has now transformed an upstairs room into a mini museum detailing its fascinating history. The shop stocks an incredible 50,000 LPs, singles, CDs and cassettes – and was opened by Antiques Roadshow expert Wayne Colquhoun He said: “All these things around us, they all tell stories of the history of Liverpool the musical city. “It’s a great institution which now, after trading 75 years, is restored for the next 75 years.” Tony Quinn, the shops owner, says young and old come into the shop.
Classical record collectors: Take a trip to the Isle of the Dead! A new interpretation of Rachmaninoff might be th greatest yet. Presented here are two of the great recordings of Rachmaninoff’s most stirring work, recorded between 2018 and 2020, under the flawless brilliance of Canadian Yannick Nézet-Séguin. It is also the long-awaited follow-up to 2021’s initial appraisal of Rachmaninoff’s work — itself a much acclaimed performance. Like Ormandy and Previn before him, Nézet-Séguin has an instinctive understanding of what Rachmaninoff was doing… long since exiled at the time of composing the Third Symphony (he was living at Lake Lucerne at the time), there was a palpable sense of homesickness in the music. But there is also a drama underlying that, most pronounced in the second movement, before thrusting itself to the forefront for the finale, an oft-times frenetic 113 minutes that resolves every conflicting emotion aroused by the earlier movements, before a climax that can still take the most familiar listener by surprise.
East Lothian, UK | Scottish company Seabass get back in the groove with vinyl revival: The vinyl record, a music format once thought dead, has its groove back. Despite seemingly being ousted from our record collections by CDs and streaming services, sales continue to grow by more than 10% each year since 2006. Against the odds, Santa will be cramming more 12 inch discs into stockings this Christmas than any year since the 1980s; helping him is Seabass Vinyl. The start-up firm aims to capitalise on the burgeoning market with a brand new record pressing plant, the first and only of its kind in Scotland. Last week the plant began pressing its first run, made up of editions of two deluxe editions of albums (13th Star, and A Feast Of Consequences) by Scottish artist Fish, a fitting name for a company called Seabass. The albums will arrive in shops tomorrow, having been shipped from the new company’s property, tucked away beside farming equipment hire firms and a hot tub dealer, on an industrial estate in Tranent, East Lothian.
