Record Store Day In Toronto

April 15 2013 – This Saturday April 20,2013 the world is celebrating the 6^th annual Record Store Day (RSD). If you are not familiar with the event here is what the RSD website tells us:

Record Store Day was conceived in 2007 at a gathering of independent record store owners and employees as a way to celebrate and spread the word about the unique culture surrounding over 700 independently owned record stores in the US and thousands of similar stores internationally.

This is the one day that all of the independently owned record stores come together with artists to celebrate the art of music. Special vinyl and CD releases and various promotional products are made exclusively for the day and hundreds of artists in the United States and in various countries across the globe make special appearances and performances. 

The concept is very exciting and T-Mak World will be out supporting these businesses with the purchase of some shiny new vinyl. Although most of the fun appears to be in the USA with many in store appearances from artists, Toronto does have some excellent representation on Record Store Day. For a full list of the action in Canada you can check here. We talked to Lincoln Stewart (Manager of Vortex Records) and Ed Stone (president of Executive Stereo and Upstairs Vinyl) whose stores are participating in the event.

We asked Ed and Lincoln to describe Record Store Day for us. Ed tells us that “Record store day has certainly been growing in consumer awareness and excitement about it, but the response from the record producing companies and distributors has been less than optimal in response to the consumer excitement. Titles are hard to come by, shipments are late or non-existent…but we are a small record store. So maybe it’s better for the bigger stores.” Lincoln describes the day as “Significant, but brief. People come in; buy what they want, and then race to other shops for any titles they missed out on. There’s usually a lineup before we open, but when that line begins varies. Sometimes it’s just 30 minutes before; sometimes it’s several hours before we open.”

The next topic was vinyl itself – we asked the guys if they believe records in the vinyl format are having a revival. Lincoln tells us “We’ve never stopped selling vinyl–we’ve been selling it since the 70s. Yes, vinyl has picked up in the past few years but we’ve always had our regulars who’ve bought it even when it wasn’t fashionable. We have some customers who literally come to the shop every single day (we get new product almost every day, some days we get new items every hour). Why is vinyl picking up? It’s hard to say, but customers who are new to it tell me that they enjoy it for the same reason people have always liked the format: it’s tangible and tactile, the art’s fantastic, and of course it sounds great. I’m sure some also come to it as a rebellion against online nonsense.” Ed claimed that “As far as a vinyl revival, we are a high end audio store as well, and are selling fairly expensive turntables like crazy, so yes there is a HUGE vinyl revival ongoing in terms of hardware purchased to play vinyl.”

There are a ton of new cool releases and here are some of our recommendations.

• Aerosmith – Toys in the Attic
• The Band – The Last Waltz – 12” Vinyl
• Cream – Royal Albert Hall London 2-3-5-6 2005 – Vinyl Box Set
• Soundgarden – King Animal Demos – 10” LP
• Deep Purple/Type-O Negative – Side by Side: Highway Star – 7” Vinyl
• The Doors/X – Side by Side: Soul Kitchen – 7” Vinyl
• Emerson, Lake & Palmer – The First Five: A Picture Disc Collection – Vinyl Box Set
• Jimi Hendrix – Hey Joe B/W Stone Free – 7” Vinyl
• Pink Floyd – See Emily Play B/W Scarecrow – 7” Vinyl
• Rolling Stones – 5X5 EP – 7” Vinyl

Ed is most excited about Toys in the Attic from Aerosmith and Elephant from The White Stripes.  Lincoln told us that for our classic rock fans there will also be offerings from Grateful Dead, Dylan, Stooges, Bowie, Beefheart, Nick Drake, Marianne Faithful, Hawkwind, Jethro Tull, Joan Jett, Motorhead, Van Dyke Parks, PIL, Rainbow, Seeds, Sir Douglas Quintet, Small Faces, Zappa and more. Vortex Records will have a complete list of the titles on their web site about midnight the night before but for now you can see what they have ordered on their website here. They also are willing to let you email them with a request but act very fast (i.e. today).

Thanks to Lincoln Stewart and Ed Stone for taking the time to talk to us about Record Store Day.

Upstairs Vinyl is at 2076 Avenue Road

Vortex Records is at 2309 Yonge Street

If you want to get back into records check out ION Audio’s iLP – a great entry level record player we reviewed here. My closing thought on the value of Record Store Day is… “let’s see your digital download collection look like this…..”

Author: T-Mak