[mp3] Record Store Day 2011 Recap

Written on April 18, 2011 by Andy in Music

If you somehow managed to avoid all the talk about it, the latest celebration of Record Store Day happened this past Saturday. And if you’re unaware of what that means, let me direct you to the website for more information on what you’ve been missing.

Anyway, I went out for Record Store Day with my girlfriend, but I ran into another of our writers, Matt, at all three of the stops I made. The morning was cold and rainy here in Rochester, but I walked over to the first store on my list – Lakeshore Record Exchange – which is about 2 minutes from my place.

At Lakeshore, I found six of the releases I had on my list: Yeasayer’s End Blood, Ryan Adams & The Cardinals’ Class Mythology, Kings of Leon’s Holy Roller Novocaine EP, Blitzen Trapper’s Maybe Baby, Death Cab For Cutie’s single and Fleet Foxes’ single. Lakeshore is one of my favorite record stores; the staff is friendly and they are generally pretty slow first thing in the morning on Record Store Day, so I can usually get a few things on my list. (On Saturday I was the first one to walk in to the store.)

Yeasayer // Phoenix Wind (Vinyl Rip) [mp3] from End Blood

After Lakeshore, I went over to Record Archive, which was a complete madhouse. They were just yelling out the names of the releases they received, and members of the assembled mob shouted out when they heard something they wanted. I ended up grabbing the rest of what I wanted there, however, as well as a couple releases that weren’t on my original list.

Ryan Adams & The Cardinals // Your Name Is On Fire (Vinyl Rip) [mp3] from Class Mythology

I went over to The Bop Shop after that, but without anything left that I was particularly enamored of, I didn’t end up grabbing anything there. All in all, it was a pretty successful day – and a fun one at that. Despite my annoyance with the mass of humanity at Record Archive, it was great to see everyone lined up for physical media and supporting local stores.

(As a side note, this is my first time figuring out how to make vinyl rips, so there is a strong chance that they could be pretty crappy. For example, the Ryan Adams track sounds kind of tinny. You’ve been forewarned, and you have my apologies.)