Port Coquitlam, BC | Pinball Alley’s new owners bringing on the weird: The City of the Arts is about to get weird. That means instead of floral watercolours to hang on the wall, expect the inky punk stylings of I, Braineater…Penny Ball and Kaine Delay have a background in pinup and punk and they think the city’s ready for their vibe. The couple are longtime friends of Pinball Alley’s owners, Heather Wallace and Johnny Barnes, who are upping stakes to chase their lifestyle dreams in Spain. Ball said when she learned the St. Johns Street shop — which has become a destination for audiophiles looking to fill out their vinyl record collections and lovers of mid-century kitsch and knick-knacks — was for sale, she didn’t hesitate. She said after 27 years working for others in retail, she was ready to strike out on her own. Delay, a veteran musician with the Vancouver punk-metal-electronica band Left Spine Down, was on board as well.
Asheville, NC | New vinyl pressing plant will be an immersive food, music and cocktail experience: “Synergy” is a word that comes to Gar Ragland’s mind often as he talks about his proposed project, tentatively named AVL-Vinyl. Ragland, a North Carolina-born music producer, president and CEO of NewSong music, and the Board Chair of the Asheville Area Arts Council, plans to build a vinyl pressing plant in the Asheville Citizen Times building, taking over nearly 10,000 square feet of the ground floor. The Asheville Citizen Times newspaper staff moved back to the second floor of the historic building this week. “We aspire to be one of the country’s leading manufacturers of high-quality vinyl,” Ragland said. “And as we started to put that model together, we realized that Asheville offers a special, unique opportunity, driven by both the homegrown love of music and craft here — as well as the 12 million tourists who come here seeking that here in our town.”
Sacramento, CA | Dimple Records closing after 45 years in Sacramento. The local chain of independent record stores is closing its seven locations. The owners’ son says his parents are looking to retire. Dimple Records is closing the doors on all seven of its locations later in 2019. Andrew Radakovitz is son of co-founders John and Dilyn Radakovitz, who opened Dimple Records in 1974. He reached out to ABC10 to share the news Tuesday evening. “My mom and dad have been doing this for years. Decades,” he said. “It’s basically a retirement sale. They’re both in their mid-70s.” The Greater Sacramento Area chain of independent record stores sells music, movies, collectibles and more. Radakovitz said business has been negatively impacted in recent years by a number of factors, including “some difficulties in regulations, minimum wage.” The liquidation sale starts Wednesday and will last through the summer. While the couple is open to finding the right person to give Dimple Records a second life, Radakovitz said there’s currently no successor in place after a potential buyer fell through.
Record Store Day Thinks the World Needs a 3-Inch Single of Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage”: Record Store Day proper has come and gone this year, but that’s not stopping organizers from releasing more of those “exclusives.” In fact, RSD has decided the world is not complete without a 3-inch vinyl version of Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage,” so that’s exactly what it’s going to get. RSD is marking the 25th anniversary of Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication with a 3-inch vinyl single of the group’s 1994 hit “Sabotage” — because normal vinyl, CDs, tapes and even streaming apparently no longer cut it anymore these days. If you’re a big 3-inch fiend, the single will be released in indie record shops on July 19. It is meant to be played on the RSD3 mini-turntable, and the “Sabotage” single comes in an outer box that reproduces the original 7-inch single (that’s four inches larger for those keeping track) sleeve art and includes a pull-out Ill Communication poster. RSD will press up 2,500 copies of the single. We’ll leave it up to you to decide if that’s an appropriate number for this “limited” pressing.
Stranger Things 3 soundtrack to be released on vinyl: A doo-wop turn in the upside down. Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein’s soundtrack to the third series of retro sci-fi romp Stranger Things is to be released on vinyl, via Lakeshore and Invada Records. Members of the synth-power-pop outfit S U R V I V E, Dixon and Stein have previously drawn heavily on ’80s b-movie soundtrack motifs for the show’s score. However, according to the press release, season 3 will step away from familiar territory, in favour of “the pop sensibilities and melancholic undertones of ’50s doo wop.” As the duo explain, “With the season 3 soundtrack, we’ve made an album that doesn’t feel like a “score” necessarily, but one that feels more like a stand-alone record than a collection of brief cues. We’ve incorporated the main narrative elements of the series and stayed true to the original sound while at the same time expanding on our musical palette — we often pushed it to the limit.”
