AU | Record Store Day Drop 2 is here Saturday 26 September: Score a limited edition release and support your local music industry. Following the first of three calendar-distanced drops of Record Store Day last month, Drop 2 is set for Saturday 26 September. This is your chance to join the party at indie record stores and get your hands on limited edition records, enjoy some live music, and give back to the music industry that has provided us all so much. In a year of upheaval, limited edition records, released by record companies to celebrate Record Store Day are being made available across three days, called RSD Drops. The third Drop is set for 24 October. Music stores and artists, like many in the community, have been hit hard by the pandemic so it’s more important than ever to get behind them. For more info, including participating stores near you and what releases will be available, head to www.recordstoreday.com.au.
Columbus, OH | The Other Columbus: The joy of record collecting, Columbus-style: I’ve collected records all my life and have the bowing shelves to prove it. Even when I didn’t have a working turntable in my possession, I still bought records. Of all the kinds of collectors that exist — the obsessives, the completists, the hipster dabbler — I rest in the middle of the spectrum, neither obsessive or laissez faire. I’m basically a casual collector with obsessive tendencies. My collection has some rare zingers in it, but I’m mostly about the music, so I’m happy with a $3 used copy of an EPMD record I already played to death when I was a lovelorn teen. I don’t need to drop $30 on a newly pressed Strictly Business LP to relive what can’t really be recreated anyway, unless I’m playing it in the passenger seat of the resident weed dealer’s ride after summer school lets out.
4 of the Best Books About Vinyl Records: The best kind of collectible is one with both class and practical purpose. It should both bring joy and look nice. What could fit that description better than an old (or new!) vinyl record ready to hit your turntable and fill your home with music? As a dedicated record fan myself, I may be somewhat biased. I have been known to truck 30 pounds of vinyl records through downtown New York in a tote bag, giddy with the knowledge that I could trade them for other vinyl records at one particular store in Manhattan. Obsessive? Perhaps slightly. Even so, I’m not alone! You’re here too, and so are the authors and characters of these four books about vinyl. Join the club, put on an album, and read up!
‘Vinyl Nation’ doc captures the diversity of communities keeping record stores alive: Kevin Smokler doesn’t believe the 2001 film “Ghost World” could be made today. Why? Because teenage malcontents Enid and Rebecca would neither sneer nor snicker at the archetypal “Record Collector Guy,” Seymour. More likely, they’d embody that character themselves. The idea that a record collector resembles a scruffy white guy with an ailing social life and a paunch is “not without merit,” Smokler admits, “but it’s a product of a different time.” Smokler, a pop culture-preoccupied author and essayist based in San Francisco, stumbled into the world of vinyl around the same time its cultural comeback began in 2007. About seven years later, in 2014, Albuquerque-based screenwriter and filmmaker Christopher Boone made the same jubilant (re)discovery. Records, although no substitute for streaming, offered something different. They offered a tangible ritual, a welcome reprieve from the digital sphere and its dictates.
Mobile Fidelity’s goal is to capture the perfect sound on vinyl: Mobile Fidelity is the story of a record company that wants to bring a better listening experience to the vinyl record enthusiast who desires it. By John “Jay Jay” French The words “musician,” “record collector” and “audiophile” do not necessarily find themselves used in the same article. In the case of my latest story on the history of Mobile Fidelity, they all come together, because I am all three of them. Most musicians are to some degree record collectors, but not necessarily audiophiles. Most audiophiles are not musicians, but are usually record collectors. Most record collectors are not musicians, but may, on occasion, be audiophiles. I came to all three at about the same time (at age 12) and have grown into a huge record collector, a longtime audiophile and, of course, as the guitarist for Twisted Sister, a musician. The first album that I bought was Meet the Beatles! in 1964 for $3.99, my first guitar was a Hagstrom bass in 1965 for $25 and the first stereo I bought in 1967 (turntable, receiver and speakers) for $600. Mobile Fidelity is the story of a company that wants to bring a better listening experience to those of you who desire to have it.
The Greatest Album Covers: 100 Pioneering Sleeve Designs: From indelible images to perfect portraits, the 100 greatest album covers provoke and awe just as much as the contents inside. We’re usually all about celebrating the way records sound, here we celebrate the way they look. This countdown of great album covers – some iconic, others overlooked – has it all: indelible images, perfect portraits, nightmares, and hallucinations. Along with plenty of sex and provocation, since much of this list of the greatest album covers revels in rock’n’roll imagery.
Ashville, NC | The art of sitting and listening: In a seismic move that will further propel the Asheville and greater Western North Carolina music scene into the national spotlight, Citizen Vinyl will officially open its doors to the public on Oct. 8. Situated in the historic Asheville Citizen-Times building on O. Henry Avenue in downtown, the property will become the new home for an extensive artistic collaboration. At the helm will be Citizen Vinyl, a record manufacturing facility (the first ever based in the state) at the heart of this musical project. The collaboration will also include Session (Citizen Vinyl’s adjacent bar/cafe), Coda: Analog Art & Sound (an immersive art gallery and retail space) and Citizen Studios (WWNC’s former broadcast station, and now an in-house recording and mastering facility). At the core of this melodic beehive is Gar Ragland of Citizen Studios. A longtime professional musician, record producer and label head, Ragland will bring WWNC’s legendary Studio A back to life — a piece of American musical history now entering its next bountiful phase.
