Hong Kong, CN | Bad Times Disco will give a vinyl record for supporting Asian migrant workers in Hong Kong: Donors have the option to support Asian Migrants’ Coordinating Body (AMCB) or Bethune House. “The world can be a better place, one record at a time” reads the byline of Mixmag Asia’s interview with Hong Kong-based Bad Times Disco, and that statement still holds true for the outgoing, humanity-conscious music platform to announce their third fundraiser. This fundraiser is organised in support of Asian Migrants’ Coordinating Body (AMCB), a Hong Kong-based grassroots network of migrant-led groups and entities that represent migrant workers from across Asia. The first edition supported three grassroots fundraisers working with impacted communities during the second wave of COVID0-19 in India, and raised over HK$35,000. Their second edition saw an impressive HK$77,000 raised in solidarity with ATIS, a Hong Kong-Philippines migrant domestic worker-led network doing advocacy and welfare work, Mission for Migrant Workers (Hong Kong), and Kids for Kids (Philippines) who coordinated relief work for Typhoon Odette.
Auckland, NZ | What I’m reading: Flying Out Records’ manager Matthew Crawley: Let me be completely honest, I’m someone who buys approximately 50 times more books than I actually read. I also have a tendency to start about 10 books at once, pitting them against each other for my attention, ultimately finishing around one a year. Despite my “prodigal son” relationship with books, I still cling to a deluded vision of myself as an avid reader, having once-upon-a-time found my happy place in the essays of Joan Didion (RIP), and loved getting lost in the Southern gothic gloom of Cormac McCarthy. Lionel Shriver’s eerily prophetic The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 helped prepare me for the apocalypse, while the poetry and lyrics of Leonard Cohen help me avoid the apocalypse altogether. Of course, I’m a sucker for a musician’s autobiography, with Bob Dylan’s Chronicles: Volume One and Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run both unexpectedly wonderful reads.
Roslindale, MA | Sight and Sound – Roslindale’s Music Shop: …The local record shop, sadly, is more of a sweet memory for most cities and towns today. I was working as a barber for 28 years in Cambridge, before I left to come back to Roslindale, but before that I ran a record / cd shop in the square. Sight and Sound was a classic neighborhood record shop that opened on Corinth St. in the 70s. It’s owner, George Aymie, was a wonderful, knowledgeable dealer who knew everyone in the square and was the musical heartbeat of Roslindale for over 30 years. I was (am) obsessed with 45s and albums and had been a fanatical customer of George’s since I was about 11 years old. By the time I was a teenager, he realized he had a kindred spirit on his hands and hired me part-time at the shop. I was in my glory, and went straight to work, learning the ins and outs of the business. Sight and Sound was, like many record shops of the day, expert in always having what everyone wanted on hand in a very small space.
5 Things You Need to Know About Proper Vinyl Record Storage: Everything old is new again, and that includes our love of vinyl. According to the British Phonographic Industry, people purchased more than 5 million vinyl records in 2021. That means vinyl records made up 23 percent of all albums sold last year. According to NME, the biggest-selling vinyl album of 2021 included ABBA’s latest album “Voyage,” Adele’s “30,” and Sam Fender’s “Seventeen Going Under.” So yes, we all love vinyl again, but with these new, physical music collections comes a new challenge: just how do we store it? Do we even remember how to store music that’s not in the cloud? Vinyl record storage is a bit more complicated than simply organizing and alphabetizing your catalog. You have to think about several factors if you want to ensure your collection lasts. Here’s everything you need to know about vinyl record storage to keep your collection fresh for generations to come.
Can turntables and modern convenience coexist in an ideal world? We don’t think so: Sorry, but optimal vinyl playback is inherently a pain. …Both Crosley and Victrola have systems that are several hundred pounds (/dollars), for those ready to take their vinyl experience to the next level over their catalogue’s more crude models. But as Starr notes, while these systems strive to strike a balance of quality, design and affordability, “there’s certainly only so much you can do within a particular unit size and price point”. And that’s rung true in our experience of such designs. Whether these all-in-one products cost around one hundred bucks or three times that, you should reasonably only expect so much sound quality (and we use ‘quality’ lightly) from something designed to deliver across multiple fronts. In the past we’ve found that such designs can also be flawed by, for example, having overly heavy tracking forces (that will ultimately ruin your records).
Norah Jones Announces 20th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition Of Come Away With Me Featuring 22 Previously Unreleased Tracks: …On April 29, Blue Note/UMe will release Come Away With Me: 20th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition. The 44-track collection will contain 22 previously unreleased tracks, including Norah’s early demos and the never-before-heard first version of the album that was produced by Craig Street. Jones reflects on her debut album, she says, “I was incredibly proud of this album and so thankful to everyone who made it with me…I figured it was a good first try and felt that it truly captured who I was–musically–at that time, which made me the proudest and is all you can really hope for when making a record.” The 20th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition was produced by Eli Wolf, and it is set to be released digitally and physically as a 4-LP vinyl set and a 3-CD set, both of which come in premium packaging with an extensive booklet with new liner notes by Norah and rare session photos.
Atlanta, GA | OPINION: Time to dump the old record collection? Or not. …A fascinating British study conducted in 2005 — “The psychological meaning of personal record collections and the impact of changing technological forms” — said albums were a measure of one’s “uniqueness and of conformity,” a picture of one’s “past self.” The study noted that, in 2002, “20 years after CD was launched as a format, worldwide sales of albums on CD exceeded 2.25 billion, compared to 8.5 million vinyl albums.” At that time, something else was happening: Digital music was taking hold. (Vinyl is back. In 2020, record sales surpassed CDs for the first time since 1986. My son Liam is now into vinyl.) “Recorded music is unlike any other kind of marketed product: we rarely buy the same item more than once and in most cases, we retain the item throughout our lives,” the authors wrote. Such collections “serve as a kind of cultural autobiography for their owners, by attaching to specific moments, events, and relationships across the lifespan.” Most who were surveyed “were able to recall considerable detail about the first record they purchased.”
