Point Pleasant, NJ | Clarizio Music Record Department brings vinyl to the Boro: Local record store sees growing numbers of success. The record Department of Clarizio Music Center, located at 2428 Bridge Ave, has been celebrating the success of their record department — selling new and used vinyl records and CDs — since opening its doors in December, 2021. Residents of Point Boro may be familiar with Clarizio Music Center, which has been a staple of Point Pleasant for over 25 years and offers music lessons, musical instrument sales, rentals and repair services. …Like so many other businesses, Clarizio was affected by COVID, but Mr. Kindler took this obstacle and made it an opportunity. He said that himself and his family always wanted to open a record store in conjunction with the other part of the business. Having another space right next to their musical center, previously used for more lessons, he then decided it was time to convert this into the record store.
Alexandria, VA | City Creatives | He’s got the beat: Crooked Beat owner overcomes industry trends, and rats, to keep selling vinyl: Bill Daly, unsurprisingly, is a lifelong lover of music. Daly’s record collection and knowledge of bands were turning heads long before he opened Crooked Beat Records, which sells old and new vinyl in Alexandria. “One night I got a call from a friend of mine who used to date one of my housemates. When he’d come over to see her, he’d look at my album collection and was always mystified. He wanted me to come work with him at a record store near North Carolina State and next thing I know I was there seven years,” Daly said. Daly decided to take the leap into entrepreneurship with his own store. In 1997, the first Crooked Beat Records opened its doors in Raleigh. The Raleigh location became difficult to keep afloat due to dwindling foot traffic in the early 2000s. Though Daly and his partner had fewer in-store customers than desired, records were still being shipped out every day. Most of these records were going to the Washington, D.C. area. A move to a new DMV location started to make sense.
Madison, WI | WORT Record Store Day DJ Party At Boneset Records: Join WORT 89.9 FM at Boneset Records, 222 North Street Suite B, to celebrate Record Store Day on Saturday, April 22nd! WORT DJs will be spinning from 10am to 6pm in celebration of the strong connection between volunteer-powered radio and the record stores that help keep our shows unique! Our music show hosts are always on the prowl for new (and old, possibly forgotten) musical treasures to share with the public, and independent record stores like Boneset Records (Madison’s newest record store) are a rich source of audio delicacies for everyone. Come down and enjoy sets from WORT DJs while browsing the racks.
Phoenix, AZ | Unmistakable rhythm of cumbia music grows louder in Phoenix as local DJ duo and fusion band work to create thriving scene: …Cumbia — a percussion-heavy style of Latin music that originated in Colombia — has a distinctive rhythm, with a pattern known as clave, heard in Afro-Cuban music such as reggaeton and reggae. Today’s cumbia is a melting pot of musical culture. Eduardo Pym and Felix Trejo, Phoenix natives who founded the DJ duo Vinyl Vagos a year ago, found inspiration in their mutual love for the music and its cultural significance to the community. “It’s important to preserve and to play this for our generation, because the music that we’re playing, it’s nostalgic,” said Trejo, adding Vinyl Vagos is hosting its biggest cumbia event to date—a Selena Birthday Bash in honor of the late American Tejano singer—at Crescent Ballroom in downtown Phoenix on April 15. Cumbia traces its roots to Colombia’s 19th century African culture. Enslaved Africans who were brought to Colombia and other Caribbean countries created cumbia as a style of courtship dance.
UK | Record Store Day: Releases from The Cure, Brian Eno and more to raise funds for Warchild: They’re also offering a chance to win a signed Rega Planar 3. Record Store Day has unveiled a series of special records that are being sold to raise funds for its charity partner, Warchild. The collection includes special edition records from The Cure, Miles Davis, Brian Eno, Celeste and more. A donation of £1 from every copy sold will go to Warchild. Check out the list here. Record Store Day is also running a raffle where fans can win a Rega Planar 3 turntable signed by either Kae Tempest, Frank Turner or Foals. Winners will be announced April 30.
Athens, GA | The end of Kindercore Vinyl: Turmoil and change at local record pressing plant: After years of turmoil among ownership and investors, Kindercore Vinyl is no more. The record pressing plant that put Athens on the map for vinyl manufacturing has been replaced by Classic City Vinyl Works, and none of Kindercore’s founders remain at the operation. The plant, located on Fritz Mar Lane in North Athens, was born from the ashes of the Kindercore Records music label of the mid ‘90s. Although the facility still operates as Georgia’s only record pressing factory, the legacy of Kindercore as Athens’ namesake for local music and vinyl manufacturing has ended. With management and ownership at odds, its demise was as profound and storied as its rise. “Kindercore Vinyl, just like Kindercore Records, existed for a period of time. And during that period of time, for both those businesses, there were good things and bad things and success and failures,” Ryan Lewis, a co-founder of Kindercore, said. “But overall, I’m really proud of what the businesses did, and the impact that they had on the community and on the arts in general.”
BLOND:ISH Drops 14-Track Record On Biodegradable Vinyl: BLOND:ISH continues to push more sustainability in the music industry with the release of her new record, a 14-track compilation called #PlasticFreeParty made on biodegradable vinyl. The environmental activist and head of the nonprofit Bye Bye Plastic has developed the vinyl in partnership with Evolution Music and Deepgrooves, a vinyl-pressing plant that uses bacterial-based materials to create the physical music. The record will feature tracks from BLOND:ISH and other artists and will be sold on Bandcamp for $40 under BLOND:ISH’s label Abracadabra Records. There will also be an NFT sold through the Sound marketplace. BLOND:ISH is not the only artist pushing for more sustainable vinyl in the industry. Anna Lunoe’s 2022 EP Saturday Love has an available vinyl made entirely from recycled records as well as a record jacket made from 100% recycled materials.
Is the Old-School Jukebox Poised for a Comeback? Collectors are willing to throw down serious cash for a bespoke jukebox. Alexander Walder-Smith says there are times when he has had to explain to younger people what exactly a CD is. “We have this world of music in our pockets, on our phones now, so that’s hardly surprising,” he says. “And yet somehow they always know what a jukebox is. The idea of the jukebox has been kept alive. The jukebox just has this iconic image. It’s symbolic, not just of rock ’n’ roll, but of liberation.” Walder-Smith grew up around jukeboxes — his father, founder of the Games Room Company, maintained jukeboxes on U.S. Air Force bases in the U.K. after World War II and would go on to introduce jukeboxes to Britain’s cafes and pub chains thorough the 1960s. Yet four years ago, Walder-Smith saw both an opportunity and the need for a rescue mission. The Chicago and latterly California-based Rock-Ola was by then the last surviving maker of classic American jukeboxes — think ornate cabinetry, chrome-plating, florescent lights, bubble tubes, record carousel and mechanical system — the likes of rivals Cincinnati’s Wurlitzer, Michigan’s AMI (Automatic Musical Instruments) and Chicago’s Seeburg long having disappeared.
