Charlemagne Records Celebrates 40 Years: The entrance to Charlemagne Records is through a tiny doorway on 11th Ave. South in Birmingham. If you weren’t looking for it, you’d miss it. Inside is a maze of record and CD bins that stretches across the creaky floors. There’s even a small box of used tapes for sale to satisfy the die-hards. They also have an old school Coke machine that still works, but don’t expect old school prices. Owner Marian McKay, some may recognize her name from her band Marian McKay and Her Mood Swings, found her musical calling in Paris, in the mid 1970s, outside Notre Dame Cathedral. She stumbled into a quaint boutique, “and there was this young woman in there and she was ironing her clothes that had just come in and she had her little Dachshund in a bassinet underneath her and I just was looking around I thought, ‘This is what I want to do.’”
Vinyl and Coffee Shop Bump ‘n Grind Spinning Gold in Silver Spring: In Silver Spring, Md., the micro-roaster cafe and vinyl record store Bump ‘n Grind opened in late 2014, offering a carefully curated selection of records displayed on a wall overlooking the seating area that’s opposite the full-service coffee bar, with turntable listening stations tucked off to the side. “We believe that much like a record spinning on a platter and the slow drip of a pourover, coffee and music are both best enjoyed in their most analog forms,” the company states on its website.
Waxing on Music and Wine, On record with Jay Boberg and David Millman: Jay Boberg co-founded I.R.S. Records in 1979 with Miles Copeland III, brother of Stewart Copeland, drummer for The Police (you know, the band with Sting). I.R.S. offered an alternative to mainstream music, inspired by “punk rock.” “It was rebellion,” Boberg remembered. “These bands established their own voice and took their place at the table. I think Oregon wine has done that in its own way, too.” Over the past four decades, Boberg’s professional trajectory has mirrored that of Oregon’s wine industry. While the number of wineries grew from just a few to more than 600 today, likewise Boberg went from I.R.S. promoting indie upstarts like R.E.M., The Go-Go’s and The Buzzcocks, to becoming president of Universal Music Publishing and MCA Universal Records, where he helped launch the careers of The Roots, Sigur Rós, Mary J. Blige, Alanis Morissette, Sublime, blink-182 and many other million sellers.
My Biz: Iowa City shop has been selling vinyl for 35 years: Working in a record store is pretty much a dream job for Record Collector employee Jordan Adams. Having visited the store to comb through records since she was 14, Adams officially became an employee at age 16 and has enjoyed every minute since, she said. “I have always liked record stores because all of this great music is in front of you and you can walk around and browse through it. Now for my job I get to look at so much cool music and listen to it, too. It’s incredible.” From a small storefront in downtown Iowa City, Record Collector sells new and used records — both 45 and 33 RPMs — as well as new and used CDs, cassettes and turn tables.
The Story Behind the Surge in Vinyl Film Soundtracks, How Mondo and other labels took a gamble on cinematic wax: One of the more surprising outcroppings of this new vinyl economy has been the demand for soundtrack releases. Over the past five years or so, a number of boutique labels have emerged, re-releasing the scores and soundtracks from a wide array of films, often pressed to colored wax and housed in lovingly designed new packaging. It has become such a cottage industry that longtime major players in the music business like Universal and Varese Sarabande have started getting in on the fun, too, with offerings such as the recently announced repressing of the Bowie-starring Labyrinth (with three color options available) or the prairie sand-colored first time vinyl release of Lennie Niehaus’ score for the 1992 western Unforgiven.
