Legendary owner of Essex Road’s Haggle Vinyl goes on the record with book: The name Lynn Alexander will strike fear into the hearts of music lovers around Islington. As the owner of Haggle Vinyl in Essex Road, he was seen as something of a curmudgeon – sometimes to the extent of putting people off shopping there altogether. He closed the store in 2014 to pursue his passion for flamenco guitar, but now he’s written a book detailing its history and other stories about his life. Lynn contacted the Gazette after our interview with Mark Burgess, owner of the neighbouring Flashback Records, which mentioned him as the rival record store owner who told customers Flashback sold porn.
BEDFORD-STUYVESANT—New Bedford Avenue Record Store Wants to Expand Your Musical Tastes: The Mixtape Shop, which opened in July, features a tightly curated selection of house, techno, funk, jazz, soul, and a healthy dose of music from Brazil, where husband-and-wife co-owners Brian Thomas and Erica Roden previously lived. Located at 1129 Bedford Ave. between Madison and Monroe streets, the space includes a cafe, and a table for people to work or hang out, and is flooded with light from large windows in the front. It was designed as a departure from the more eclectic, dust-filled record shops of yore, a deliberate move intended to make it more welcoming to people peering in the plate-glass windows or coming in off the street, according to Roden.
PROSPECT HEIGHTS—Bar Specializing in Craft Beer and Vinyl Records to Open on Vanderbilt Ave.: Chris Maestro, a former educator and brewery manager, plans to open his “dual passion project” BierWax at 556 Vanderbilt Ave. near Dean Street, inside the old Bopsot space, by the end of the year combining his love of local beer and music, he told DNAinfo New York. BierWax will offer customers two things: beer brewed in the city, Long Island and upstate New York, as well as great music curated from Maestro’s personal collection of records, including “all the different elements that gave birth to hip-hop — disco, funk, soul, rock, jazz,” he said.
Latest Bromsgrove vinyl record and CD fair coming to the town this Sunday: The next vinyl record and CD fair takes place in Bromsgrove this Sunday, September 24. The event, from 10am to 4pm at the Bromsgrove Hotel, is another sell-out stall-wise with more than 45 tables of items on offer. They will include everything from classics to real obscurities, along with plenty of guaranteed bargains. There is free parking on-site and a cash machine on site for those who buy more than they anticipated. Visit www.midlandsrecordfairs.co.uk for more information.
Austin Record Convention founder preserves multi-generational love of vinyl: On Sept. 30, thousands of LPs, vinyl records and customers eager to sift through them will fill the Palmer Events Center for the Austin Record Convention. For event founder Doug Hanners, this year’s event represents decades of hard work and a multi-generational love of vinyl records. At a young age, Doug Hanners was introduced to vinyl records by his father, who organized community dances at a YMCA in West Texas — the soundtrack to which was a collection of carefully selected vinyl. After moving to Austin for college, Doug Hanners carried on his family’s love of vinyl by working at a record shop on Guadalupe Street, which he said was his ultimate inspiration to create the convention.
How a Canadian Punk Band Wound Up on the Vinyl of Beyoncé’s Lemonade: Gretchen Steel, Zex’s vocalist, posted a video of the mishap (it appears to be borrowed from a Twitter user from Edinburgh, Scotland). “Yes. This is Beyonce’s new L.P. . . . and yes. This is ZEX playing on the a-side of her record. Either this was a huge mistake at the pressing plant OR Beyoncé is a huge fan of my band. Personally I like to believe she’s just a big supporter,” she wrote. Steel added that a friend working at the Rough Trade East record store in London first alerted her to the switcheroo. She told Vanity Fair, “After he told us I looked around and found nothing about it. Within a few hours we received a wave of messages and emails from Beyonce fans saying they used the Shazam app to find out what was playing and found us. To my surprise most of those fans said they wanted to buy our record now and really liked it, which of course was also a shock to me. I’m in a UK82/NWOBHM inspired band. Nothing I would exactly compare to Beyoncé.”
Discogs Achieves Sound Of Success In A Dying Marketplace: Forbes reports that Discogs owes its success to the vinyl resurgence and, though some millennials may not want to admit it, to big corporate retailers as well. It’s players like Urban Outfitters and Whole Foods, not mom-and-pop record stores, that are driving the vinyl boom by marketing records as part of an organic lifestyle. By lumping vinyl into a lifestyle that includes other holistic choices in fashion and health, these retail heavyweights have (perhaps deliberately) spawned the next generation of physical media enthusiasts.
