In rotation: 2/7/18

A guide to record shops in Cambridge: For the past few years, we’ve been bombarded with news stories telling us that vinyl records are finally making a comeback. In 2016, the tides fully turned as records overtook CDs as the most-sold physical form of music in the UK. If you’re looking for vintage and rare classics to add to your collection, or are just looking for the best new releases to put on your turntable, here are the locations in Cambridge you should visit…Hidden away towards the end of Mill Road, Relevant Record Cafe offers an extensive range of new release and collectable pre-owned vinyls ready for you to buy. Before you even enter the store, a quick glance on the Relevant website will show you all the staff recommendations of the best new music- so you can try before you buy.

Cleveland.com’s new ‘Two Nick’s’ music podcast: Talking vinyl with Gotta Groove and Wax Mage Records & more: Tucked within St. Clair-Superior’s Tyler Village, Cleveland’s Gotta Groove Records pressing plant churns out more than a million records a year. Founded in 2009, the factory is responsible for making vinyl records for everyone from your favorite local bands to international acts. Gotta Groove is also home to another project that’s garnering national attention in the art and music world. Employee Heath Gmucs is the founder of Wax Mage Records, which makes experimental, one-of-a-kind hand-poured vinyl at the Gotta Groove headquarters.

Musical mystery: Record collector seeks info on Athens-based single: Have you ever heard the song “I Was Wrong” by The Rocking Reactions? What about its flip side, “Wednesday Night”? If you haven’t, don’t worry; it’s likely not many people have. However, a local record collector would like to know more about it. Michael Sharritt said he found the record in a local store. It immediately caught his eye because the 45-rpm single originated here. The red Star Records label also says the song was produced by Athens-based Crown Productions. The only other information it contains are the names of the songwriters — Ray McCafferty wrote “I Was Wrong,” while “Wednesday Night” was penned by McCafferty and Steve Howard…There seems to be little known about Star Records or Crown Productions, however.

A record label is about to start shipping vinyl copies of NASA’s famous golden records: After years of effort, a group of music aficionados is finally bringing the full auditory experience of NASA’s famous Voyager golden records to turntables all over the world. NASA debuted its golden records — an album of messages, images, and audio meant as a record of Earth for aliens — before the nuclear-powered Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes launched in 1977. Though they weren’t the first golden rockets sent to deep space, the records are considered the most ambitious time capsules of their kind…The company already shipped backers some 10,000 early copies, but the $98, three-vinyl-LP box set is now available for sale to the wider public. According to Ozma Records’ sales page, the remastered golden records will begin shipping in mid-February.

Is the greatest hits album dead? Physical albums on CD and vinyl now make up just over one-third of the market, with the rest coming from digital downloads…But increasingly, the decline of physical product means the end of compilations that span an artist’s career and cherry-pick the best tunes: the “greatest hits” albums that used to be a reliable cash-cow for record companies. Online music magazine Pitchfork saw this trend coming a couple of years back. “In the digital era, once a catalogue enters a streaming service or an MP3 store, there’s no need for a reissue and, therefore, there’s no reason for a label to mine the vaults,” according to contributor Stephen Thomas Erlewine. “Users can assemble their own personalised greatest hits playlists or just scan through an act’s most accessed songs.”

‘The B-Side’ revives a vanished strain of American music: In 1964, Bruce Jackson took a tape recorder to Texas and rescued a dying piece of history. The University at Buffalo professor’s 1965 album, “Negro Folklore From Texas State Prisons,” features spirituals, work songs, poetry and scripture sung by inmates toiling in the state’s agricultural prison farms. Many of the songs and styles Jackson preserved, carried on slave ships from Africa and tinged with the pain and brutality of the antebellum South, would soon disappear from the culture when American prisons began to integrate in the next decade. Almost 50 years later, New York City-based performer Eric Berryman came across a used copy of Jackson’s record on vinyl. The music moved him so deeply that he approached a New York theater company with the idea of mounting a performance based entirely on the record.

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