Dayton, OH | Blind Rage Records to close, leaves lasting mark on Dayton music scene: ‘Other people picked up the slack and saw that this is just a thing you can do.’ Blind Rage Records—a DIY hub for Dayton’s punk and hardcore scene—will close March 22, owner Gwen Downing-Groth announced on social media. “Thank you to everyone that ever came to the shop, bought records, traded records, sold us records, shared laughs, cried with us, moshed with us, truly f— lived with us,” she wrote in the post. “Blind Rage was always about being for the community and I still feel it was a massive success and take an immense amount of pride in all we accomplished over the past (just shy of) six years.” Blind Rage will throw live and in-store events throughout the month, sending off the shop in true DIY, indie and punk fashion. This includes a stacked show Saturday, March 21—with many familiar faces from previous bills—followed by a quiet denouement on its final day.
Buffalo, NY | Black Dots Records & Bar, with Live Music in the “Garage Room.” It takes a lot to surprise me these days. But just the other night I came across an unexpected occurrence that really made me happy. It was Saturday, and my buddy and I decided to head out to have a couple of beers. We started off at one of my favorite bars—Turning Bridge Tavern in Back Rock. From there, we headed to Gypsy Parlor to get some food. At around 10:30pm, we decided to call it a night, and began walking to the car. As we passed by Black Dots Records & Bar, I noticed that they were still open, as people were still browsing the rows of vinyl. And that’s when I remembered that there was in fact, a bar in the back of the record shop. Not only was there a bar, there was also a performance area in the far back “garage room.”
Seattle, WA | Sub Pop Records leaving Denny Triangle for Seattle’s waterfront: The age-old independent record label Sub Pop Records, based in Seattle, will relocate from its Denny Triangle store to Seattle’s waterfront on April 1. Sub Pop announced it will move to a 2,688-square-foot store inside the nearly 115-year-old Maritime Building at 908 Alaskan Way for its new Sub Pop Waterfront location. A sign was posted in the window of the label’s former Amazon re:Invent tower space, a building on Amazon’s campus that houses 5,000 employees, indicating it was “closing up shop” and heading South. The record label closed its store inside Amazon’s re:Invent tower on March 8 after five years in the space, according to The Puget Sound Business Journal.
Everett, WA | Apollo Exos, hub for brews and tunes, will expand: When Sotirios Rebelos started collecting records again, he couldn’t stop himself. As a kid, vinyl was an integral part of his life. But when he got busier as an adult and slowed down his record buying, he realized he missed that aspect of his life—something he said kept him in focus. The next thing he knew, he was scrolling through online forums and buying entire collections from people as he built up a massive catalog of records on his own. “I couldn’t stop,” Rebelos said. “And I’m like, might as well open up a record store.” Since it opened in August 2024, his shop, Apollo Exos Records—a beer bar and record shop in Everett’s downtown core—has become a hub for brews and tunes.
It was worse! Lights reportedly turned themselves on and off in the studio! Equipment, which fails all the time, inexplicably failed! And what was producer Martin Birch’s punishment for meddling in the dark arts? He was involved in a traffic accident involving a mini-bus sardined with real live nuns. Papal penguin punishers! Who probably had to be restrained from ruler-whipping him to death! And the cost of repairs? £666! And he didn’t have collision insurance!
Liverpool, UK | Jacaranda Record’s ‘huge announcement’ 10 years in the making: Graham Stanley, director of Jacaranda Records, said: “There is currently no facility like it in the UK.” Liverpool’s Jacaranda Records has announced bands, artists and people will be able to create their own vinyl records in the Baltic Triangle location. The collaboration with Fat Monkey Studios, a local vinyl cutting company, has been in the aether for more than a decade. Jacaranda Records will make use of Fat Monkey Studios for its Jac Cuts project, an initiative where Jacaranda works with artists to create unique releases and special editions of existing records. The first release will be exclusive to Jacaranda Records Record Store Day customers. Graham Stanley, director of Jacaranda Records, said: “What this means, any band, no matter how small, can now release 
Denver, CO | PigStyle becomes Loveland’s newest—and only—record store: Arjan Shaw launched new business after DOGE cuts affected his career. Arjan Shaw wanted to be his own boss. After he was laid off from his software engineering job when budget cuts from the Department of Government Efficiency canceled work his company was doing for the United States Department of Agriculture, he began to consider what that would involve. He had experience in landscaping, and enjoyed being outdoors in the summer, but that was ultimately just another job, another salary, and he wanted to pursue a passion. He found it in music, and after plenty of effort opened PigStyle, Loveland’s newest, and currently only, record store. “I’ve always been a collector myself, and (the record business) hasn’t been swallowed up by the box stores,” he said. “
Bristol, UK | Record shop to showcase local heavy metal female artists: The upcoming Mothering Sunday is expected to bring together some of the proverbial mothers of the city’s heavy metal art scene under one roof. The South West’s only specialised heavy metal record shop, Black City Records, will host the event. Heavy metal may conjure up sights and sounds of distorted guitars and abrasive noise, but that is only one aspect of a genre—it is as much 
North Liberty, IA | After flipping vinyl to pay for film school, Isaac Smith now operates a store of his own: Zig Zog’s Records in North Liberty. The vinyl collector bug bit Isaac Smith hard after he asked his parents for a turntable on his 13th birthday. After acquiring a few thousand records since that pivotal moment in 2015, the Bettendorf native recently opened a record store of his own in North Liberty. …I first met Smith at a record fair in the summer of 2022. While making small talk at his booth, I learned that he was selling records to cover the cost of attending the University of Iowa—a self-made Vinyl Revival Scholarship, if you will. Coincidentally, it turned out that he had already enrolled in my Music & Social Change class that fall semester (for which he wrote a final paper titled “The Beach Boys Encounter Counter Culture”). I kept buying LPs from this tall young man over the years, and by this point, I have shelled out about as much as he paid in tuition to take my class, 
