Record Store Day!!

Another "Record Store Day" today! My kind of holiday! Vinyl junkies, geeks and dorks galore in the record store. Wait a minute ..... I'm one of those geeks. Just not the insane variety that stands in a long line for several hours waiting for the doors to open. I mosey on in whenever I get around to it. And glad that I do. From the photos that I've seen it looks like it was a mob scene during the first hour. I probably missed out on some good stories but I'm way too old and lacking in perseverance for this standing-in-line stuff.

It's fascinating to me, the number of kids, teenagers and 20-somethings, that frequent record stores today. Sometimes I think they outnumber us geezers. How did they discover these black discs called records? I feel the urge occasionally to stop and tell them about the grand old days of record stores, the BCD era (before compact discs) when there was three or four in town. When one might go out of business but another would always pop up. When every decent sized town had a record store. When they would burn incense in the store. Long before the internet .... When every store would have the huge Schwann Catalog on the counter for reference. When the majority of the band and musician names on the records were known to me. When I was young!! I wonder if they would listen?

I did pick up a couple Record Store Day limited releases to do my part to observe and honor todays occasion .....

• Typhoon - Prosthetic Love (Piano Version) ..... 7-inch vinyl. A local band!
• The Animals - The Animals No. 2 ..... 10-inch vinyl. From 1965. Their second EP.

Also found .....

• Kai Winding & J.J. Johnson - The Great Kai and J.J. ..... Jazz from 1961. Both are trombonists. Bill Evans on piano. On Impulse Records, another of the great classic Jazz record labels.
• Clyde McCoy - The Uncollected 1938 .... Big Band Swing. From radio broadcasts. On Hindsight Records. Part of a series of enjoyable recordings of different big bands from the 1930's-50's. I've been taking home anything that I can find from this series. History to me. Something my parents may have listened to in their youth which makes it fascinating. With the live narration introducing each song, you almost feel like you are back in those days, in front of your radio.