Record Store Moving from DC to Alexandria: The City of Alexandria has plenty of music venues and festivals and now it can add a record store to its music mix, with the addition of Crooked Beat Records. The store specializes in “hard to find new and used vinyl records of independent label music and obscure major label releases existing outside the radar of the mainstream,” according to its Web site. The record store announced Wednesday its plans to move to Alexandria from the Adams Morgan neighborhood in Washington, D.C., where it was located for the past 12 years.
New record store opens in Oxford after eight-year hiatus: A new record store has opened in the city centre after a eight-year hiatus. Fopp, which closed down eight years ago, re-opened earlier this morning fully stocked with vinyls, (“Vinyls” is not a word. —Ed.) CDs, TV box sets and videogames. It is the first record store in the city centre since HMV closed in June 2014. Customers began filing in to the Gloucester Green shop at the clock struck 9. Former DJ Peter Conway was one of the first through the doors and planned to add to his extensive music collection.
Third Man Records has officially made history in celebration of their 7th Anniversary by launching the first record played in Space. The launch of the ICARUS CRAFT, a custom “space-proof” turntable attached to a high-altitude balloon, occurred on July 2nd just outside of Marsing, Idaho, spinning Third Man’s THREE MILLIONTH record pressed. The ICARUS CRAFT was designed and engineered by Kevin Carrico, longtime friend and electronics consultant for Third Man Records, and launched with the invaluable assistance of SATINS (Students and Teachers in Near Space.)
Tim Burgess ‘vinyl adventures from Istanbul to San Francisco’ review: “Tim Burgess is a crusader and vinyl’s epic voyager. He knows why pop art’s a culture and a cure. Learn and listen. He knows good things.” Sound advice from none other than Johnny Marr, a man who knows a thing or two about music himself. He’s not wrong either. In Burgess’ second memoir, the brilliantly named ‘Tim Book Two’, the singer embarks on a quest to hunt down the vinyl recommended to him by a host of famous faces, sometimes purchasing records he already owned purely for the purposes of his quest.
UK record labels: You’ll miss supermarket support when it’s gone: It’s a curious fact that record companies have never shown a lot of love for their biggest single revenue generators, the nation’s music retailers. I’m told that Rob Dickins, the former head of Warner UK, used to take great delight in describing them as mere “outlets” to which one retailer memorably responded, “If we’re the outlets, you’re the ones creating the sh*t.” Fast forward to the present day and the labels’ view of retailers hasn’t gotten much rosier. When questioned about the prospect of the music industry ending up with just a handful of digital retail partners – Apple, Amazon, Spotify, Google – one of Dickins’s successors cheerfully declared, ‘Bring it on. The fewer of the f*ckers I have to talk to the better.’ Be careful what you wish for.
