Celebrate Record Store Day!

rsdToday, Saturday April 18th, is Record Store Day! When was the last time you visited your local independent record store? Get off your blog-reading butt and into your local record store. No cash? No problem. Many labels like Merge, Redeye, Rounder and Fat Possum all have free CDs or records featuring artists like Superchunk, M. Ward, The Magnetic Fields, Spoon, The Broken West, Bell X1, Faunts, Delta Spirit, Ween, and Wavves. There are free t-shirts. and eco-friendly shopping bags, too.

No independent record stores near you? Screaming toddler you can’t find a sitter for? No worries! Visit the best vicariously through Spin’s recent “15 Best Independent Record Stores” article.

I’m lucky enough to have a Rasputin’s Music Store just a mile from my suburban home. It’s been a glorious day so far. It’s a record breaking 78 degrees out. I took my 10 year old daughter with me for a lesson in the history of record shopping. We certainly turned a few geeky heads as we wandered the isles of Rasputin’s and I explained how in “the good old days” we had to go to an actual store to purchase and find out about new music. When we got home, I dusted off my Bang and Olufsen record player, and cracked open a few of the 7″ singles. She looked incredibly surprised that such a relic was in amongst our working audio components and commented quizzically, “That’s a record player?!? I thought it was one of those things that you had to crank a handle to make go.”

Goodies I picked up today include:

Record Store Day exclusive Death Cab for Cutie green and yellow T-shirt

Leonard Cohen: “The Future”/”Suzanne” 7″ [Columbia] — both tracks from Live in London.

Leonard Cohen/El Perro Del Mar split 7″ [Rhino] — Li, in a mellow mode covers Wendy Rene’s 1964 soul meditation “After Laughter [Comes Tears]

The Smiths: “The Headmaster Ritual” 7″ [Rhino] — A reproduction of the rarest Smiths 7″ picture sleeve. It’s backed with the meh instrumental “Oscillate Wildly”. I think “Paint a Vulgar Picture” would’ve been a much more apt choice. Reissue! Repackage! Repackage!

Andrew Bird/Loney Dear split 7″

Flaming Lips/Black Keys split 7″

New Order Temptation 7″

Two I couldn’t find were:

Vetiver: “Wishing Well”

Grizzly Bear: “While You Wait for the Others” / “He Hit Me” (Live on KCRW 7″)

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