Ozarks Original: Record Store Owner Finds his Groove: Stick It In Your Ear, a downtown Springfield music hotspot is sort of a retail vagabond. Starting in the early 1990’s, the store has moved across college towns in three different states. Wes Nichols, the owner of Stick It In Your Ear, states, “So we did Miami, Oklahoma, and that was so successful we went north to Pittsburgh, Kansas, and then that was so crazy successful in 1991 we went to Joplin. My partner said you wanna move one more time and I said I can move one more time and that was to here, and the rest is history.” Wes moved Stick It to Downtown Springfield 24 years ago and has not moved the shops’ location ever since.
A vinyl Revolution in Conway: Dan Belflower and Lisa Cole love music, so much so that they moved their wedding day so their new shop, Revolution Records, could participate in the 10th annual Record Store Day, an international collaboration of independent stores, on April 22, 2018. The vintage vinyl shop located at 50 White Mountain Highway in Conway had its grand opening June 10, Belflower said, and has received a “phenomenal” response from the public. “We had a very good summer,” he said. “Everyone who walks in, it is just awesome to watch them light up. They are just like ‘Wow.’
Craft Beer and Vinyl Mashup Ignites Buzz in Ohio: Craft & Vinyl is a new concept creation from marketing maestro and music lover, Troy Stacy. The vinyl record shop – slash – craft beer pub will be opening its doors in Ohio. According to Stacy, he typically pitches business in places like NYC, Nashville and Los Angeles. For his latest project, however, Stacy has selected Grandview, Ohio. This music and craft beer friendly locale will be the location of the first of four Craft & Vinyl stores in the state. Ohio was a natural fit for his pub and vinyl record shop vision, with craft breweries numbering over 200.
Band mates open York’s first vinyl café to make music real again: Three men on a music mission have opened York’s first vinyl café. The FortyFive Café on Micklegate opened on Monday, inspired by Stephen Frears’ romcom High Fidelity and influenced by Bradford’s Indy Coffee Roasters & Brew Bar. In it Dom White, Steve McNichol and Dan Kentley have crafted a unique space to share their love for quality music, deliciously strong coffee, and dangerously cheesy toasties. Dom, Steve and Dan got the idea for the business after touring the US in their rock band The Family Ruin. They noticed how people weren’t buying their CDs, apart from at their shows. So they decided to do something to bring back music as a physical entity, in the face of intangible streams and downloads.
A busy fall getting started in the city: Might be that Alberta’s summers are getting hotter – and longer. But for many southern Alberta organizations, the Labour Day weekend signals a start for their busy fall and winter programs. And September becomes something of a transitional month in Lethbridge with a wide selection of outdoor and indoor events. Outdoors, there’s the all-ages Love and Records celebration on Sept. 16. Billed as “Western Canada’s largest free outdoor record fair,” it combines live music with a great selection of new and used vinyl records, tapes and CDs. Attractions also include a Ferris wheel, food, a beer garden and a Canada 150 outdoor art gallery.
A Brand You Can Trust? Record Nerds’ 20 Favorite Labels From the 20th Century: If music companies were brands, which labels did record nerds trust most? The results are in via an informal poll of critics, influencers, music industry veterans, and vinyl enthusiasts conducted by Variety. Admittedly, the question asked was fairly basic — “what is your favorite record label from the 20th Century?” — and the pool that answered lacked some diversity within age, race and gender, but the results are no less interesting. Many expressed nostalgia for their personal, musical coming-of-age. Some took a historical view towards the music industry — qualified by eras, musical genres and even indie vs. corporate contexts. Others went on sheer instinct citing revelatory inspirations, completist obsessions, aesthetic presentation, and taste-making consistency. A few felt it was impossible to answer — but answer they did.
The Illinois Valley appears to be better off in 2017 than it was in 2010: Do you miss your old vinyl LP records? Bill Dvorak figured there are a lot of people like you and decided the time was right for a store that offers popular music in 33⅓ rpm. Dvorak and co-owner Denise Stern opened up Groovy Dog Records in Peru, figuring the time was right to reintroduce the joys of vinyl to the Illinois Valley. “The interest in vinyl has really grown over the past few years,” Dvorak said. “Analog sounds far better than digital. I know in the UK last year vinyl outsold digital for the first time and I feel the trend is coming this way as well.”
As vinyl’s popularity surges, a record-making plant gets set to open in Austin: …Caren Kelleher says she isn’t too troubled by the skeptics, because the former band manager, who also worked at Google, knows more about the demand for vinyl records than most people…“Up until now, the factories that had survived the (vinyl) downturn had been at capacity,” Kelleher said. Kelleher is trying to solve this problem by opening a vinyl record pressing plant in Austin called Gold Rush Vinyl. She plans to open it in December, after the equipment arrives from Canada to make the records. “We’re going to focus on special orders,” Kelleher said, working primarily with independent artists interested in printing up to 1,000 copies. “Other plants can print more than that,” she said.
Stuart McLean’s previously unreleased ‘Vinyl Cafe’ stories to get CD, book release: Listeners who enjoyed humorist Stuart McLean’s imaginative “Vinyl Cafe” tales will get a chance to revisit the storyteller’s world this fall. A new four-disc album and a Christmas-themed book are both set for release in October with previously unheard recordings and unpublished adventures of Dave and Morley. “The Vinyl Cafe: The Unreleased Stories” brings together a collection of 13 anecdotes told by the late CBC broadcaster on his popular radio show. It will be released on Oct. 6. Included are two new yarns — “Dave and the Vacuum” and “The Christmas Card” — captured at McLean’s final live “Vinyl Cafe” performance in Thunder Bay, Ont., last November.
Queen ‘News of The World’ Expanded For 40th Anniversary: Queen will release an expanded 4-disc box set of the ‘News of the World’ to mark the album’s 40th anniversary. ‘News of the World’, the sixth Queen album, was released on 28 October 1977. The album is Queen’s best selling album to date. ‘News of the World’ was a format change for Queen. The previous album ‘A Day At The Races’ was self-produced and often reviewed as “boring”. For this record the band decided to rock-up and orchestrate less. They brought in Mike Stone to co-produce. They spent two months writing, recording and producing, finishing in September 77 and releasing the album four weeks later.
