It's Record Store Day!!!

I know it's been a while, dear readers (if there are any of you left)... between work and home and everything else that occupies our daily lives, it's easy to lose track of the things that help us feel better about ourselves and our places in life. Today, we here at The Cuddle were brought back into sharp focus by the high holiday on the vinyl-obsessive's calendar...

Record Store Day! Now, while I would argue that every day should be record store day, it's not every day that some of the Ideological Cuddle's favorite bands release limited vinyl editions of their work. Here in the B-lo, we only have two independent record stores left - Record Theatre (with its two remaining locations... alas, once there were 4) and Spiral Scratch (an almost exclusively vinyl house of worship... very cool, very under-the-radar). When the dinosaurs roamed the earth (and the economy wasn't in the toilet), Buffalo was lucky enough to be blessed with two additional independent record stores - the legendary Home of the Hits and New World Record. Each of those locations catered to vinyl-philes as well, but exist no more...

So, bright and early at 10 am (what I thought was the opening time of Record Theatres' Main and Lafayette location), the BFF and I were off to plunder some wax treasure. Much to our surprise, we arrived to find that they were already open... and already plundered to some extent by area hipsters who had flooded The Theatres' usually empty lobby area. The kind folks at RT had set up all of the exclusives at the front of the store, cutting out some of the fun of a treasure hunt across the entire store, and raising the possibility of a fist fight. Luckily, everyone was on their best behavior, despite the lack of copies of the extremely limited edition of the Hold Steady's forthcoming Heaven Is Whenever (I hear there will be a drawing for "the only copy in Buffalo"... whatever) - OK, I assume people other than yours truly were looking for that record. They did have other things in plentiful supply, including the ultra-cool Mastodon Blood Mountain 45rpm remaster in limited edition 2LP gate fold (a little pricey at $44.98), the Tom Waits Mule Variations 11th Anniversary 180-gram 2LP reissue (already own it on vinyl), tons of 7" singles (the Elvis Costello and the Attractions Live at Hollywood High 7" was tempting along with the Neil Young "Heart of Gold" 7" with picture sleeve). I settled on the limited Black Keys 12" single of "Tighten Up", the early release of Josh Ritter's latest masterpiece, So Runs the World Away (with CD version packaged with the LP - bonus!), the beautifully packaged White Stripes double LP version of Under the Great White Northern Lights, and the limited re-release of Swordfishtrombones by Tom Waits (not a Record Store Day exclusive, but a cool purchase none-the-less).

It's good to see so many people jazzed about vinyl again... it's really the best way (other than live in person) to experience music... so long as you have a functioning turntable (as I was writing this post, mine decided to make distorted liver out of the White Stripes tearing through "Jolene". This turntable has been back to the manufacturer once already... really don't want to send it back again).

Until next time, I hope that everyone out there finds some new treasures or discovers some old ones - be it on fresh wax or dusty vinyl. Enjoy.