New York, NY | Rough Trade NYC outlines how August’s Record Store Day event will work: The first of three 2020 Record Store Day Drops happens Saturday, August 29. (The other two “Drop” events happen September 26 and October 24, each with exclusive titles.) In NYC, not all record stores are up and running again, but one that is and will be participating in RSD20 is Brooklyn’s Rough Trade. Unsurprisingly, they’ve announced this year will work a little differently than usual. Rough Trade will be open on 8/29 from 9 AM to 5 PM and the store will be enforcing health and safety guidelines, including “always maintaining 6 feet of distance with other customers and wearing a face covering in store, at all times.” As all NYC venues are still closed, there are no live performances this year (or sales of food or alcohol) and their restrooms will not be open. As store access will be limited, Rough Trade is asking that all customers looking for the day’s Record Store Day exclusive titles come prepared with a wishlist of what you want. They’ve made a printable wishlist form of all the titles they’ll be carrying on 8/29 that you can fill out and hand off to employees. “Please keep in mind that you may not get everything on your list and that the titles on the list may change.”
New York, NY | A drive-by eulogy for New York City’s record stores: Just before lockdown, the indie-rock band Real Estate paid tribute to the now defunct record shops that nurtured its rise by performing a series of guerrilla-style concerts, or “out-stores,” in front of them. …The record store has been eulogized plenty, but, for anyone who came of age before the streaming era, it was a formative and necessary space. Now that music is a digital commodity, it’s easy to dismiss record collecting as a pretentious affectation, but the practice continues to hold a certain kind of outré allure. (“High Fidelity,” Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel about the romantic devastations of an obsessive record-store owner, was made into a film in 2000, and then adapted again this year, as a Hulu TV series, starring Zoë Kravitz.) New York still has excellent record stores—Record Shop, in Red Hook, or Academy Records Annex, in Greenpoint, or 2 Bridges Music Arts, in Chinatown—but they have come to feel like obscure specialty markets. Record Store Day, a holiday devised to celebrate brick-and-mortar shops, was postponed this spring, owing to covid-19, and is now being held on three dates, beginning on August 29th. One hopes that there will still be record stores to celebrate.
Record Store Recs: Chicago House Hero Marshall Jefferson On Representation In Dance Music: …In 1986, Chicago DJ/producer Marshall Jefferson released the ecstatic, piano-led “The House Music Anthem (Move Your Body)” on legendary local imprint Trax Records, unleashing a quintessential building block of house music that took the scene by storm. It is credited as the first track to bring piano (inspired by Elton John, nonetheless) into the emerging house music sound he and fellow OG DJs were creating in the Chicago and New York City underground. Following that pivotal moment, he stayed active and innovative in the Chicago underground until the late ’90s, DJing clubs and releasing countless classics under his various aliases and collabs, including “The Jungle” as the Jungle Wonz in 1986, “Open Our Eyes” in 1988. In the 2000s, he began to focus more time on DJ gigs and relocated to London (and later Manchester, where he still resides) to be closer to the European clubs he was being booked at.
Lund, SE | A miniature record store for mice has popped up in Sweden: Ricotta Records is the latest work by art collective Anonymouse to turn heads in the city of Lund: Destiny’s Cheese. Rats Against the Machine. Lady Gouda. Rodents can stock up on all their favourites at the diminutive Ricotta Records, which is drawing many a quizzical look in the southern Swedish city of Lund. It’s the latest mouse-themed artwork by Swedish collective Anonymouse and follows the opening of the ‘Cicada Pharmacy’ on another street in the city in July. Of their latest work, which has records by the likes of Johnny Cashew and Minor Enemy in the window, the collective said: ‘We would like to thank the municipality of Lund for inviting us and encouraging really small business owners.’ Their first installation, the super-scaled-down façades of a French deli and an Italian restaurant, appeared in Malmö back in 2016, and since then they’ve produced everything from a gas station in the city of Borås to a jazz club in Bayonne, France. Because it’s actually quite hard to spot these things IRL (and they’re all very much temporary), here are some of Anonymouse’s most eye-popping creations from past years.
The Kinks’ Dave Davies taking part in Twitter listening party for his 2020 Record Store Day release: Kinks guitarist Dave Davies will help fans celebrate the August 29 release of a limited-edition 20th anniversary vinyl reissue of his Rock Bottom: Live at the Bottom Line album by taking part in a Twitter listening party that’s scheduled for Monday, August 24, at 12 p.m. ET. The album will be re-released as a two-LP set pressed on silver and red vinyl on August 29 as part of the first date of the three-date 2020 Record Store Day campaign. During the listening event, which is being presented by Newbury Comics, Davies will be on hand to chat about the reissue and to field fans questions. Fans can submit their queries via Twitter by using the hashtag #DaveDaviesxNewbury. Rock Bottom: Live at The Bottom Line, which originally was released in 2000, was recorded at a 1997 solo club show Davies played in New York City. The album features renditions of Kinks classics such as “Tired of Waiting,” “All Day and All of the Night” and “You Really Got Me, a variety of deep cuts from Dave’s famous band, select tunes from his solo career and a few covers, as well as some onstage banter.
