New record shop Bordello A Parigi opens in Amsterdam: Bordello A Parigi has been operating as an online shop, record label and clothing brand since 2011. Yesterday (12 March), “after a lot of blood, sweat and beers,” the owners finally realised their dream of opening a physical space in the Dutch capital. Inside you can expect a strong selection of dancefloor-aimed 12″s and electronic long players plus the Bordello A Parigi fashion line. Have a browse of the online shop for more clues as to what’s in-store.
16 record shops owned by women you should visit, More and more women are opening record stores and selling vinyl: Husband-and-wife team Stevie and Jamie Freeman opened Union Music Store in 2010 – a bold move post recession that turned out to be well worth the risk. “I think women should be brave and open shops that sell music, but they don’t have to be afraid to mix it up with other retail, focus on the stuff they love and be a specialist in a genre – we do folk, country and Americana,” Stevie says. “Times are changing, women in the music business are becoming more present: there are more DJs, more producers, sound techs and so on. And so it should be.”
800 Copies: Meet The World’s Most Obsessive Fan Of ‘The Velvet Underground and Nico’: Yet the most atypical obsession of those five decades may be that of veteran music publicist and longtime Velvets fan Mark Satlof, who collects original pressings of the album. He owns more than 800 of them – he’s actually not sure exactly how many – which are neatly filed on shelves in his study. They account for an estimated 1 percent of all copies manufactured in the U.S. before March 1969. A first mono pressing, still in its shrink wrap? Check. Promo copies — both the version with the yellow label and the much rarer, white-label edition? Natch.
Aldi’s vintage-looking vinyl record player is £170 cheaper than posh version – can you tell the difference? Discount supermarket Aldi has started selling a vintage-looking vinyl record player that looks exactly like posh alternatives – but at a much lower price tag. The 3-speed turntable with built-in stereo speakers, which comes in a red or blue colour, will be in Aldi stores from 16 March. It looks remarkably similar to the Crosley Bermuda Dansette, which is sold by John Lewis, Urban Outfitters and Amazon, for around £230. Aldi’s version costs £59.99 – a massive £170 discount. The supermarket claims that its cut-price version is “identical in specification” to competitor models.
Rochester native Leonard Silver founded Record Theatre: Leonard Silver, a Rochester native who built Record Theatre into one of the longest-running independent record stores in the country, died on Friday in Hospice Buffalo, in Cheektowaga. He was 90. Silver opened his first Record Theatre in Buffalo in 1976. At its peak, Record Theatre had 37 stores throughout the country, including three in Rochester. Record Theatres could be found in Cleveland, Syracuse, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. He also owned One Stop, a wholesale record store on South Avenue.
Tony and the art of collecting vinyl: When asked how large his music collection is at present, there’s a brief pause and a bit of a sigh as Tauranga’s Tony Pill does the sums in his head. “Probably about 3000 vinyl, 9000 CDs, 800 music books, and lots and lots of memorabilia.” The pause is even greater, and the sigh more pronounced, when he’s confronted with the question of what his utter most treasured album might be. “Oh, that’s really difficult to say, after owning a music shop for 14 years you listen to a lot of great music. I love my classic rock stuff like Pink Floyd, I grew up with the Rolling Stones in the UK, good quality blues and jazz, but I also like some house music. “So yes, I go right across the board.”
Editorial: More than just die-hards: Vinyl LPs, those music-laden gems that nearly went extinct decades ago with the advent of compact discs, have been enjoying a renaissance for some years now. In fact, a lot of purists never gave up on them, claiming the analog recordings offer a richer, warmer sound than the digital technology of CDs – and especially the smaller-file MP3 players. A number of artists resumed issuing vinyl copies of their albums along with CDs because they discovered there still was such a market. And the thing is, it’s not just the die-hards who are lovers of that warm sound. Younger people, too young to know the original experience of sifting through a bin, the stacks of LPs with their readable liner notes and bonus focus on artwork, have discovered the magic.
