Vinyl Lives

Back in 2009 we launched a column here at Glide Magazine called Vinyl Lives. The column was dedicated to a deep love of record collecting and the tendency of that love to turn into an obsession. It was also focused on the resurgence of vinyl as the most optimal platform for ingesting music in the […]

While the stream of new vinyl continues to find space in the better record stores, a lot of stuff, both mainstream and underground, is once again easy to find (though I seem to have missed the boat on the last Dead Weather album at my local shop).  However, there is also quite a bit of very nice vinyl that may not find its way to every shop.

Last year, I showed up at Sound Garden, in Baltimore's Fells Point, about an hour after they opened.There were a few people in there and some of the more desirable titles had sold out, but I walked right in and found a lot of what I was looking for with no crowds and no hassles.  This year was a different story.  I got down there right before they opened and the line ran for about two blocks outside of the store.  When I finally got in the store about an hour later, there was still probably 30 people waiting to get in behind me.  Sure, I would have loved to have walked right in, but the bottom line is that Record Store Day was a much bigger event this year than last year and that alone more than made up for the wait.

Recent months have given us some fine vinyl releases and I'll recap some that I've picked up from Side One Dimmy, No Sleep Records, Tiny Engines, Blackheart, Dischord

Jeff over at Imagine Echoes is a music fan with wide-ranging tastes who, until a year or so ago, had never owned a record.  Now, he has over 150, and in addition to building his collection, he's also the auther of the well-respected blog, Imagine Echoes.

Tiny Engines is a brand new label, but they already have a second fantastic 7" under their belts.

This isn't intended to be a comprehensive list of vinyl (or even just the cool vinyl) that's come out over the last few months, but there have been some releases that definitely deserve to be highlighted.

In my last column I discussed the difference between a seller who describes the condition of a record versus one who actually grades the record as well as what questions to ask and what to expect with the former.  This time, I'll discuss the seller who is at least sophisticated enough to attempt to grade as well as the catches involved in dealing with the less-than-concrete world of record grading.

When you go to your local used record shop, it's easy to determine if a record is in the desired condition.  A visual appraisal right there in the store will give you a really good idea of how the record will play.  Sure, it might look clean and still have some surface noise or have visible scuffs and still play clean, but by and large, when you get it home on your turntable, there shouldn't be tremendous deviation from your expectations at the time of purchase.

It seems like there's never a shortage of new holidays that pop up and, sadly, marketing is almost always the force behind them.  Well, add one more to that list:  Record Store Day.  This holiday is certainly about marketing, but it's not quite what you'd expect.  You see, this is about marketing for the underdog, the independent record store.  It's also about community, because, in many ways, that's what these stores are about.

In 1977, at age 6, Glide's Bob Lange bought his first record, Kiss Alive, and started an obsession that's lasted a lifetime.  Welcome to Bob's new column dedicated to that very obsession, "Vinyl Lives"