Record Store Day 2024

Introduction

I thought I had done a piece on this, but I may have mentioned it here and there and certainly documented a few of them on my blog here:

These are the sites for the UK and USA plus a video about Record Store/Shop Day

Record Store Day UK

And the USA

Me And Record Store Day And Vinyl

I remember in the nineteen seventies when there was an oil shortage and petrol went up to a pound a gallon, and because oil is the base material for vinyl, the cost of LPs went up, but the thing I found very strange was that this was when we started to see 12" singles, which used as much vinyl as an album for a single.

Vinyl was then was then supposed to be replaced by CD which was then supposed to be replaced by streaming services. This is a piece I wrote on music media:

The thing is that not all music has been made available in digital format, so sometimes the vinyl pressing is the only copy of it unless they kept the master tapes, but that is another media format.

Most record shops sold music on tape and vinyl and then CD, and any good record shop would have the format. Boots and Supermarkets used to sell music, but the record shop chains went to the wall and Boots and Supermarkets dropped music products. Although HMV are still with us, they are just a souped-up market stall, and music is usually hidden away.

We are lucky in Newcastle and Tyne & Wear in that we have a lot of independent record shops, here are the ones I can think of:

REFLEX

As you can see, we have a lot of independent records shops here and there a lot more throughout the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

Record Store Day was conceived in 2007 at a gathering of independent record store owners and employees as a way to celebrate and spread the word about the unique culture surrounding nearly 1400 independently owned record stores in the US and thousands of similar stores internationally. The first Record Store Day took place on April 19, 2008. Today, Record Store Day is celebrated at independently owned brick-and-mortar record stores around the world.

In Newcastle shops invite bands to play, put on food and entertainment as well as selling records pressed especially for the occasion. In the beginning there were only a few of these but now there are a huge amount of Record Store Day special releases.

I do try to get to each one, but think I have only one or two Record Store Day records in my collection.

Each year there are huge queues outside record shops for fans to get their hands on the limited edition vinyl releases, and I do not do queuing if I can avaid it.

One of my issues is that often the releases are just picture discs but there are a couple of zoetropic George Harrison released this year. I only have my Kate Bush zoetropic copy of "Running Up That Hil" but I couldn't really get it to work, but the music is obviously top notch.

These are two examples of zoetropic animation on vinyl.

Conclusion

The lead song in this article is "Recycled Vinyl Blues" by Neil Innes which is sort of appropriate as vinyl has been reborn rather than recycled, and sales are going up.

I always say I have enough records but the chances are that I will go out tomorrow and come back with a few more records.

Thank you so much for reading, I hope this was not too garbled or senseless.