Vinyl records are selling at twice the clip of a year ago with no signs of slowing down: Sales of vinyl records have been rebounding for years, but during the first half of this year, they went to a whole other level: up 94% over the same period last year, when they happened to top CD sales for the first time since 1986, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumors” is one of the top-selling albums of all time. These days, Fabio Roberti is having a hard time finding vinyl copies. “It’s unavailable for months and months and months. It’s crazy. I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. Roberti owns a record store in Brooklyn called Earwax Records. Buyers don’t just covet classics like The Beatles and David Bowie, he said. Artists from the ’90s and early 2000s are hard to find. …“Folks are often surprised that a lot of it is driven by younger people who don’t have any experience at all with physical music consumption,” said Marc Hogan, a staff writer at the music site Pitchfork. Gen Z has mostly grown up with streaming, he said, so vinyl has novelty value.
New York, NY | New York record store Superior Elevation launches Gofundme after suffering flood damage: “They are still determined to bring the shop back to life,”said co-founder Ellen Kanamori. …Brooklyn store Superior Elevation have started a GoFundMe page after it suffered major damage as a result of Hurricane Ida. Ellen Kanamori, who co-founded the store with Tom Noble in 2015, wrote, “During the heavy rains from Hurricane Ida the building’s sewage drainage system gave out and it released about 4 feet of water into the store. After help arrived, they managed to pump all of the water out. They did manage to salvage a small portion of the records, but at least 75% was destroyed in the flood, if not more, it was too late. “They do have insurance at the shop, however there is no guarantee of any funds at this point. And even if funds do come in, it will never match the incalculable losses from some of those unknown and hyper rare records that were lost…”
Redlands, CA | Redlands Vinyl Records: A glimpse into film history and old movie presentations: Redlands Vinyl Records made it on the list of “A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful and Obscure” in the Inland Empire, a book recently written by author and Riverside resident Larry Burns. Owner of the store, Dave Bernal, spoke enthusiastically about his lifelong passion project. “We are insane. Who would do this? Somebody crazy. So, we are doing that.” Bernal hung out at a local record store in the 1970s and from there began a career of buying and selling music and movies paraphernalia that has now spanned four decades. He owned a movie theater for 15 years in Hemet as well. Today, he’s the owner of two specialty record stores, one in Redlands and one in Palm Springs. “Initially we just wanted to open one store,” he said last year on The Create Podcast, which can be found on YouTube. “I wanted to be in either a tourist area or an established area that had foot traffic. Here we have the university and a lot of things going on, and I live here. It makes it easy,” Bernal described of the Redlands location.
Brighton, UK | Tom Odell performs live in Brighton record shop: Tom Odell was appearing at Resident music in Brighton this evening on the first of an intimate seven date UK record store live appearance and signing session in support of his latest album ‘Monsters’, which is his fourth long player and coincidentally it reached No.4 in the UK Official Album charts. Thirty year old singer-songwriter Tom, is a Sussex boy who was born in Chichester on 24th November 1990. He was ‘discovered’ by Lily Allen, who remarked that “his energy onstage reminded me of David Bowie”. Tom released his debut extended play, ‘Songs From Another Love’ in October 2012 and luckily made his television debut the following month on BBC2’s ‘Later… with Jools Holland’. His previous three albums prior to ‘Monsters’ have also been hits; with debut ‘Long Way Down’ hitting the top spot in 2013, and 2016 follow-up ‘Wrong Crowd’ peaking at No.2 and 2018’s ‘Jubilee Road’ just breaking into the Top 5.
Lancashire, UK | Rare Beatles record worth £10k found in Lancashire house clearance: Derek Plant found the original version of the White Album track “Happiness is a Warm Gun” in a Ken Dodd record sleeve. A Lancashire man was stunned to discover a £10,000 rare Beatles recording that was in a pile of “rubbish” while clearing out his dad’s house after he died. Dad-of-two Derek Plant, from Fleetwood, found the original version of the White Album track “Happiness is a Warm Gun” in a Ken Dodd record sleeve which he was about to throw into the tip. Derek’s father Harry Plant bought the record in a box of old records at a car boot fair 40 years ago and didn’t realise the 7ins acetate demo recording, that differs significantly to the final version used on the 1968 album, was in the box. When he died in 2009, Derek was left with the records but kept the box in his garage. It was only when he threw the box into his van to take it to landfill that he spotted it in the nick of time. The acetate disc slipped out of the sleeve for a Ken Dodd and the Diddymen LP and fell onto his drive, the Liverpool Echo reports.
Coloured vinyl or black vinyl: which is better? Move over Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury, this is the fight of the century. …Given that you’re literally adding things to the biscuit, it makes sense that you will get some variation in sound quality between a black record and all its various coloured siblings. That said, the odd duff pressing aside, the difference is essentially negligible. Coloured vinyl is now so ubiquitous that the pressing plants of the world are more than capable of knocking out coloured pressing which will please even the most ardent audiophile. On a particularly high-quality system you may be able to tell some difference, but even then it may not be as simple as the black sounding better than the coloured – it’s not unusual for us to see comments from customers saying that they actually prefer the coloured pressing.
