April 17th, 2010 is Record Store Day which is a one day a year event where artists from all over submit to independent record stores rare EP’s, LP’s on vinyl and CD that are only made for this special event. The reason being that independent record stores are a hard find these days when just 15 years ago it seems almost every single town had one. I remember good old Soundwave in Manasquan, NJ that charge 17 dollars a CD, Yikes! But besides that they offered tons of vinyl as well as an incredible used CD selection that often had bands I was interested in. The problem Soundwave had, besides it’s unreasonable prices, was the shear competition of stores like Nobody Beats The WIZ and the more prevalent Best Buy today, who buy CD’s in bulk which enables them to sell at much lower prices. It seems the movie Empire Records wasn’t too far off on what corporations would do to the music industry in the near future and how it made sense that the independent store just wouldn’t be able to compete, oh and it’s a great movie by the way.
Record Store Day is the artists last stand for the local record store and every year their are dozens of bands who submit really cool EP’s on 7″ vinyl that hold rare tracks and cover songs that you can’t get anywhere else. Last year one of my favorite bands The Gaslight Anthem released a 10 track live LP for sale at Record Store Day and it sold out immediately so I wasn’t fortunate enough to get it. But this year is different and Beach House has just announced as one of the earlier bands to release a special EP with rare tracks and mixes off of their latest album Teen Dream. I can’t wait till more artists start coming out of the wood work to announce they will be part of this cool new holiday and hope to god somebody I least expect. Either way I hope you check out your local record store, if you still have one, on this day and pick up something cool. In the mean time you can keep yourself posted on the website below.