Celebrating vinyl and the stores that sell it

At Wall Street Journal Digital Network’ MediaMemo blog, Peter Kafka reported last month that marketing researcher NPD Group found that CD sales fell by 19 percent last year. Okay, that’s probably not news to anyone who has ever even heard the term “iTunes,” but hold on…so too are music purchases overall in decline. Rampant online piracy and file-sharing are taking a bite out music retail, but so too are services like Pandora, MySpace Music, and LastFM, an endless source of tunes to be streamed for free.

Long story short: The music retail business is in a bit of trouble.

So, to some the very thought of Record Store Day might seem like a rearrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic. However, not everyone is quite ready to sound the death knell for those who actually want to purchase and enjoy a tangible music collection.

Brandon Delmont is the head buyer for the Western New York retail chain Record Theater—whose three local stores will celebrate Record Store Day this Saturday—and he knows firsthand the struggles that music retail is experiencing. At the same time sees some life in it yet.

“There will always be a market for physical product,” Delmont says. “Every time I walk out into the store I see kids—younger and younger—going through the vinyl section. It’s small and loyal but certainly growing.”

A confessed long-player junkie himself, Delmont sees Record Store Day as a very literal celebration geared toward a growing niche that many fans and certainly the music industry at large had written off by the 1990.

“Record Store Day is about vinyl records,” Delmont says. “It is really is geared toward the vinyl lovers: It’s about the music fans and the culture of record stores.”

So what exactly is it about records?

My best articulation of it come from being a kid. The proliferation of music in the digital age has made the whole experience cheap, like wallpaper in the background. You download a tune and maybe listen to it a couple times. Perhaps a tiny morsel of art pops up on your computer screen.

With records you had to go out and buy music, invest time in listening to it. Hell, you had to flip sides after 15 or 20 minutes! You had to connect.

One of my earliest memories is hearing the Beatles’ Abbey Road through the speakers of my parents’ Fisher stereo unit while poring over John, Ringo, Paul, and George making their way through the zebra street crossing. I listened to the album and looked at that cover over and over again. Funny thing is: I still do.

“Vinyl is coming back and reminding people that music is not disposable,” Delmont says. “From the sleeves to the rich dynamics of the sound: Records are really beautiful.”

The draw of Record Store Day for many will be the wealth of limited edition releases issued exclusively for release on April 18 at the select retail locations participating.

For around $5, black circle adherents can get their hands on limited release picture sleeve 45s like the epic indie split showdown with Sonic Youth and Beck, or a reissue of the lauded “Headmaster Ritual” single by the Smiths.

Delmont says that Record Theater is stocking as many special releases as possible.

“We will have as much as we can. We won’t have it all due to limited nature of the releases and they amount of stores across America participating.”

Further keeping with the spirit of the day, two of the Record Theater locations will host performances by local bands ranging from art rockers Besnyo and stumble punks the Inebriates at the Hamburg outlet, to hip hop outfit TypeRelevant and indie acoustic experimenters A Hotel Nourishing at the Main and Lafayette store.

Full details on Record Store Day and the list of the rare special releases are at www.recordstoreday.com. Info on the local happenings for this Saturday can be found at www.recordtheatre.com.

My top five list of must-get Record Store Day vinyl releases, in no particular order:

■ Whiskeytown—San Antone/The Great Divide (Geffen/Outpost/Mood Food Records). Two unreleased tracks from Ryan Adams’ late great bar rock sweethearts.

■ Flight of the Conchords—Pencils in the Wind (Sub Pop). Formerly New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo a capella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo with a limited edition 45 of 3,000 units.

■ My Morning Jacket—Celebracion de la Ciudad Natal. Double limited edition vinyl recorded live in Louisville at Waterfront Park and Ear-X-Tacy, a Record Store Day participating location!

■ Neil Young—Sugar Mountain Live at Canterbury House 1968 (Reprise). Two 200-gram ultra heavyweight black-vinyl discs manufactured at Furnace (Japan) housed in a paper-wrapped Stoughton gatefold jacket. Vinyl freaks know: It’s all about the weight and the gatefold!

■ Misfits—Walk Among Us (Rhino). One of the uncontested greatest and most ghoulish punk debuts ever gets brought back from the dead with the 140 gram treatment!

—donny kutzbach