Concord Bicycle Music Launches Stax of Wax Vinyl-Only Store: Exclusive First Look: Concord Bicycle Music is taking advantage of the vinyl resurgence by opening Stax of Wax, a vinyl-only store at the upscale Malibu County Mart in Malibu, Calif. The 345-square-foot retail outlet carries more than 900 titles, including new releases, reissues and box sets in a wide range of genres, as well as t-shirts and books. The walls are lined with prints of iconic performers from the Morrison Hotel Gallery.
Classic albums given new life at Abbey Road Studios with ‘half-speed’ vinyl treatment: From 78s to CDs and the MP3, popular music has enjoyed countless revolutions. Now acoustic experts claim the path to perfect sonic reproduction is vinyl albums produced at the “half-speed” of 16 2/3 RPM. Six classic albums, including The Rolling Stones’s Exile On Main Street, have been cut for release at Abbey Road Studios in London using half-speed mastering, a process that promises to reveal a new level of depth and clarity to the recordings. An artisan process in an era of digital music reproduction, requiring hand-crafted use of a lathe, the records have been mastered by Miles Showell, one of the world’s leading exponents of half-speed cutting.
Whole Foods hasn’t ruled out “record stores” and “tattoo parlors” for its hip new millennial-focused stores: Come for the produce, stay for the … tattoos? A new line of stores being rolled out by Whole Foods may host quirky local businesses like record shops and tattoo parlors, Bloomberg reported on Thursday (Feb. 11). The initiative is called “Friends of 365.” It sounds like a joke, but you can read about it yourself on the company’s website. “We like to mix things up,” the company writes. “Record shop? Tattoo parlor? Maybe!”
Atlantic Sounds marks milestone groove: On Saturday, the venerable independent record store just west of Beach Street on International Speedway Boulevard will celebrate 33-1/3 years in business with an in-store concert by a half dozen metal bands. “It’s a celebration of the anniversary and the 33-1/3 rpm vinyl record,” said owner Mike Toole, who opened the shop on Oct. 15, 1982. “This can only happen once, so we decided to go all out.”
Independent shop Banquet Records launch free album offer for junior doctors: Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is trying to impose new contracts for junior doctors, which redefine unsociable work hours and scrap guaranteed pay increases. Writing on their website, Banquet said: “Don’t get us started on the importance of our NHS and the welfare of its staff including our junior doctors as we’ll be here all night, and we have homes and clubs to go to! We want you to know that we as a staff, and all our customers, value what you do… even if some others don’t.“
‘I’m not finished yet!’ Elton John says the Rocket Man is still standing: If Elton hadn’t sold more than 300 million records in a storied career spanning five decades, he could still have sold, er, records. Only these would have been over the counter at a record shop…“Even in 1970 when I started to make it, I used to go to Musicland in Berwick Street and work on a Saturday for nothing,” he tells me during a misty-eyed anecdote about a long defunct shop in London’s Soho. “I was fascinated by what people would buy and I just loved it. It was the job I might have done.”
Kim Gordon Teams with Gagosian Gallery to Open Uber-Cool Pop-Up Record Store: According to the release, the gallery booth, which takes its inspiration from the record shop’s a “resistance to the status quo,” will feature original record covers by artists such as Rita Ackermann, Richard Prince, Laura Owens, and Jim Shaw. Like all good record stores, this one will also have a listening booth.
Ditch your CDs, MP3s and turn off Spotify – vinyl is making a major comeback: The resurgence of vinyl is clearly great news for the music industry but it’s also creating a new market in tech turntables. Some of the biggest names in technology are joining the vinyl revolution with Sony the latest firm to show off its modern day take on a retro gadget. The imaginatively named PSHX500, may look like any standard turntable but it has a neat trick up its sleeve with brings it nicely into the future.
