It's (nearly) Record Store Day. Expectations are long lines, camaraderie, killer music
Dumb Records co-owner Jeff Black expects long lines and high expectations for Record Store Day Saturday.
Black said he also sees things getting more back to normal with the subsidence of COVID-19 regulations, with one "drop date" instead of multiple drop dates throughout the year.
"It's a big celebration of vinyl collecting, people nostalgic for music from past times and present times," said Black, who became a half owner with Brian Galecki in 2021. "It's just an exciting to come out, celebrate the hobby, get some stuff you probably won't see again, and people will probably meet up buddies they haven't seen since last Record Store Day when they were lined up, so there's a bit of camaraderie there."
There will be about 300 new releases on Record Store Day, centered around box sets, special live recordings, demos and remixes.
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Dumb Records (418 E. Monroe St.) will open at 8 a.m. with Custom Cup coffee and doughnuts for patrons. A concert featuring En Love, Slug, Prevention, Side Eye and Dose at the concert venue will round out the day.
Recycled Records, 625 E. Adams St., will open its doors at 7 a.m. though Record Store Day deals won't be able for purchase until 8 a.m. The store will also have coffee and fruit on hand for its customers.
Among one of the most anticipated releases is Alice in Chains' "We Die Young," a three-track EP originally released in 1990 as promotional-only.
There's a new Taylor Swift release ("The Lakes"), a Black Pumas collector's edition box set, a Ramones box set and Joni Mitchell's "Blue Highlights," a special release with demos.
Vinyl boom
Black said the pandemic may have fueled the vinyl records boom even more.
Vinyl sales in the U.S. nearly doubled, from 21.5 million units in 2020 to 41.7 million units in 2021, according to MRC Data-Billboard, formerly known as Nielsen-SoundScan.
"Yes, we have a lot of music digitally on Spotify and other platforms, but there's nothing that beats that tangible quality of being able to handle some of your favorite albums, put them on the record player and listen to them the way they were made to be listened to, non-digitally," Black said.
"Nothing beats having those (albums I love) on vinyl, so I can handle them, look at the artwork, look at the liner notes, see how the artist wanted to present it and then be able to listen to them that way. It just feels like you're partaking in an experience doing it that way."
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Some collectors, Black said, are rebuilding their vinyl collections, so there's "a nostalgia around it."
There's also a nostalgia around Dumb Records' most recent addition, an arcade featuring pinball machines and other video games.
"I often joke about how people like me are trying to re-create their childhoods and now we have adult money to do that," he said.
Recycled Records markdowns
Every item in Recycled Records in the store is marked down. Its owners, brothers Mark and Gary Kessler, are selling the store that was started by their grandparents as Springfield Furniture in 1910.
The store includes some 70,000 titles of vinyl records, CDs and cassette tapes, plus jewelry, musical instruments, posters, books and a caché of other items.
Some 200 high-end LPs from King Crimson and Pink Floyd, among others, will be on sale starting Friday, according to the store's Facebook page.
Other record stores
The Elf Shelf, 413 E. Adams St., and Prairie Archives, 522 E. Adams St., (on the Old State Capitol Plaza) both sell used records.
Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788, sspearie@sj-r.com, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Record Store Day is back and these Springfield, IL, stores are ready
