In rotation: 9/25/17

As the tables turn: Flat, Black & Circular celebrates 40 years in East Lansing: Flat, Black & Circular, an East Lansing record store located on Grand River Ave, is celebrating its 40th anniversary this week. Opened in 1977 on Tuesday, Sept. 26, the self-proclaimed longest running record shop in mid-Michigan is holding a celebration to commemorate four decades of excellence in the record sales business. Co-founders Dave Bernath and Dick Rosemont (Bernath still runs the business) will be in attendance. Flat, Black & Circular is East Lansing’s only record store, however, there used to be many more. Most recently, The Record Lounge in downtown East Lansing shut its doors, but now it’s just Flat, Black & Circular.

Meet Curator Who Travels U.S. Collecting Vinyl for Coachella’s On-Site Record Store: Alex Rodriguez walks into the quant Black and Gold Records in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. The dimly lit store, which also serves coffee and pastries, is filled with not only vinyl but also antiques. The small-framed, long-haired Rodriguez — wearing flared Levi jeans, brown leather boots and a worn Bee Gees ’97 shirt — immediately begins flipping through crates. For the past three weeks, Rodriguez has been driving through the country stopping at various record stores in different cities to collect as much vinyl as he can to fill the on-site record store at Coachella. Aside from curating the seasonal pop-up, he also manages (and shops for) the permanent Glass House Record Store in Pomona, Calif.

Superfly’s Lone Star Music Emporium, San Marcos’ only record store, closing Oct. 31: A post on the business’s Facebook page said it would put some inventory in storage while it figured out the “next step”. “We sincerely hope that San Marvelous has another record store step up in our absence so that our regulars and new collectors alike will have a place to come hang, listen to tunes, talk music and browse through the bins,” owners wrote in the post. The business is located at 202 University Drive, Ste. C, San Marcos, next to Texas State University, and has been open since 2012.

Portion of Main Street to be renamed for Record Theatre founder: Record Theatre may be gone, but the legacy of its founder will go on. The section of Main Street running from Delavan Avenue to Lafayette Avenue and back to Harvard Place that was home to the iconic record store for more than 40 years will be named Leonard “Lenny” Silver Way. A ceremony will be held at 10:30 a.m. Sept. 29 in front of the now-closed retail music store, at 1800 Main Street. Silver opened Record Theatre in November 1976 and it grew to become “The World’s Largest Record Store” with 25,000 square feet of retail space. He provided a gathering place for musicians and music lovers alike to explore and expand their musical experiences.

Back in the groove: How vinyl rose from its sickbed to capture the eyes and ears of millennials: Progress is what the format continues to make. The BPI says that the first half of 2017 saw a 30 per cent rise in vinyl sales compared to the first half of 2016. Usain Bolt on steroids would struggle to keep up with the pace it’s setting. But, as Kim Bayley, chief executive of the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), points out, it took a lot of hard work by her members, particularly her independent members, to get us to this point. “The record business jumped into the CD business and abandoned vinyl when there was still clearly demand – it was only after a sustained campaign from retailers, via Record Store Day, that they started making vinyl LPs available in the numbers we’re now seeing and this has seen the market grow,” she says.