Cleveland, OH | Iconic Cleveland Heights record store closing doors after 55 years in business: Record Revolution opened in 1967, influencing music and culture on Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights. Rob Love started working at Record Revolution as a teenager in 1987, eventually becoming a partner in 2005, now forced to close the store after the holidays. “I’ve been very emotional thinking about it,” said the 49-year-old co-owner. “I don’t know if it’s sunk in 100% yet but I have enjoyed all of the fans and customers that have come by and visited and shared their stories of what Record Revolution means and meant to them.” Bands have credited support from Record Revolution for helping make them famous, and it was consistently voted best record store in Northeast Ohio. But it was about more than records. “I call it a lifestyle store,” said Love.
Beltsville, MD | Route 1 Is Home to D.C.’s Only Woman-Owned Vintage Record Store: The only fully woman-owned record shop in the D.C. area is on the Route 1 corridor. Located at 11011 Baltimore Ave. in Beltsville, Sonidos! Music & More first opened in October of 2019, but it had to shut down briefly during the coronavirus pandemic. Owner Claudia Mendiola-Durán told the Hyattsville Wire that the record shop got its start when she mentioned to her friends next door at Atomic Music about her idea. “I’ve been friends with the guys at Atomic for many years, and when I mentioned that I wanted to open a shop of my own, they offered to clear out a space they were using for storage so I could rent it out,” she said. During the pandemic, Sonidos continued selling via mail order, but the brick-and-mortar sales continue to be unpredictable. Still, she says she’s optimistic about the future of physical media, even as streaming services have taken off.
Belfast, IE | Oh Yeah Music Centre to auction extremely limited edition version of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Happy Xmas (War Is Over). In December 2020, the Oh Yeah Music Centre, a registered music charity in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter, was gifted one of only fifty limited edition acetates (number 44), hand-cut at Abbey Road Studios, of the 2020 Ultimate Mix of Happy Xmas (War Is Over) by John Lennon & Yoko One, first released 50 years ago, in December 1971. The gift came with the instruction from Sean Ono Lennon “to sell, auction, raise money to help your charity or to fund your Christmas party.” The Oh Yeah Music Centre has been an ‘open doors to music’ since 2007 so it was decided that the most fitting way to honour this incredible gift was to reinvest it in a programme of support for emerging talents. Charlene Hegarty, Talent Development Manager, said: “We are incredibly grateful and excited to make available to the public a piece of iconic music history. The best part about it is that every single person who enters the raffle to win the collectible vinyl will be doing their part to support future creative generations—which cuts to the core of what Oh Yeah is all about.”
Books that express album art with a different vibe: Two volumes of Mark Goodall’s Gathering of the Tribe coffee table books that are “A Companion to Occult Music on Vinyl.” The first two volumes of author Mark Goodall’s “companion to occult music on vinyl” are with us at last, and if you like your coffee table draped in gloriously obscure, full color album covers, with exploratory notes and explanatory text, then these really are the books for you. Notionally, you could say these releases are tied into the on-going folk horror boom that preoccupies so much of the British (and elsewhere) underground these days; to do so, however, would be to overlook the allure that albums of this nature have long held for vinyl hounds and crate diggers. They are slim volumes — eighty pages in one, 100 in the other — but what they lack in weight, they make up with heft. And both serve not only as fascinating studies of their chosen themes, but will certainly give your vinyl wants list something to think about as well.
The best headphones of 2022: The best headphones for each budget. Over the past two years, there has been a continuing shift in listening habits as consumers, in an era of lockdowns and rising work-from-home trends, sought for more personalised sound experiences. What better tool than a high-quality set of headphones to achieve that goal? There are more bells and whistles than ever before in today’s headphones. Bluetooth, active noise cancellation and app connectivity are just a few examples of the high-quality wireless technologies that have become increasingly common in recent years and are available at a wide range of pricing points. Although these perks are often touted by manufacturers as a reason to buy their headphones, sound quality should always come first. There’s some key lingo to know while shopping for headphones, as it might alter the quality of the sound you get. You’ll hear the terms “open back” and “closed back” quite a bit.
a-ha’s Hunting High and Low to be issued as a 6LP vinyl box: 6LP super deluxe offers 60-tracks. Hunting High and Low, the classic 1985 debut album from a-ha, is being reissued as a 6LP vinyl box set in February next year. The album has been the focus of much archival activity over the years, with a 2CD deluxe edition first issued back in 2010 and a 4CD+DVD super deluxe five years later for what was the 30th anniversary. Three years ago, that same super deluxe was issued in ‘cheap and cheerful’ packaging (and without the DVD) at a much cheaper price than the by-then-out-of-print 2015 version. This new 6LP vinyl edition offers the same audio content as the four CDs in the 2015/2019 sets, bringing the amazing array of demos, alternates and remixes to vinyl for the very first time. The audio is the 2015 remasters. It comes with a 64-page booklet which no doubt will offer the same kind of content as the original CD super deluxe with extensive sleeve notes and photography.
Los Angeles, CA | Rock ‘n’ roll will never be the same, but it’s not dead: Whether you’re a baby boomer, a hippy or just found yourself rummaging through your parents’ boxes of dusty vinyl, we all discovered the artists and bands that changed the world of music forever. Many people, especially younger generations, are unaware of how much rock ‘n’ roll has influenced music today. There are endless arguments as to whether rock ‘n’ roll is the same as rock, but I’m going to use them synonymously. Popular artists, such as Lana Del Rey, Harry Styles and Greta Van Fleet, were influenced by musicians from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. It’s a stunning genre with brilliant music and artists who can just make you feel something. Rock ‘n’ roll is still one of America’s favorite music genres. According to Statista, rock ranked third in physical music sales in 2021. Consider this: streaming was expected to be the end of the rock ‘n’ roll world, but people are still purchasing physical records.
