Rock Island, IA | Ragged Records to open Rock Island store: After a decade in downtown Davenport, Ragged Records & Music plans to expand Sept. 24 to the second floor of the former Laborspace building next to Rozz-Tox at 2108 3rd Ave., Rock Island. Owner Bob Herington said the store will offer new and used vinyl and CDs, vintage stereo equipment and music gear, amps, guitars, keyboards and music accessories. Unlike the store at 418 E. 2nd St., Davenport, which is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, the Rock Island store plans evening hours later in the week. Herington is tentatively planning to be open later on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays…Burns also said the new store will be a place people can visit after work. “It will be good to have extended hours,” he said. “People special order records. They come over every Friday when the new records come out.”
San Rafael, CA | A Positive Spin: Vinyl lives on in the Digital Era. …In the North Bay, the local record store lives on in shops like Santa Rosa’s Last Record Store, which has been operating since 1983, and San Rafael’s Red Devil Records, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary. The record-buying bug bit Barry Lazarus as a teenager driving around to record stores in his native Los Angeles, and he’s been a music fanatic ever since. Moving to the Bay Area at 19, he’s lived in the region for 40 years, and he just marked 20 years of owning and running Red Devil Records. “I lived in San Francisco back when it was a lot rougher than it is now, and I had a stressful job, and I was trying to think of what would be the opposite of that,” Lazarus says. “I decided opening a record store in the North Bay would be the opposite of having a stressful job.”
One of the rarest punk records in the world has appeared on Discogs: One of supposedly only nine original copies of the Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save the Queen’ is now being sold on Discogs. Before signing to Virgin Records and officially releasing ‘God Save the Queen’, a song that declared the arrival of punk into the mainstream, the Sex Pistols were originally signed to A&M Records. However, just six days after they were signed on March 10th 1977, A&M’s owner, Herb Alpert, destroyed the contract, due to the Sex Pistols’ volatile nature. Subsequently, the 25,000 copies already pressed were destroyed by A&M. However, nine promo copies are thought to have survived, making them some of the rarest records pressed in the UK. Genuine originals have a serrated anti-slip necklace and ‘7284’ written twice on the B-side runout. The record has ‘God Save the Queen’ on the A-side and ‘No Feelings’ on the B-Side.
Rolling Stones Curate ‘Confessin’ the Blues’ Compilation: …Confessin’ the Blues fittingly opens with Waters’ “Rollin’ Stone” and features other classics like Berry’s “Little Queenie,” Howlin’ Wolf’s “Litle Red Rooster” and Bo Diddley’s “You Can’t Judge a Book By It’s Cover.” The collection will also boast tracks from Elmore James, Little Walter, John Lee Hooker, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Jimmy Reed, Robert Johnson, B.B. King and Buddy Guy…Confessin’ the Blues is available to pre-order in several formats, including a two-CD set, a double LP vinyl set and a special vinyl bookpack meant to mimic the original packaging of 78 rpm records. All versions will come with liner notes from music journalist Colin Larkin, while the bookpack will feature removable card prints featuring drawings by blues illustrator Christoph Mueller. Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood contributed the album art with his interpretation of a bluesman.
