National Record Store Day

also got Teenager Of The Year and it sounds way better than my old CD. Only copy in the shop so was worth going at opening time.

I saw the Groundhogs thing, pretty cool.

I didn't get anything but I got the Dream Syndicate 2LP for a friend.

The Dream Syndicate reissue was the only thing I wanted. I usually avoid RSD alike the plague, because I hate waiting in line for anything. But original copies are impossible to come by, so I went out this morning. Lined up to get in the store (after opening time) and then lined up for an hour (!) to pay. Exhausting but now I have the damn album. The lineup went around the store twice, so I browsed while in line, and my armload got progressively heavier. Came away with some Cure and Stereloab records on discount, as well as the Ronnie Lane thing which I’m sure will be available in the discount bins later... but what the hell.

I need a nap now.

Got there early with my son, there was a huge line in the rain. By the time we got inside, the Death Grips single he wanted was sold out, so we didn't get anything.

I only went for the Insides reissue, but the 4 places I went to in Mass. didn't have it. Maybe it's UK only? I didn't get anything.

i had a positive experience this rsd.

showed up at my local spot and saw my friend’s band play. there was beer on tap and more beer in cans hanging round and it was good to see / catch up with regulars / friends who were there to support the shop and see music. there was a reissue of the abdullah sami lp which was not a rsd release but i was thrilled to see it and was happy to buy it. lori barbero from babes in toyland was spinning records as i left.

this on top of my friend, aforementioned, whose record from the late ‘70s i reissued a few years back. he got in touch with me a few months back saying he wanted more copies of the record bc they sold out of them at shows. i was more than happy to sell him my remaining stock — i never made any money on this reissue — and so after four years i finally broke even on that project. i used some of that unexpected money to buy that sami record.

i had to go to work at 3 so i resisted all the offers to have a beer. i just talked to friends and drank coffee in preparation for my inevitable boring shift at the restaurant.

well ! i would have thought things were done then and there. but when i showed up to work the bar was dead — except for one guy. turns out it was scarface from geto boys.

didn’t know what to say at first but we ended up talking and he was super nice. i told him how much i love grip it on that other level and he said that was one of his favorite records he had worked on. he showed me some funny photos on his phone of him with willie and bill. the conversation wasn’t super long but at one point he said “yeah ... we’re not geto boys anymore. we’re just geto old ass men.” i thought that was funny.

so it was a nice day. gimmicks aside i’m happy i stopped in and threw some cash to some of my fav ppl

Went to Kingston upon Thames (my first visit) for RSD. Spent a lovely couple of hours crate digging in Shaks' Staks of Wax, coming away with half a dozen good to great s/h 7"s then strolled down to Banquet records and joined the (much shortened) queue around 2.30pm. Was inside in around 20 mins and they still had everything I wanted. Tick VG, would recommend.

For a second misread that as Kingston upon Hudson.

bj

jfc budo jeru that's amazing

yes, hi bj! top posting. thank you for sharing.

back to the nasty side. . .

the more stuff i see show up on my instagram, the more the thought comes up to me: this is it; this is why the vast majority of folks don't consider the physical copy of recorded music to be essential or even respected anymore. vinyl has reached its exclusivity in the cheap gift shop phase. which i find very lamentable.

the Sunn 0))) record... beautiful black pressing.... all analog process, recorded with Albini.... turned it up and my god what a testament to vinyl

foh. would sound way doper if it was a pic disc of an albini headshot.

preferably with refined elements of the broken down compound of his three day old whiskers. shaved one of the mornings before when one of the album's recording sessions was to take place.👍🏻

#genesimmonsdidnothingwrong

Dropped into my local this afternoon- they still had loooaads of stuff left. Picked up the Durutti Column and Crispy Ambulance reissues

Popped into my local this afternoon and heard a depressing convo. A kid came in asking about the Death Grips record, the clerk checked the computer and said there should be three copies in stock but couldnt find them in the bin of RSD leftovers. He steps back to call the owner and I hear him ask "Did we sell those under the table? Oh ok, I'll tell him" and announce to the kid that theyd been sold online. I guess it must be pretty common for stores to flip their own RSD stock online day-of, but still shitty to hear.

The “ironing is delicious” on that anecdote.

Had a nice time, as I do every year. Unfortunately couldn't stay for the instore gigs & complementary beers but the vibe's always good.

Made a (very) short list of things I'd like beforehand of which they only had Spacemen 3's Live in Europe (Space Age Records, so Sonic probably disapproves, sorry!). When I asked about The Art Ensemble of Chicago reissue they came up with the reissue of a 7" on which they were the backing band of Alfred Panou. Unkown to me, it's great - like everything they recorded whilst in Paris.
When I asked about the Groundhogs reissue they told me they didn't get it but had an original up for sale through discogs which I got with a 25% discount - score!
Lastly, bought a 7" the record store put out on their own label.

https://recordstoreday.com/NewsItem/9003

Record Store Day will look very different this year, but supporting indie record stores may be more important than ever. We don't know what sort of rules will be in place, or what sort of gatherings people will be in the mood for this year, so we're focusing on the music and getting the really great titles on the RSD Official List this year into the stores and into your hands, in the most financially and socially responsible way.

