Record Store Day

brent johnson and bill bodkin celebrate a national day devoted to a lost art form …

Magazines and websites remind us all the time: Statistics show people don’t buy CDs anymore. Hence, today might not be circled on your calendar.

But today is Record Store Day. All across the map, brick-and-mortar music shops will try to remind you that they still exist — and still rock. Many will sell limited-edition releases from artists like Bruce Springsteen, Foo Fighters and even The Velvet Underground. Many will host live music.

Last year, we profiled one of the best record stores on the planet: Vintage Vinyl in Woodbridge, N.J., a massive shop filled with thousands of albums, singles, T-shirts, magazines and more. Today, the store will welcome John Leguizamo, who will sign copies of his DVD Freak, as well as live sets from Bruce Tunkel and Ian Axel. If you need more of a push to show up, here’s our love letter to the place.
— Brent Johnson

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I was raised on records. The pop, the hiss, the rich hi-fi spinning at 45 and 78 RPMS. While I may espouse and promote heavy metal, hard rock and indie Jersey Shore music, I was raised on the rich a capella of doo-wop music, the sound of my dad’s childhood, the sound that almost made him a national recording artist. During my childhood, the record store, like the baseball card shop, was a vital stop on weekends for me and my dad. Whether it be the old Relic Rack in North Jersey, Vintage Vinyl in Woodbridge, The Princeton Record Exchange or various shops in New Brunswick and New York, my dad and I would “dig in the crates,” trying to recollect the old records he had lost while in the service — thanks in part to his brother “borrowing” pieces of my dad’s collection to spin the jukebox of the bars he worked in.

So today, April 16, Record Store Day, holds a special place in my heart. Today, the record store is a romantic notion, a place, a sanctuary, for the music-obsessed. We at Pop-Break love records and we’re proud to promote friends of the site Only Living Boy who will be releasing a 7 inch record at: Eyeconik Records in Franklin, Holdfast in Asbury Park and Curmudgeon Records in Sommerville, N.J.

I’d also like to recommend an excellent article by Martin Halo of The Waster who spoke to musical icons like: Jack White, Rich Robinson of The Black Crowes, Alan Evans of Soulive, Kevin Calabro of Royal Potato Records as well as members of The Flaming Lips, Weezer, Cake and Umphrey’s McGee about the beauty of vinyl.
— Bill Bodkin

If you’d like to find out more about Record Store Day, click here.