Ames, IA | Places to get coffee in Ames: Ames Vinyl Grind. The Vinyl Grind is a local cafe that doubles as a record store and is located seven steps below ground. After closing for a year due to COVID-19, the cafe has opened back up. Owner of The Vinyl Grind, Blake Delaney, describes the cafe as almost a speakeasy for vinyl and coffee that also feels like a secret club. He says once you find out about it, you just want to keep coming back. Delaney has owned The Vinyl Grind for seven years now after working in flooring and being a huge fan of the cafe. Delaney describes his job as a dream come true. When he was a kid, he was required for school to keep a journal in which he made several entries about owning a record store. Delaney credits his former mother-in-law — or, as he now calls her, his outlaw mother-in-law — for pushing him to chase his dream and buy The Vinyl Grind. There are typically about 1,000-1,500 records for sale at any given time while always looking for new records to sell. Delaney says due to COVID-19, he has found that more people have begun collecting and looking to purchase records, creating a huge demand for them.
Newtown, AU | Newtown record store trail for vinyl lovers: Over recent years, vinyl record sales have reached new heights with music lovers continuing to embrace the nostalgic and traditional medium of music listening. In the process, the re-emergence of record stores has continued to rise and whether on purpose or not, Newtown has become a gold mine for crate diggers. To celebrate the Sydney music communities strong support for vinyl records, we have compiled a fun record store trail, to help you find those musical gems of all genres. Halcyon Daze Records – 498a King St, Newtown NSW 2042: We recommend starting your walk on South King Street, away from the hustle and bustle of the main part of King streets thoroughfare. Locals will proudly proclaim this section of King St as still the truly local side of Newtown with a mix of coffee shops, antique stores, pubs and well establish local eats. Tucked in the middle of it all is Halycon Records who proclaim to ‘love the lost, the weird and the simply wonderful’. This is a record store you go to, to find something you’ll never hear on Spotify or Apple music and expand your ears through something old, that’ll be your personal something new.
La Quinta, CA | The Lucky 13: Sean Cox, New Owner of Finders Keepers Records in La Quinta: Local record store and thrift store Finders Thrift and Vinyl is undergoing a change. Owner Matt Lehman transitioned his brick-and-mortar record store into Spatula City Records, an online record store, a few months ago, and is now moving to Arizona—taking Spatula City with him. Finders Thrift and Vinyl will become Finders Keepers Records, and will open Saturday, May 8, under new owner Sean Cox. Cox is the latest to take The Lucky 13; here are his answers. “…Nomeansno was a band from Victoria, British Columbia. They fall into the “punk” category, but their music is so much more than that, with elements of jazz, prog and math rock, all with a wicked dark sense of humor. They were the first band for me whose music had so much going on that it forced me to actively listen, rather than just react. Active listening has sincerely changed how I listen to music.”
Denver, CO | A New Spin: Legacy Turntable Company Victrola Moves to Denver: Not long after taking over Victrola in October 2019, CEO Scott Hagen considered moving the headquarters of the century-old turntable company from Port Washington, New York, about twenty miles west to Brooklyn. But in early March 2020, just before COVID-19 lockdowns swept the country, he began exploring other options, ultimately deciding to move the headquarters to Denver. Hagen shut down operations in Port Washington, which is on Long Island, just outside of Queens, and his entire staff started working remotely. Over the past year, Victrola’s executive team has been based in different cities around the country, so shutting down headquarters didn’t impact business. “We started operating more productively,” Hagen says. “And then what happened was that we started thinking, ‘Hey, if we can work remote, why not look at all the potential locations that we want to be in the future, if we don’t think that we would lose our base by moving to another location?”
The art and science of vinyl records: Excerpted from “The Musician’s Guide To Vinyl,” we review a brief history of vinyl records and share some basics when it comes to mixing for your vinyl release. The resurgence of vinyl over the past decade means that manufacturing, releasing, and distributing an album or single on vinyl is a viable option for your independent release. We’re thrilled to be part of the return of this medium; vinyl harkens to the origins of Disc Makers, after all. And renewing the debate over analog vs. digital recording and playback in an age obsessed with technology and expedience is what we audiophiles live for. …While Edison originally envisioned the phonograph being used as a recording device for dictation and teaching, Berliner’s gramophone introduced the era of the recorded musical album, providing a way to mass produce recordings for people to play on systems in their homes. The process is similar to how records are enjoyed today.
Pioneering record producer Ethel Gabriel’s legacy focus of forthcoming documentary: A handful of framed gold records lined the otherwise mundane hallway of the Rochester Presbyterian Home, and then on to the walls of the one-room apartment of Ethel Gabriel. She was 91 years old then, but she remembered. “How could I forget Elvis?” she said. “I made him famous.” That was eight years ago, before dementia swept away so many memories of Elvis Presley and of the estimated 2,500 albums — probably more — that she produced over the course of a career that began in 1940, when the recording industry was a man’s world. Gabriel’s impact on the music business has not been forgotten. In 2014, the Rochester Music Hall of Fame honored her with a Special Merit Award. And after Gabriel passed away quietly on March 23 at Highland Hospital — as the music of Frank Sinatra played in the room — The New York Times and The Washington Post ran obituaries. The Post’s headline read, “Ethel Gabriel, trailblazing producer and executive at RCA Records, dies at 99.”