The titles on the RSD 2020 Official List, launched on March 5th, will be released at participating record stores on one of these three RSD Drops: August 29th, September 26th, and October 24th. The new version of The List, with newly assigned RSD Drops dates will launch on June 1 so check back here for a look at when you'll be able to pick up the titles on your RSD 2020 wishlist at your local record store.

how incredibly frustrating. at the risk of sounding sanctimonious i'll say that i've already found ways to support my local shops during the pandemic, one of which has been ordering online / via phone and picking stuff up curbside or having it shipped. quite without the help of official national record store day, thanks. the owners of the record stores i find it important to support have been as resourceful as they can, but withholding merchandise which has already been manufactured only delays the money i might have given them if we could just have the records now. so let the labels just ship the records. making us wait until the end of october to acquire releases that would ideally already be in our hands—all for the sake of staging a farcical bank run that increasingly only ever seems designed to assuage the guilty yuppy conscience or to enrich the greasy flipper—does nothing except exasperate eager fans and delay funds to record stores for which right now small margins of cash are the difference between weathering the storm and shutting the doors for good.

the grill-out and the in-stores have been cancelled, likewise the beery convos, the comparing of notes, and the other pleasant rituals of record store congregating. if we're lucky we'll pick that up when it's deemed safe to do so. until then let me order some shit ffs.

good post and 100% otm

no. you will participate in the marketing culture whether you want to or not.

thanks for hyping it up, btw!

(for real tho: it's the typical rsd bullshit. it never was about making sure the stores can achieve longevity. is anyone really surprised?)

I've read this is actually preferable to store owners because they don't have to shell out for that merchandise in one go and can instead split it up with three buys, using the first to gauge how much might be needed for the second and third.

Fuck RSD btw, but at least this situation makes it easier on the stores.

fair point there

What Johnny Fever said.

Also, while no solution is perfect, having the labels just ship the records to customers directly (as budo suggests) sort of defeats the purpose of these releases being 100% designed to benefit record stores. Record. Store. Day. I get that you want them in your hands, but, having them bypass retail completely would be brutal for indie record stores who were already fucked by Direct Shot Distribution issues and covid-related closures.

at least my friend who owns a store says that RSD is by far their biggest day of the year and he counts on it, don't know why not having it would benefit

Seems like three days in three consecutive months would mean more people in the store with more chances to sell stuff? The thing that pisses me off about RSD exclusives is that can't, as far as I understand, be returned to the distro like regular stock if it doesn't sell. That's why every store that participates has a bargain bin of RSD shit no one wants.

This at least seems like a good way to lessen the financial burden on store owners who haven't been open or have been operating in a downgraded capacity. Lots of them are dead broke.

All true, Free Download. And, ideally, we'd love to have it. But, nobody is in a rush to be in a crowd at the moment and nobody has any clue when that will change, so, at least this is a way to get the stuff out there somehow, in a way that the smaller stores among us can actually stomach.

This will certainly be a year of getting used to imperfect solutions.

Also, Johnny Fever - 95% of vinyl is not returnable even when it's not a RSD piece. The reason there are so many RSD leftovers is it's really hard to get the orders right on 400 titles that come out at the same time... and you don't want to undershoot too much and miss out... and sometimes you order more because you know your order will be allocated, so you have no clue what you'll actually get until closer to the day. Fun!

Sounds like a nightmare.

JF - you're misunderstanding though, it's not like record stores exist to make efficient transactions of records, nearly everything you could get online likely cheaper

they still exists because of the things budo jeru said, and RSD is a ritual

yeah you can't return anything anymore, for the most part. found that out when I got a bad pressing of one of those Can reissues from a local store and they told me they just had to eat it :(

If you get a bum record from a shop, don’t return it there. Buy a copy from Mega Online Retailer to replace it with. Send the shit copy back to them and get a refund.

Why don't they announce the list of RSD exclusives to participating stores, take their orders, and then press up and ship the requested quantities? I don't see the benefit in having something pressed in a quantity of 300 if 2,000 people want to buy it. How does that help record stores? Yeah they'd need a lead time of like 18-24 months but it's not like they don't know there will be a Record Store Day every year. Well I guess not this year but.

I bought a Massaman Sani LP new and it was too warped to play... have read about people contacting labels directly for a replacement but I kind of feel bad about doing that for some reason, like the profit margins have got to be low as it is idk. I don’t have my receipt anyway.

xxp yeah because "Mega Online Retailers" stock so much of what I buy, (eyeroll)

I don't see the benefit in having something pressed in a quantity of 300 if 2,000 people want to buy it. How does that help record stores?

golly, it's almost like it never was supposed to help the stores.

it's been about labels manufacturing "collectables" since day one. some places were able to spin it into a good day, but even the ones that don't have the means to do in-stores or other promotions have still come to rely on it financially.

it's one of the worst things that's happened to physical media in the past twenty years.

