10 Highlights From Jack White’s Interview at Making Vinyl Conference: The lifelong vinyl devotee delivered a lively and passionate keynote Q&A for the Making Vinyl conference on Monday evening in White’s home town of Detroit, where he opened Third Man Pressing — the first plant in 35 years to open in the U.S. with brand new presses — over seven months ago. Accompanied by his mother and several Third Man staffers and questioned by his nephew and Third Man principle Ben Blackwell (a White Stripes roadie during his teen years and drummer in the Dirtbombs), White spoke to the gathering of nearly 300 manufacturers, suppliers and retailers, rallying the troops about his love of vinyl and his hopes for the industry’s continued growth. White’s talk did not dismiss more contemporary modes of listening to music — or experiencing any art, for that matter — but the 35-minute session made a convincing case for the value of vinyl, speaking to but also gallivanting the converted.
New Lexington store capitalizing on renewed interest in vinyl records: It was a love for music and awareness of this return to records among consumers that prompted Lexington local Kingsley, “D.J. Kingpin” Waring to open Turntable City at 202 West Main Street in the heart of Lexington. Kingpin says his store has a ton of full albums, 12-inch singles, and all musical genres in stock. The store will have more titles for purchase during the holiday season. Pricing averages out at around $7 per record, with discs available from $1 to $15. Turntable City is another exciting new business in Lexington, and especially in the downtown area.
Vinyl records making a comeback in Marquette County: Blackrocks Brewery hosted a “pop-up” vinyl sale Sunday afternoon. The event invited members of the community to see what Marquette area’s Gitche Gumme Records has to offer along with the chance to buy some new music. Gitche Gumme Records has a shop in the basement of the Masonic Building on Washington Street in downtown Marquette. They’re getting ready for their grand re-opening next month. The disc jockey spinning records on Sunday says, these “pop-up” style events are a great way to reintroduce the public to vinyl music.
Record show to spin for the 13th year: Record lovers, rejoice: the Tucson Record Show is back. Nov. 11, there’s the chance to peruse 45s, LPs and music memorabilia from as many as 20 different vendors. The event — this is the 13th annual one — offers visitors an opportunity to get a closer look at Tucson’s record scene, which Bruce Smith, one of the record show’s organizers, said he sees resurging. Smith has been collecting records for more than 50 years and buying and selling them through his business, Cassidy Collectibles, for 25 years. “There’s never been as many record stores in Tucson at one time since maybe the late ‘70s,” Smith said, counting at least four records stores that he knows of. “People are getting into the business because there’s a demand for it.”
Vinyl is the new Netflix (but the old DVDs-on-demand Netflix): Vinyl records won’t stop breaking records. Physical LPs-in spite of all the times they’ve been predicted to die since they were first popularized in the 1950s-have more than survived the music-streaming boom, so much that their sales are actually helping bolster the troubled music business at large. Still, the fact remains that collecting records in the modern day can be cumbersome, expensive, and difficult to justify when considering the existence of cheap, buffet-style digital subscription services like Spotify and Apple Music. And so there is a natural solution: Vinyl, too, is going subscription. Celebrity artists like Elton John and Quincy Jones in recent months have thrown their weight behind subscription-vinyl services, of which there are now more than a dozen. (Count us out. —Ed.)
Hi Fi Fight Club changes name to Heavy Vinyl before last issue’s debut: BOOM! Studios is notifying retailers that Hi-Fi Fight Club #4 will now be titled Heavy Vinyl #4, shortly before its release at the end of the month. Heavy Vinyl, by Carli Usdin and Nina Vakueva, follows a group of women who work in a record store and act as vigilantes. Issue #4 is the last issue of the mini-series. Expect the collected edition to reflect the name change when it’s released in April 2018. Luckily for those who can’t read, the logos still look similar.
