NY | 18 top vinyl record store destinations in upstate New York: As the Baby Boomers will rightly recall, our lives changed when we bought our first record player and spent our chore money on records, both 45s and albums. Music freedom at last!! Vinyl records are huge right now. New ones are out there in big numbers, and at big prices. In fact, too big in my opinion. So, we settle for the used vinyl that we had, loved, through away, and now yearn for back. They are much cheaper than new vinyl re-issues, and are far more enjoyable to listen to, even with the errant pop, hiss, and dust moozy clogging things up a bit. Where just a few years ago a vinyl record store was a rare and much appreciated thing, today they are in almost every town, village, and shopping mall. In this gallery we find 18 great places to get your vinyl groove on.
Dundas, ON | Celebrated record store in Dundas closing doors after 45 years: Records on Wheels is scheduled to close on May 31. My record collection is something I take pride in, but it got off to a rough start. I was eight years old and a newbie Beatles fan when my dad landed home with a long-playing album that featured two of my favourites from the Fab Four — “She Loves You” and “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” I played that cherished LP over and over. Drove my family crazy. Many months later, a friend took a close look at the cover. “That’s not The Beatles,” he said. “It’s some group called ‘The Buggs.’ ” Sure enough, it was “The Buggs. With the Beetle beat … The original Liverpool sound. Recorded in England.” They were sound-alike pretenders, hiding behind misleading cover notes and a dimly-lit photo of four mop-topped band members. I’d been had. Talk about misspent youth.
UK | HMV profits jump thanks to vinyl revival: HMV’s profits have more than doubled after a boom in demand for vinyl records helped power a turnaround at the once-struggling retailer. Pre-tax profits at Sunrise Records & Entertainment, which owns HMV and the retailer Fopp, rose from £2m to £5.3m in the 12 months to May 2023, newly filed accounts show. Sales grew from £151m to £178m. Doug Putman, the Canadian businessman who owns the company, said: “Sales growth is representative of the continued revival of vinyl but also of our expanded pop-culture, anime and K-pop offerings, which have growing fan bases amongst younger audiences.” …Nearly six million vinyl records were sold last year, with albums from Harry Styles and Taylor Swift among the best-sellers. HMV has embraced vinyl and now claims it accounts for more than half of sales in the country in some weeks.
Long Beach, CA | VIP Records founder, who helped shape the West Coast music scene, dies at 82: Members of the music industry, especially local fans and artists, are mourning the loss of VIP Records founder Cletus Anderson — a visionary who helped shape the West Coast music scene and created the chain of shops that became a breeding ground for Long Beach’s musical talent. On Sunday, Jan. 28, surrounded by his children, his wife, family, and friends in his home in Mississippi, Cletus Anderson lost his battle with gallbladder cancer, passing away peacefully in his sleep at 82. Anderson opened the first VIP Records in 1967. In 1978, he opened the Long Beach location on the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. He eventually sold that location to his brother, Kelvin Anderson Sr. By the 1990s, and with continued influence from Cletus Anderson, VIP Records became a haven for young people who wanted to escape the violence in the neighborhood by focusing on their musical talent.
Aberdeen, UK | ‘Aberdeen Music scene legend’ Jim Sandison dies aged 72: A music lover, Jim was the owner of Spin Aberdeen, having previously owned the well-known venues Tunnels and Drummonds Café. Music lover and owner of the popular venue Spin Aberdeen Jim Sandison has died aged 72. Tunnels and Drummonds music venues, which he previously owned, announced the sad news on their Facebook today. Described as an “absolute legend in the Aberdeen music scene,” he owned several record shops over the years as well as two of the Granite City’s most-loved music venues; Tunnels and Café Drummond. Six years ago, he took over Spin Aberdeen, a bar and venue on Littlejohn Street, which hosts music events, comedy nights, and weddings. Jim started to collect vinyl records at the age of 14, creating a collection of nearly 200,000 records over a few years. As he ran out of space to store them all, he decided to buy a site at Aberdeen’s Carnegie Brae, which he later transformed into a live music venue known today as Tunnels.
Gainesville, FL | Gainesville celebrates vintage music culture at Winter Record Fair: Hundreds of people collected at Cypress and Grove Brewery Sunday for CDs, cassettes, records and more. Beneath the dim glow of brewery lights, the air buzzed with determination amid the beats of ‘80s and ‘90s classics. Hopeful to find a hidden gem, desperate hands sifted through crates of vinyls and cassette tapes. Hundreds of music enthusiasts gathered at Cypress and Grove Brewery, at 1001 NW Fourth St., for its Winter Record Fair Sunday. Organized by Gainesville record store Sunshine Records and online record shop Bounty Records, the fair offered a wide variety of music with more than 25 music vendors from throughout the state. The brewery was transformed into a maze of music, with multiple rooms filled with tables covered in VHS tapes, cassettes, CDS, vinyl records, posters and other collectibles. No genre was excluded from the fair. Each vendor offered music categories from the ‘50s to early 2000s, with genres such as indie, punk, reggae, metal and alternative rock.
London, UK | Social Records Society & building a vinyl community: We catch up with the London-based collective Social Records Society to discuss their parties, running an open decks and the joy of bringing people together. For the last five years, a group of young DJs have been coming together to party and share records with their community in the heart of London. The collective, made up of Ri Mistry, Vandorta, Rohan Rakhit, Jaime Rosso, Disco Fucks, Sophie Farrell and Bror Havnes, is called Social Records Society and is guided by one principle–to get people dancing. Beginning in 2018 as a university society, Social Records Society was founded by Sophie Farrell before its residents grew. “Gradually, as it went on, we built a little community around it. It was free entry, 10 minutes walk from Goldsmiths on a Wednesday night,” Farrell explains. As time went on and Farrell and the other members eventually left Goldsmiths, the group became independent of its university origins, blossoming into its current form.
Sealed first pressing of Prince’s ‘The Black Album’ up for auction, and more: RR Auction unveils extremely rare gem to the public—a sealed original 1987 U.S. first pressing of Prince’s “The Black Album.” RR Auction, based in Boston, unveils extremely rare gem to the public—a sealed original 1987 U.S. first pressing of Prince’s “The Black Album.” The vinyl, still sealed in its original shrinkwrap, boasts a peach-and-black sticker on the front, bearing the label “Explicit Lyrics, Parental Advisory,” accompanied by the barcode and copyright information sticker on the back. This is one of five sealed copies of The Black Album recently discovered in the collection of former Warner Bros. Records executive Richard Wietsma. Prior to that discovery, only three copies of the original 1987 U.S. pressing had surfaced. “The Black Album,” often referred to as “The Funk Bible,” was initially slated for release on December 8, 1987, featuring an all-black sleeve without any printed title or song credits. However, Prince abruptly pulled the album from distribution a week prior to its release, citing a spiritual revelation that led him to believe the music was ‘evil.’
