Record Store Day in Columbus, Ohio

Mark your calendars!  Record Store Day this year is April 20, 2013.  Spoonful Records will open at 9 am with hundreds of limited edition releases.  Most will be snatched up before noon, so we recommend getting here early.

Originally created to bring music lovers back to brick and mortar stores, Record Store Day has grown bigger than just a day to snag a limited-release rare piece of vinyl before the price blows up on eBay.  Record Store Day is a day to celebrate, connect with like-minded collectors, and discover individuality and community all-in-one.

Columbus Monthly did this nice article about it, so read more:

Vinyl Fantasy

Shops, bands and music fans celebrate the charm of favorite albums during Record Store Day.

BY JOHN ROSS

Downtown’s colorful Spoonful Records will pay homage to vinyl with exclusive releases, discounts and other Record Store Day specials.

PHOTOS BY TESSA BERG

The picture sleeves are creased, the grooves worn gray, but I still have nearly all the 45s I played on a plastic turntable my parents gave me at roughly age 5. When you’re a kid, anything that’s yours is automatically important, and a record felt like a personal letter from the band.

I’d blast “Yankee Rose” while studying the chest hair beneath David Lee Roth’s unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt, then gaze longingly at Belinda Carlisle’s flirty portrait on the sleeve that held The Go-Go’s “Our Lips Are Sealed.”

My lifelong love of vinyl was born. It edged into obsession during college when I inherited a family-room cabinet of rock, pop and R&B from my parents and spent days introducing friends to the arty glam of Roxy Music or the minimalist jazz of Thelonious Monk in my small Waldeck Avenue apartment.

On April 20, people like me will celebrate vinyl’s singular charm during the fifth-annual Record Store Day, when shops worldwide offer sales and host in-store concerts. They also sell scores of exclusive releases such as colored vinyl or elaborate box sets that bands prepare specifically for the event.

Die-hard collectors are known to camp on the sidewalk overnight to get limited-edition items, but the event’s designed to bring back anyone who’s ever had a record he played too loudly, wore through and had to replace. At many stores, the day feels more like a low-key house party than a shopping trip, with owners and customers playing and discussing favorite songs.

As customers ditch downloads for a day, store owners encourage music fans to recall the allure of the hard copy—liner notes about an epic recording session, poster inserts designed for a bedroom wall. They want customers to remember vinyl’s rich, warm sound, but also the ritual of sitting down and putting needle to groove for the first time.

Read the whole article at:  http://www.columbusmonthly.com/April-2013/Vinyl-Fantasy/