Island gets new record store, Vinyl proving to be a long player: A local collective is taking music back to its roots with a new pop-up venture in Onchan. Sound Records, alias entrepreneur Jack Doyle, is running the temporary record store in Onchan’s Village Walk shopping precinct throughout the month. A curated selection of tracks and albums on vinyl, as well as vintage clothing lines, are onsale. It’s open from 11am. Sales of vinyl surpassed three million the UK last year – a 25 year record.
Cullingworth man’s Keighley vinyl record shop Grind and Groove is spinning to success: A new Keighley record shop has got into its groove within weeks of opening. Gareth Beck has been left spinning by the success of Grind and Groove since he began selling vinyl discs from his little shop in Cavendish Street. Gareth, a former Australian policeman, also sells what it claims is the “best coffee in the world” to both passers-by and people browsing for records. Lifelong music fan Gareth decided to specialise in only vinyl rather than CDs after amassing his own collection of thousands of the discs over the past few years.
This vintage Charlotte record store closes after 45 years: The Wax Museum, a southeast Charlotte vintage record store known for its thousands of offerings, from 45s and LPs to cassettes and CDs, closed last weekend after 45 years. Owner Chris Beachley announced in October that he was ready to retire, and that last Saturday would be the store’s final day. “The Wax Museum has been fun,” Beachley told Observer news partner WBTV last month. “It’s been 45 years, and it’s time to retire.” The store at Monroe Road and Sharon Amity Lane also sold posters and memorabilia. For the unfamiliar, beach music “care packages” were available, including such DVDs as “Carolina Shag for Beginners” and the “Shaggin’ On The Strand” TV documentary.
Diggers Delight: London’s Lesser Spotted Record Shops: The much-vaunted vinyl revival has allowed Britain’s independent record shops to fill their lungs with air, to relax a little bit, and take a few more chances. More and more seem to opening each week, with London enjoying a glut of weird and wonderful shops that sit a little off the grid. While the Vinyl Mile on Wardour Street still thrives – just look at the queues in Sister Ray across the weekend, for instance – those who want something just a little bit more bizarre can find plenty to feast on in outlets across the capital. From floating vinyl emporiums to specialist outlets, we’re here to cater for every taste, no matter how outlandish.
Rachel Joyce’s The Music Shop will bring you ‘in floods’ (tears), Author’s musical novel tells the story of Frank, a ‘gentle bear of a man,’ and his record shop in an ordinary English city. British author Rachel Joyce’s bestsellers — Perfect, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy — share in common a sparkling compassion, as lives lived on the margins, overlooked lives, are unveiled in all their extraordinary depth. And so The Music Shop opens on an ordinary English city, in January 1988, where Frank, a “gentle bear of a man,” runs his shop on falling-apart Unity St. Frank’s fellow shopkeepers — quirky characters all — include “Tatooista” Maud; Father Anthony, purveyor of Articles of Faith; the two Williams brothers, pathologically shy Funeral Directors; a gentle Polish baker who still imagines his dead wife at his side — and finally Kit, an enchanting klutz of a boy, who helps Frank in the shop.
Tracey Thorn: Perhaps the point of vinyl is not the music but those poignant pops, crackles and hisses. If you’re the right age, these sounds whirl you back in time to those first records you owned. Vinyl has had a revival, you will have read. And part of me can’t help feeling that it’s really the pops and crackles that have made a comeback, securing their place in people’s hearts as some kind of badge of authenticity…So I can’t get exercised about the whole “vinyl sounds better” debate. I don’t think it does, but then I don’t think that matters. People like vinyl in an irrational way, the way they like lots of things. There is meaning in placing the record carefully on the turntable, lowering the needle. It’s reverential, ritualistic. And maybe we like the snaps, crackles and pops, the surface noise, that faint mysterious hiss that seems to come from somewhere else entirely, perhaps the place where the music lives.
How Vinyl And Merch Are The Lifeblood of Unsigned Artists: Sales of vinyl records are increasing in the UK, according to a report on vinyl sales by Guardian writer Hannah Ellis-Petersen. Vinyl, in fact, outperformed digital music most weeks, making £2.4m in sales compared to digital music hitting £2.1m total purchases. Peterson’s report also mentions that vinyl sales have increased for eight consecutive years despite “almost dying out around 2006.” This report is certainly welcome news for unsigned artists, who mainly rely on vinyl to get their music to people, and earn some money at the same time. (It’s great news, too, for record labels that make vinyl records of classic albums.)
