Record Store Day
Every year, about this time, the media make a big splash about “Record Store Day” and nerdy middle aged men pile into record shops everywhere to (select from below):
- Support their local recorded music retailer – and hope that they will stay in business for another year.
- Snag a couple of RSD exclusives, these being records that you always wanted and/or didn’t know what you wanted, to be loved and cherished.
- Snag a couple of RSD exclusives, and then sell them on E-Bay at a massive profit.
- Complain to anybody within ear reach about how RSD is just a big corporate rip-off, and wander out of the shop having annoyed everybody and bought nothing.
- Silently complain to yourself that RSD has become a corporate rip-off, but buy a couple of items to support your local shop.
- Pay outrageous amounts of money for (not very collectable) tat.
- Pay outrageous amounts of money for stuff that would have been released, likely at a lower price, anyway.
- Ponder paying outrageous amounts of money for a “limited release” record that might or might not sell out rapidly – a lot of last year’s RSD releases are piled up on shelves in record shops around the world, and often find their way to Amazon – seriously discounted.
I consider RSD to be transactional – I know I am paying far too much for any record that I buy – some of which I would never have bought – but I see it as a direct subsidy to my local record shop to provide me with the pleasure of “crate digging” intermittently for the next 12 months.
I visited a number of shops in an around RSD 2019 – mostly selling the same stuff. There were a number of records that I would have bought – if they had been priced reasonably – Yazoo, the Rolling Stones (Big hits volume 1 & 2), the Emmylou Harris box set, Frank Black’s solo albums, Tangerine Dream, CSNY,Fleetwood Mac, Badfinger, Frank Zappa, Charlie Parker with strings (outtakes), Black Rose by Thin Lizzy – probably the only one that I regret not buying (all in excess of Euro 30). There were a couple of albums released as picture discs that I would have bought on standard vinyl (I only have one picture disc – Lateralus by Tool, they generally sound terrible). I would have like the Bill Evans live in Ronnie Scott’s 2 x LP release, but it didn’t come our way. The Roxy Music remixes were
Anyway this year I bought (none of this terribly collectable):
- The King – Teenage Fanclub
- Steve McQueen Acoustic – Prefab Sprout
- Honeyman (live in 1973) – Tim Buckley
- Astral Weeks Outtakes – Van Morrison
- Cold Trumpet – Chet Baker
- Us and Us Only – Charlatans
The major disappointment about RSD is the sheer volume of “dad rock” – i.e. music targeted at the classic rock audience, with very little material from bands & artist from the past 20 years. Also, where is all the jazz?
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