In rotation: 6/27/17

Record Shops Around The World. Part 1, Places to visit in USA, UK, South Africa and Jamaica: Even though the digital revolution in music has a lot of advantages, we are extremely happy to witness the vinyl revival. More than 3.2 million records were sold in 2016 in the UK. That is a rise of 53% on the previous year, according to the BPI. It is very heartwarming to see the weekly chart that counts down the top 40 best-selling singles (including both 7in and 12in formats) and albums. We decided to to put our two cents in and contribute to the vinyl revival by starting the new series dedicated to the best record shops around the world.

At Prince’s favorite record store, fans celebrate release of ‘Purple Rain’ deluxe edition: Chris Provenzano, started playing all Prince’s old records around the house. Now, Cristiano has a Purple Rain t-shirt. For the boy’s birthday, the Chicago father and son drove up to see the Prince-themed Twins game against the White Sox last week and got a VIP tour of Paisley Park. At the Electric Fetus Purple Rain listening party Friday morning, they won a Prince record and mingled with a couple dozen other fans who came from Minnesota and across the country. “There’s a special quality to Prince,” Chris Provenzano said. “He has a special element that connects all different ages.”

Lost recordings from pre-revolution Iran collected on vinyl for the first time: Co-founder of the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, a collection of lost recordings by Morteza Hannaneh have been rescued from their original tapes and released on vinyl for the first time. While very little is known about the album, Tschashm-e-Del is thought to have been recorded in pre-revolution Iran in the ’60s to be played on Radio Tehran, and remains an eerily evocative document of a bygone era. Essential for fans of library music, soundtracks and aural oddities, as well as globe-trotting record collectors following the likes of Finders Keepers and Folkways, Tschashm-e-Del is set to a Ghazal, written by famous Iranian poet Hatef Esfehani in the 18th century.

CLASSIC VINYL: Pet Sounds, one of the greatest albums ever made: Without Pet Sounds, The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper might never have been made. Pet Sounds was released in May 1966 to staggering acclaim and is acknowledged as one of the greatest albums ever made. It is an album that not only defies belief but raised the barriers to new heights in recording and production techniques. After hearing it Paul McCartney and John Lennon with their producer George Martin said: “We have to make our next album as good as this one.” Despite the critical acclaim, Pet Sounds sold poorly after its release. The Beach Boys had had a string of hit records about endless summers, fun, beautiful girls, sunshine, surfing and driving around in hot rod cars. This album was a huge shift in emotional growth by Brian Wilson who had written just about every Beach Boy hit.