Record Store Day

Justin Townes Earle

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Record Store Day aftermath

This past Sunday, while a stream of soft, late-morning light was tumbling through the living room window I’d left open overnight, I awoke on the couch, sat up (sort of) and snapped the above photograph. It is as much an illustration of how not to treat your records as it is a testament to how much fun the previous day — Record Store Day — had been.

I’d planned on writing a preview post on Friday but got distracted by and thoroughly wrapped up in Boston manhunt coverage, deciding ultimately that a blog post about which limited-run records I was hoping to get my hands on would seem incredibly trivial next to the day’s headlines. Instead, with Dzhokar Tsarnaev safely in custody and that boat somehow — miraculously, I think — not in a million pieces, I’d like to roll out my Record Store Day highlights through a series of open letters. I’m not sure how many there will be, but I do know where I want to start: with the kind folks who joined Bandmate 4eva Doug and me in lining up outside BK Music early Saturday morning.

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Alexandre Desplat

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One of our nation’s most treasured traditions is nearly upon us, and I for one couldn’t be more excited about it.

“It” being Black Friday, of course… what? Did you think I was talking about Thanksgiving? C’mon, Thanksgiving’s just a speed bump on the road to the holiday shopping season! Everybody knows that! What’s really important is lining up in the cold outside your local Walmart with a bunch of strangers at dinner time on Thursday so you can pay a little less for a television that will probably cost half as much in 6 months. That’s the true meaning of Thanksgiving, right?

All sarcasm aside, while Black Friday is almost entirely despicable, it would be 100% despicable if it weren’t for Record Store Day: Black Friday, which aims to divert some of the orgiastic holiday spending from national chains to locally owned music stores. If you’re planning on venturing outside on the most terrifying shopping day of the year, I hope you’ll consider supporting your local record store by stopping in and snagging some of the limited-edition goodies (click here to see the full list of Friday’s special releases).

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Animal Collective

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Honeycomb

I have a few more things to share about my trip to Nashville (I promise they don’t involve vomit or Jack White), but I have to butt in and right a writing wrong that I, myself, have perpetrated. It’s been 302 days since I last wrote about Animal Collective. How the hell did this happen? AC and I certainly aren’t feuding or anything. As Big Boi once said of his distinguished colleague, André 3000, “Not clashing, not at all.”

I guess one reason might be that they haven’t released a conventional* LP since Merriweather Post Pavilion, but that wasn’t that long ago, right? Let me just check Wikipedia and find out when that wa… January of 2009? WTF?!? There’s no way 40 months have passed since that album came out. It just can’t be true. The songs still feel fresh, despite the fact that I’ve heard them god knows how many times over the past few years. In fact, I’m pretty sure the album hasn’t left my phone’s iPod, and I’ve had at least two phones since January of 2009. The more I think about it, the more it seems like this is a major indicator of an album’s greatness — the amount of time after its release that it stays in the front of your mind (and on the smaller hard drive of your primary listening device).

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Debo Band

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I really like free stuff. I know this from years of experience obtaining free stuff, but I also know this because I recently had a coworker say to me, “You really like free stuff.” When I decided to write this post, I tried to remember the context in which he said this, but there were too many possibilities, and I gave up. Not so coincidentally, this same coworker and I have already updated our calendars with the best Richmond Flying Squirrels promotional giveaway nights, including the one in which they’re giving out an egg timer shaped like a pig, and the Father’s Day one, in which they’re giving the first 2,000 men 15 and older a visor that reads “Head Nut” (my love for the team’s marketing department knows no bounds). Neither of us has kids, but WHATEVER. It’s free!

Speaking of free stuff and nuts (A segue for the ages!), many of the folks who stormed their local haunts on Record Store Day had the chance to grab a complimentary copy of the fifth volume in Sub Pop’s Terminal Sales sampler series, entitled Mixed Nuts (there may be no better example of how one should keep one’s head on a swivel for free stuff than RSD). Having had a little more than a week to check it out — no, I will not rat out the record store that gave it out early — I can confirm that each of the tracks has that extra measure of sweetness than can be found in the complimentary Slurpees dispensed each July 11, or the free scoops handed out on Ben and Jerry’s Free Cone Day. That said, one gave me a particularly potent sugar rush — “Asha Gedawo” by Debo Band, an 11-piece, Boston-based outfit, led by Ethiopian-American saxophonist Danny Mekonnen, with vocals provided by a man named Bruck Tesfaye who, as far as I can tell, is not related to Abel Tesfaye of the Weeknd.

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Record Store Day Superlatives

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Record Store Day is quickly fading in the rear view mirror, and now that we’ve had a couple days to strip off the shrink wrap, listen to the loot and digest the day’s events, I wanted to share a few reactions and a few songs. In lieu of a list of acquisitions (I’m a little scared to a provide the complete inventory, as my better half reads this blog, and I may or may not have some financial splainin’ to do), I thought I’d keep the superlatives theme from earlier this month rollin’ by handing out a few RSD Superlatives. Off we go…

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Record Store Day

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It’s a war out there. Be safe. Be ruthless. And bring sunscreen. I’m currently waiting in long, sun-soaked line, wearing a chocolate brown t-shirt, braising like a rump roast.

Happy Record Store Day!

YHT Holiday Gift Guide

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[Spoiler Alert: If we’re related, please wait till December 26 to read this post. The gift I’m getting you may be listed below. For realsies.]

Hey there, blog reader! You look tense… Do you still have some last-minute Chrismukkah shopping to do? I knew it! Well… does your friend/family member/coworker like music? They do?!? Well hot damn, this is the holiday gift guide for you. Here are three YHT-approved gift ideas that are sure to delight the music-loving friend/family member/coworker that you totally planned to get something for sooner.

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Ryan Adams

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Ashes & Fire

Soooooo… got any plans for Black Friday? Gonna do a little shopping? Maybe hit up a few sales? Charge a Walmart or two? Me too! Just kidding, I’m terrified of Black Friday. Frankly, I’m pissed off I even have to capitalize the first letters of Black Friday (but Wikipedia capitalizes them, and we all know Wikipedia’s never wrong). But there is one thing happening the day after Thanksgiving that has me ready and willing to enter the fray of the biggest shopping day of the year: Record Store Day, Black Friday edition. Record Store Day is an event that encourages music lovers to head to their local independently owned record store, have some fun and buy some physical media, including hundreds of special, often limited edition, releases from bands who believe in the cause of keeping local music stores alive. While this year’s main event already happened on April 16, you can still make it to the smaller, but no less exciting, event on November 25. I’ll stay off my soapbox, except to say it was sad to see Richmond, VA fixture Plan 9 file for bankruptcy protection, though I’m optimistic this step will help them adapt so they can continue serving the community, as they have done for 30 years. So what can YOU do to help? Go out and buy some music on Black Friday! One release I’m prepared to shamelessly fight over in public is a 7″ of Ryan Adams song “Do I Wait,” from his marvelously mellow new album Ashes & Fire. If you’re not familiar with him, Adams is known as a songwriting machine, generating new material at an astonishing clip. While that may be true, it doesn’t change the fact that Ashes & Fire is a top-notch collection of soulful and earnest country rock songs that should absolutely not be missed. Have a listen to “Do I Wait” below, and if you’d like it, click here to find a locally owned store, like Plan 9, where you can pick up a copy from a nice, potentially tattooed human being working the register, who will probably tell you “Have a nice day!” when you leave. Unless you buy something by Justin Bieber. All bets are off at that point.

Ryan Adams — “Do I Wait“