National Record Store Day – Saturday April 16th

This Saturday is my favorite 'holiday' of the year. It's National Record Store Day, a day to celebrate the independent record stores across the nation, and to celebrate the vinyl record itself.

The vinyl record had just about been declared dead ten years ago. But then something unusual began happening. In Europe, young people started getting into vinyl. We're talking about kids in their teens up through college age.

The resurgence soon spread to the US, and granted it was a very slow build until about 4-5 years ago. At that point, sales of records started growing more rapidly. And in fact those sales have doubled every year for the past three years. Last year over 2 million vinyl records were sold, and there is no sign of a slow down.

Those of us who grew up with vinyl fueled additional growth.  We got back into listening to records again. The major record labels took notice. After all, they have been decimated by the rise of mp3s and other forms of digital downloads, and are looking for revenue streams.

Taken as a percentage, records still comprise a very small piece of music sales. But it's been enough that most of the major labels have brought their pressing lathes out of mothballs and are producing classic titles from every genre, especially rock and roll.

You can now buy beautifully pressed platters on heavy 180-gram vinyl. If you grew up with the format, like I did, you know that we didn't have that kind of quality during the 60s and 70s.

Listening to music on vinyl is not only rewarding to the ears (analog sound is warm and pleasing to listen to because that's how we actually hear sound), but it compels you to get more involved in the listening process.

One side of an LP is about 20 minutes of music. It's a reasonable time span to plug in and really listen. If you're listening with someone else, you can talk about what you just heard while you're flipping the record over to play side 2.

Then there's the LP cover.  A 12-inch square with art, graphics,  and artist photos that are in a large enough format to enjoy as an actual art form.  The inner sleeves are large enough to have printed lyrics, detailed liner notes, and tons of information about the music you're listening to.  I've learned an encylopedia's worth of music information reading liner notes while listening to an album.  It's just an immersive experience.

You can read who's in the band, who plays what, who produced the album, where it was recorded, and often humorous text from the artists themselves.  And it's great to read the lyrics while you're listening to a song.  You can often gain a lot deeper understanding of the artist's mind and intent.

We do have one independent record store in Abilene.  The Record Guys are just off South Seventh on Leggett.  They've got turntables too, so if you've been considering getting back into vinyl, stop by and see them this Saturday for Record Store Day.

Hasting's also carries a decent selection of new vinyl from the major labels.  And if you want to order vinyl online there are two fantastic sources, which I can highly recommend even if just for information purposes.   Go to AcousticSounds.com or ElusiveDisc.com to find out what's out there.  I think you'll be amazed.

Finally,  Record Store day is celebrated by artists and record labels with new, exclusive, and limited pressings on vinyl.....provided only to independent stores for this Saturday!  You can see the entire list of Record Store Day releases on the official website at RecordStoreDay.com .  There's still nothing quite like analog.