How does that help record stores?

The record stores can mark it up A Lot.

it helps record stores by increasing traffic and sales, people who come in to buy something rare that's not there will probably buy something else on RSD, or used records in addition

there's a lot of a galaxy brain thinking going into the premise that having a store packed with people spending lots of money is actually bad for a store

I'm glad stores are surviving thanks to RSD, but I hate so much that it turned into solely being about THE LIST and the scramble for gimmicky records with forced exclusivity.

I liked it much better when the idea was just a day to celebrate the "idea" of record stores - food, in-store performances or DJs, sales, etc. Maybe a few special things, but more like free comic book day where it's just massively pressed quantities of a 7" or two so that everyone who steps foot in the door gets one. Not this bullshit, "hey we know 40 of you have expressed interest in this exclusive red splatter ELO 7" so we asked for 45 copies, but we only got two so, uh, good luck" thing that's happening. I don't blame the stores for this at all, but the whole thing is so antithetical to what I love about record stores.

I mean, it should have been a big red flag years ago when every single record store's social media feed was filled with variations of "hey, just so you know we got nowhere near as many copies of the RSD exclusives as we requested, so prepare to be disappointed". Instead we just keep repeating the same thing year after year after year.

Limited quantities of select items incentivize people actually go instead of put it off until they decide not to care. "FOMO" is a big motivator to drive sales, a percentage of which might not even happen at all without that factor.

Whatever problems I have with RSD, I've always been fine with the prices/scarcity/clusterfuck aspect of it. It's Record Store Day, not Record Store Customer Appreciation Day - the whole point is to get as much money as possible out of peoples wallets and into the cash registers of record stores, not to equitably distribute desirable records to music fans.

Where I work, we put a lot of money into RSD usually but it is a total risk as others have said. Before the lockdown, I was still putting previous releases from the last few years in our clearance section. There's always some titles we don't get enough of and some we somehow manage to get just right. The latter is very rare. The mark ups on these records (and for all new records in general) are really terrible. We mainly stick to the suggested prices and often we're lucky to make roughly $5 profit on these exclusives. Maybe more like $10-15 on some bigger items. It is true that we have no idea what we're going to get for sure until the week before. There's always some that we really went overboard on (anyone still need one of those Nas Stillmatic reissues from Black Friday or the Sugar Ray reissue?)

We've done very well on the day just because people want to come out and support our store. There will be people waiting in line for half an hour picking up new copies of Radiohead albums they can buy any time. We sell a lot of used records too. Lots of people telling us they've been waiting for a special occasion to pick up something a bit more rare/expensive. I was very skeptical about RSD (and still am in some ways), but it really changed things working there and seeing all the people (all our regulars and more) coming in to just pick up anything they could. The build up is stressful, but it really is a nice experience.

Maybe it's changed, but the first two or three years I checked out RSD at a shop near me (that sadly no longer exists) you couldn't even buy or browse the non-RSD stock. You waited in line at the door, then they let folks in two by two, to ask for the exclusives they wanted. You were then rung up and guided right back out the door, you weren't even allowed to browse the "regular" stock.

The long game is to build loyalty, so stores should focus on using the day to encourage people to come back for regular shopping visits. It's pretty short sighted to not make the most out of it beyond the exclusives and single day traffic however possible.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to begrudge the stores one bit for whatever helps them survive. If RSD, in its current formulation, does it - great. I won't begrudge anyone that enjoys it either.

But I do find it... interesting (for lack of a better word) that a special holiday created specifically to celebrate one of my favorite hobbies ever has evolved into something where it is the one specific day I actively avoid record shopping. And I know I'm not the only one that feels that way. I feel like it should be called Record Store Exclusive Vinyl Day or something else instead.

tbh I also avoid the stores that day, or if I go its usually shortly before closing to browse the leftovers & survey the damage. But I always figure its not really aimed at people like me who typically go once a week and spend regularly, we dont really need an incentive to go spend money at our local record store, but moreso for Earnest New Vinyl Enthusiasts and people who might otherwise only go at christmas or soemthing.

I've never been on RSD - I have a young daughter and would rather spend the weekend with my family, and wouldn't relish the chaos anyway. But every year there are a couple of releases among the novelty tchotkes that I lust after. I read there was supposed to be a reissue of GBV's Vampire On Titus or Propellor this year, which definitely caught my interest.

June 12 & July 17 this year - anything exciting coming up?

Want the Blackbeard I Wah Dub reissue, and also the Timmy Taylor/Brainiac rarities/demos things, but I won't be going to any record shops today, so...