Columbia, MO | Small Business Saturday draws area shoppers looking for deals: Just hours after Black Friday ended, Columbia residents packed into local storefronts searching for Small Business Saturday deals. Originally created by American Express in 2010, Small Business Saturday, which is always the day after Black Friday, has grown into an unofficial holiday that promotes shopping at small businesses. …Hitt Records, a record store located downtown, participated in a holiday shopping event geared toward music lovers called Record Store Day Black Friday. Kyle Cook, co-owner of Hitt Records, said the event brought in lots of customers. “There is this entire wall of brand-new records available,” Kyle said. For this event, according to Record Store Day’s website, some titles might be exclusively released at independent record stores, which might or might not be available to other retailers in the future.
Toronto, CA | Why BMV may be the best store of its kind in Toronto: In an increasingly digital world, physical media is the attraction. …But with the holiday shopping season upon us, it’s comforting to know that BMV is still there – three stores filled with the items it’s named for: books, magazines and videos – as well as collectibles, vinyl LPs, CDs, comic books, games and art. Stuff. Unlike the prevailing minimalist philosophy of curation that drives so many beloved indie shops, at BMV more is more. “When we were closed during the pandemic, some regular customers would shoot us emails,” says Mike Murray, the manager of BMV’s Bloor Street location in the Annex (the others are on Edward Street downtown and at Yonge and Eglinton). “They’d talk about how browsing here is good for their mental health. Walking the aisles was part of their routine and something they’d look forward to. We’re not saving lives – it’s a used bookstore – but it shows it means something to people.”
Niagara Falls, NY | Records lounge to anchor new-look Niagara Street block: In development circles it is known as the historic Tugby-Lennon block. Many long-time residents in the City of Niagara Falls recognize it as the block of Niagara Street where the Arterial Lounge once served drinks and the Press Box restaurant offered up its famous salads and Pittsburghers. …In total, the project covers 12,531 square feet of renovated space, including interior and facade improvements. The project creates 4,177 square feet of First-floor commercial and retail space, with part of the space already committed to a new tenant — a vinyl record store and listening lounge called Daredevil Records. The store, which allows customers to purchase vintage records and also stay and listen to music on cassette and record players while enjoying beer, wine and other refreshments, will be located inside the renovated space at 324 Niagara St.
Chatham, ON | Chatham Record Show offers some great vinyl finds for collectors: The digital age provides instant access to your favourite music these days, but there are still those who love the richness of sound that comes from a record played on a turntable. Vinyl enthusiasts came out in large numbers to the Chatham Record Show on Saturday at the Moose Lodge Hall to peruse wide variety of records offered by about 20 vendors. Toni Martin and her son Chris Martin, 27, made two trips the show. Toni Martin said she was finding “blast from the past albums that I used to own but didn’t think I would ever need back again, but now I do.” Martin said she had been looking for Janis Joplin’s Greatest Hits and was finally able to find it on Saturday. Chris said he picked up a bunch of records earlier in the day, but came back with his mom to find more records to satisfy his eclectic taste in music.
London, UK | UK Police posed as hip hop record store in undercover sting operation: A new investigation has uncovered that Boombox, a former Hip Hop record store in North London, was actually operated by undercover cops as part of a sting operation. Dubbed “Operation Peyzac,” the half-a-million-pound sting — which was revealed in a detailed report by Vice on Monday (November 21) — was in an effort to control guns and violence in the area – and Metro Police wired the recording studio in the back with CCTV to do so. According to a 2016 Daily Mail report, the operation put 37 alleged “armed criminals” and drug dealers behind bars for a cumulative total of 400 years. Vice reports the majority were Black and between the ages of 16 and 41. “The undercover officers sought to portray themselves as having unspecified criminal links in order to infiltrate relevant persons to gather evidence on their levels of criminality,” Abbas Nawrozzadeh, a senior consultant solicitor at Eldwick Law, told Vice: “This was one of the largest undercover operations in London in recent years.”
UK | ‘I’d be stupid to stop it now!’ The man with the only complete collection of UK No 1 singles: Dave Watson is the proud owner of 1,404 chart-toppers. He looks back on three decades of tracking down obscure vinyl records – and reveals how he copes in the digital era. For 70 years, the UK singles chart has been a constant in our lives: a weekly countdown humming along in print, on TV and the radio. But to Dave Watson, it’s more than just background noise: it’s a lifestyle. The 55-year-old has been collecting copies of UK No 1 hits since the late 1980s; today, he owns all 1,404 UK No 1 singles, reaching back to the birth of the charts in 1952. He believes it’s the only complete collection of its kind. Watson’s devotion to the charts began when he was given a Guinness Book of Hit Singles one Christmas. Starting a collection made sense: with a mother who had worked in a record store, he grew up in a musical household and he enjoyed collecting things. “I just looked at the list at the back of the book and thought: ooh, it might be quite a good idea!” he says, speaking from his home in Dunstable.
How the world’s first 45 RPM record changed music forever: On Family Fortunes, if the question cropped up to name the most famous musical figures in history, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart would not be far from the top of the list. However, unlike The Beatles and their contemporaries occupying the slots surrounding the little pompadour prodigy, Mozart himself was never actually recorded. In fact, aside from a coterie of the European elite, in his short 35 years between 1756 and 1791, nobody had ever heard the man himself play. Back in those days, the class system was the defining element of music, but technology would soon change that. The gramophone might have changed that when the first sound was captured in Paris by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. Scott’s recording of the French folk song ‘Au Clair de la Lune’ (‘By the Light of the Moon’) from April 9, 1860, might sound like an eerie mess but the groundwork was in place. Nevertheless, despite constant development thereafter, the technology still wasn’t fit for the explosion of pop culture.
Frederick, MD | After father’s death, daughter of famous collector tasked with determining fate of 15,000 records: …It took Anderson a few weeks after Bussard died to get up the nerve to enter the basement of her childhood home. Even now, she said, it feels weird to stand by her father’s collection without him looming nearby. The stickers that dictated the rules of her childhood — “PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH RECORDS” — are still on the shelves. The way the records are organized also remains a mystery, even after Anderson’s boyfriend catalogued each one on a spreadsheet. Moving the collection to anywhere besides Bussard’s basement — where it has lived since he moved to the house with his wife, the late Esther Bussard, in around 1968 — will be a formidable task. The kind of records Bussard has are more fragile than the vinyls of today. Not only are they old, but most were pressed in a different, less flexible kind of material called shellac. If you bend a vinyl record, it will flex to a certain point. If you bend a 78, it will snap.
Totally Wired – an Essential History of the Music Press: A glorious romp through rock’s back pages. Once upon a time, before the internet, before cable TV, before pop music coverage started turning up in “real” newspapers and magazines, the music press was the only reliable source for news and information. Once a week, once a fortnight, once a month… it depended upon where your reading choice took you… there it would be. The new Creem, the new Trouser Press, Record Mirror, Disc, Tiger Beat, Rolling Stone, Street Life, ZigZag – there were dozens of the things. Some lasted forever. Melody Maker launched in 1925, the NME (as Accordion Times & Musical Express) in 1946, 16 in 1957. Others barely got off the ground before they were planted back into it – National Rock Star, New Music News. But all had their dedicated readers, and all had the same purpose in mind. To chronicle what was happening in the wonderful world of pop and, via the penmanship of some truly brilliant writers, help shape their readership’s choice in listening. It’s a fascinating story, and it’s a vast one, too.
