This Saturday is RECORD STORE DAY!

Sorry, Mum, but I'm cancelling your birthday...



Woah, I'm incredibly late with this one. I heard about this a while back, but I didn’t realise how big a deal it was or that it would be making its way out of America. Basically, this is a celebration of independent record stores and a lot of great record labels and artists are getting involved.

There are something like 100(!) records being especially released in very limited editions and it is mostly vinyl. These are to be sold exclusively through participating stores on Record Store Day and once they're gone, they're gone...onto eBay. Wouldn't it be a tragedy if you missed picking up the Flight of the Conchords 7” in the record shop and had to shell out twice as much on eBay for it and missed out on the lovely experience of browsing the aisles and flipping through all those beautiful records!? I'm going to be kicking myself on Saturday if I miss anything on my extensive-and-growing-by-the-minute shopping list! As if that isn’t enough of an impetus to get out there, there are going to be a slew of in-store signings and appearances. Graham Coxon, Partick Wolf and more will be appearing at Pure Groove in London and I expect there’ll be stuff going on at Rough Trade. I won’t go into the range of acts appearing across the U.S. as it’s just too large, but you can check it out on the Record Store Day website.

Some of the labels lining up special releases include Matador, Touch and Go, Sub Pop, Epitaph, Nonesuch and majors such as Sony, Warner Brothers, Capitol and a lot of reissues on Rhino.

Just a taste of some of the stuff being released:

Pavement – Live in Germany LP (2500 copies)
Jay Reatard/Sonic Youth split 7” (2500 copies)
Sonic Youth/Beck split 7” (2500 copies)
The Smiths – Headmaster Ritual (reissue of rare Dutch 7”)
The Decemberists – The Rake Song 7” (2000 copies)
Talking Heads – 77 (Remastered LP on 180gm)
Radiohead – vinyl EP reissues (everything from Drill to 2+2=5)
Flaming Lips/Black Keys split 7”
Depeche Mode – Wrong 7” (2000 copies)
Sony’s Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen 7”s in custom sleeves…
And…the Holy Grail of releases…The Jesus Lizard – Inch (but more about that next time!)

Anyway – go HERE for the complete list of releases and HERE to find out which shops are taking part and then get down to a record shop and buy records! Easy, really.