New York, NY | Almost Famous Launches Ticket Giveaway With 9 New York City Record Stores: The new Broadway musical is celebrating the anniversary of the Oscar-winning Cameron Crowe film. Almost Famous, the upcoming Broadway musical based on the 2000 Cameron Crowe film, has partnered with nine New York City record stores to celebrate the 22nd anniversary of the film’s release. On September 13, the record stores will showcase an Almost Famous-inspired vinyl selection of records curated by the Oscar-winning filmmaker. Participating record stores include Rough Trade, Generation Records, RPM Underground, Rock and Soul DJ Equipment, Limited to 1, Looney Tune Records, HiFi Records & Café, Record Stop and The Shop NYC. The celebration will also feature a ticket giveaway: Each individual participating in the September 13 contest will be entered into a giveaway for free tickets to Almost Famous, which begins previews at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre October 3, with opening night set for November 3. The ticket giveaway is limited to one entry person.
Kettering, OH | New record shop focusing on heavy metal opens in Kettering: A new record shop dedicated to heavy metal music has opened in Kettering with a listening room. Catacomb Records, owned by Timothy Wright, caters to the metal underground scene by covering genres like death metal, black metal, doom metal and thrash metal. Wright told Dayton.com they even have some of the older, harder to find, used metal records from the ‘80s. The record shop, located at 2310 W. Dorothy Lane next to Maverick’s Cards and Comics, has everything from cassettes, CDs and records to audio equipment, T-shirts and more. Wright said he has plans to add posters, battle vests, patches and horror movies. “It has been a dream for a long time,” Wright said. “I’ve (been) to a lot of record stores through the years not only in the U.S., but abroad.” He particularly noted going into record shops in Norway and seeing the amount of love and attention the metal community was given there.
London, UK | Numero Group Announces 5-Day London Takeover Oct 5-9, ft. Thousands of LPs & Decades of Lost Sounds: Today, Numero Group announces its return to London for a five-day takeover. From October 5th-9th, for the first time in three years, the Chicago-based record label and rights management organization will bring thousands of LPs, 45s, cassettes and CDs, exclusive t-shirts and hats, test pressings, lavishly packaged box sets and decades’ worth of precious lost sounds to a pop-up shop in the Shoreditch neighborhood. Open from 11am-7pm each day and located at 146 Bethnal Green Rd, the free-to-enter events will see Numero co-founders Rob Sevier and Ken Shipley travel across the pond to offer deeply researched, expertly resuscitated selections, recommendations and knowledge to all attendees.
King Crimson’s 80s albums get vinyl reissues: Steven Wilson and Robert Fripp mixes for Discipline, Beat and Three Of A Perfect Pair: King Crimson’s 80s output is to be released on 200g super-heavyweight vinyl for the very first time through Panegyric Records on October 28. Discipline (1981), Beat (1982) and Three Of A Perfect Pair (1984) featured the Robert Fripp, Bill Bruford, Adrian Belew and Tony Levin line-up adding a stylistic update to the band’s sound, incorporating rock with electronica, funk, pure pop, modern avant-garde, and a complex variety of musical textures and influences. All three albums were reissued as part of the band’s 40th anniversary reissue campaign on CD but now will be released on 200g super-heavyweight vinyl featuring the 40th anniversary stereo mixes from Steven Wilson and Robert Fripp. The LPs have all been mastered by Jason Mitchell at Loud Mastering from original studio masters.
Portland, ME | Vinyl suggestions to educate, entertain: Here are some ideas from Bull Moose on albums that will entertain — and might even educate. Well, that summer went by fast. Now we’re a week into September, school is back in session, and Chris Brown and Mick Werkhoven from Bull Moose joined us on 207 with some music suggestions on how to make the transition to class a little easier. Here are their talking points, with recommendations for several different subjects. History: Sabaton – The Last Stand First period will be History taught to you by Swedish Power Metal band Sabaton. Their specialty is writing ballads and riffs about important moments in military history over the years, and their album ‘The Last Stand’ documents courageous battles where one side, well, made their last time. Think the 300 Spartans or the Satsuma Samurai Rebellion. But Sabaton does more than just play instruments! They have a companion YouTube channel where a historian explains the actual events which inspired the songs.
Pro-Ject Vinyl NRS Box S3 reduces record crackle: The box removes record noise from your analogue discs – with digital technology. The idea is not new. Many companies have experimented with remedies and boxes that promise to remove the crackle from worn vinyl records. Few have succeeded. But Pro-Ject believes that the new Vinyl NRS Box S3, should remove the dust even a platewasker can’t get rid of. A dishwasher does a fine job of removing dust and dirt from the grooves, but it doesn’t repair the dents in the record, or the wear and tear that inevitably causes noisy records. The Pro-Ject Vinyl NRS Box S3 is placed between the turntable and the amplifier, and uses an advanced digital sound processing to remove the noise. The signal from the turntable is digitized in the box, with 24-bit quantization and 96 kHz sampling, and then the processor uses dual 54-bit accumulation to dampen the clicks.
This Bluetooth-Enabled Record Player Is a Mid-Range Collector’s Dream: Audio-Technica’s AT-LP60XBT record player is easy to set up, connects to Wi-Fi, and won’t scratch your collection. I owe my records an apology. In the 15 or so years that I’ve been collecting, my attention span for them has ranged from hyper-fixated mama bear, making sure every LP is swaddled in a protective sleeve and out of the sunlight, to that of a negligent guardian, ignoring the needs of a collection that is probably my largest financial asset (next to the $23 in my Acorns account). You see, I recently learned that I’ve also been spinning my precious bébés on sub-par record players, slowly killing them over time just like Teri Hatcher’s character did to her neighbor in season seven of Desperate Housewives. In a recent VICE interview with Kris Byerly of Amoeba Music, I was given all the deets on the best and worst record players on the market, and learned that my dinky portable turntable doesn’t cut the mustard for sound and a steady belt.
Three Overlooked Lessons from The Mo-Fi Analog Master Tape Dumpster Fire: There is so much to unpack from the recent news that Mobile Fidelity wasn’t exactly being completely forthright about their analog mastering process en route to sell well-heeled audiophiles massively expensive vinyl versions of creatively important music. It wouldn’t be the first audiophile fib told by a company in the industry. It likely won’t be the last. But many important plot lines are being overlooked in this scandalous story. We covered the background facts of the topic in our article: Mobile Fidelity’s Digital Vinyl Debacle: Are your records really analog? But digging deeper into the implications, here are three key points that aren’t being discussed enough.
