Record Store Day was yesterday and record stores all over the world were buzzing with excited music fans picking up bargains, discovering new music, watching live music, making new friends and chatting about that glorious art form that enriches all of our lives, music.
The day was designed not to celebrate music, but to celebrate the stores that give music fans a place to hang out, chat to fellow fans, learn more about music and generally feel part of a tangible community free of the distant and faceless world of the internet.
We’ve all been guilty of targeting something you want online, finding it and buying it without any discussion or interaction with another person, but yesterday was a reminder - for me and hundreds like me - that your musical tastes expand when you chat about it with someone else. For every record recommended to me yesterday, I could recommend something to someone else and it’s this broadening of horizons that cannot happen in cyberspace.
This voyage of discovery didn’t end yesterday. Today, I woke up with a renewed passion for independent record stores and an impressive pile of records that will be my soundtrack for the next week.
We took a camera around to six stores in Melbourne yesterday chatting to staff members, owners, artists and a few surprise guests along the way. Be sure to check that out when it goes up later in the week.
A huge thanks is owed to Vince Peach (PBS), Fee B Squared and Ben Birchall (RRR), Alan Brough (Spicks and Specks, ABC Radio), Little John, Abbie Cardwell (I hope your foot heals soon!), all the staff at Polyester (Fitzroy), Muscle Shoals (East Brunswick), White Rabbit Record Bar (Kensington), Basement Discs (City), Missing Link/Collector’s Corner (City), Pure Pop Records (St. Kilda) and all of the staff at all of the amazing record stores in Melbourne, in Australia and in the world that we sadly didn’t get to yesterday.
Support your local artists and support your local stores!
Follow the author Tim Cashmere on Twitter.
Not too long ago, Little John played a few songs for Undercover's U-Sessions. Check it out below:
