Record shop owner finds fitting home in historic building: Doug Frank wasn’t looking for a new place to live when he saw the renamed Grand Manse Pavilion pop up in a Craigslist ad this summer. He was looking for a place to open up his post-retirement business, one that brought him full circle to one of his first jobs, at a record shop. On Thursday, Frank flipped over a David Crosby album inside Lincoln’s newest used vinyl shop, Black Circle Records.
Can Legalized Weed Sales Help Ailing Record Stores Turn Over a New Leaf? It seems miraculous that any music retailer has survived the demolition-like forces that piracy, downloading and streaming have unleashed during the past 15 years…But there is hope on the hazy horizon, and it’s coming in the five-leafed form of marijuana, which is legal in a majority of states — 28 of them have sanctioned cannabis for medical or recreational use — following the 2016 elections. What does reefer have to do with records? With music retailers getting into the dispensary business or aligning their physical location with pot shops, the long-standing symbiotic relationship between music and weed may finally be (legally) monetized.
Vinyl enthusiasts buy, sell and talk records in New Plymouth: The Lambert Twins, Hi-Glow, the Rockettes, Lew Pryme and the Edward Sisters have been gone from the music charts awhile, but they’re not forgotten. A vinyl album featuring the Taranaki United Artists was one treasure picked up by organiser Brian Wafer at a record fair in New Plymouth on Saturday. Several thousand records featuring groups well known and obscure were lined up in boxes on 10 trestle tables at the Blind Foundation Hall, for buyers to rummage through.
The 10 best album covers of 2016 – and the stories behind them: Cover art may have evolved from vinyl gatefolds and CD jewel cases to a thumbnail image on a digital player, but the essence of what makes a sleeve great hasn’t changed that much. An attention-grabbing cover can make you hear an album in 3D and spark a conversation, regardless of the process, tools or medium. 2016 has had no shortage of memorable sleeves, from the strikingly simple portrait of Solange adorning A Seat At The Table to the strange cartoon colors of the Lil Uzi Vs The World cover. We asked the designers behind our top 10 pieces of album artwork to explain the stories behind the sleeves.
