So, Record Store Day 2015 has been and gone, and yet again independent record stores up and down the country were full of charity shop-jumper-wearing-hipsters fighting for their favourite band’s limited edition RSD release. How very indie of them.
Back in the day, records were all the rage. Everyone who was anyone owned an immense record collection consisting of The Smiths, Joy Division and The Clash. Decades later and people still can’t seem to get enough of records – they are the grandfather of CD’s and the great-grandfather of torrents – and aren’t they just so much classier?
A certain demographic of today’s youth – the ones who hang around Brick Lane wearing Aztec print jumpers and boat shoes mainly – appear to be infatuated with old things. Vintage clothing, Factory Records, Dr Martens – the list goes on-and-on. I must admit that, to some extent, I fall into this category.
I have spent innumerable days in Manchester exploring the charity shops and looking for cheap woolly jumpers, or browsing through Piccadilly Record’s mountainous collection, as I found this much more enjoyable being rammed into by hyper-active school kids in the Arndale’s food court.
I vaguely remember spending a lot of my teenage years listening to Spandau Ballet on my record player whilst wrapped up in my duvet in my sub-zero bedroom in North Wales, or spinning some T-Rex in the morning whilst getting ready for college. Even though I wasn’t alive in the seventies and eighties, there appears to be something rather nostalgic about owning a record player – they are just so much better than that crappy playlist you made on ITunes.
Student, Curt McArdle, 20, says: “I think Record Store Day is great because it brings to light how popular records really are, I usually make the effort to head out to Rough Trade every year for it.”
Whenever one of my favourite bands release a new album I will usually always head to the nearest record store to purchase it, as I find it so much better to own a tangible item than a torrent. When we purchase records we tend to listen to them the whole way through. By listening to an album in its entirety you get much more of a feel for the band, as opposed to browsing through FrostWire and illegally downloading the band’s latest single and discarding the remaining songs on the album.
Milly Rochelle, 27, graphic designer from Hackney says: “I think it’s great that records are slowly making a comeback, I also think that it’s great to see many modern albums being released on vinyl. Record Store Day is great because there are so many limited edition releases and because of this record stores in London are buzzing.”
Record Store Day proves that vinyl is very much alive and prominent in the music world, even in the 21st century. Maybe ten years from now we will see kids going mental over cassette tapes. Who knows?
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