Sunday 21 April 2013

Record Store Day UK 2013

Happy Belated Record Store Day! (...they should start making greeting cards surely?)

And what a day it was!

That's right, yesterday was Record Store Day all over the world; a day where independent record shops open the doors to the public, boasting a range of Limited Edition RSD releases that can only be bought on that day. However, it is not just to sell limited copies of vinyl but also to promote the use of your local record store. Since the big names such as Virgin Megastores and HMV have arrived (and now left...awkward) our high streets, we have seen lots of these small, independently owned record shops having to close down.

Yesterday proved that music lovers still love going to their local record store to seek out a new release or even an old favourite they had forgotten about. The purchase of a vinyl is not just like buying a CD, you're buying a piece of art that will most likely become as precious as a family heirloom and stay with you for the rest of your music loving days!
So having seen pictures on Twitter of the queues
around the block at Rough Trade, I decided
to leave it until later and thought I would seek out
some other participating stores in London.
I went along to Berwick St. in Soho where
I was greeted by a full blown street concert, held by record shop: Sister Ray. It was such a great atmosphere and was made all the more better with the sun beaming down!

I went into two record shops on and around Berwick St. but both were jam packed full of people and I started to experience a mixed bag of feelings...overwhelming wonderment and claustrophobia. My head was screaming: 'I'm a small person in a small shop of tall, sweaty people! GET ME OUT HERE'...

...so I left...empty handed, but was not about to give up.



At the end of the day, I thought I would stop by where I wanted to go originally: Rough Trade. It is one of the biggest, if not the biggest record shop in London so I was perhaps defeating the point of Record Store Day, but I thought I would swing by and see what they had left in terms of the limited edition releases.

             

I rocked up at 5pm and there was STILL a queue, but I was let in within 5 minutes, into another great atmosphere of happy music lovers boogieing to the superb DJ, supplying the soundtrack to their shopping experience.

Luckily I still managed to pick up 2 of the 7 I had on my list and it was probably just as well otherwise I would've spent a fortune! I paced back and forth to the till as I tried to decide whether to buy Paul Weller's 7" double a-side single ;Flame Out/The Olde Original' or James Blake's Retrograde/Overgrown 12"...both of which were blown out of the picture when I spotted these two releases which I can now call my own....

Django Django: Hi Djinx! Remixes &
 Mystery Jets Live at The Royal Festival Hall (SIGNED!)

I'd describe it as a kind of weird game of Snog, Marry, Kill...but with James Blake, Paul Weller, Mystery Jets and Django Django.

It was lovely to see people of all ages and families with young children coming out to celebrate what seems to have become a national music holiday (or so it should be)! If only everybody could use their record shops as much as they do on Record Store Day...I am also guilty of that.

Needless to say, it was quite a different experience to how I spent RSD last year. I was in the little town of Nantes in France, where I skipped along to my local record shop Melomane and perused through the collection at ease. I enjoy RSD France and RSD UK equally as much.

I'll leave you now with an interview I did with the one of the founders of Record Store Day in the USA, Michael Kurtz:





Lotsa luv,

Ess Double You x






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