REMY: Record Store Day 2014

Vinyl hunter frenzy, 40% off all records

in the newly opened HMV on Grafton Street today

I'm not long back from my first Record Store Day experience and I'm very pleased with my purchases, most record shops opened at 8am, with Tower Records even providing espressos and finger-food for punters queuing for the shop to open. My diligence didn't stretch that far though and I made my way in just after 10am, slightly worried there would be nothing decent left, but thankfully I wasn't disappointed.

In a nutshell, Record Store Day is on the third Saturday of April each year and began in 2007 to celebrate the culture of the independent music store. It's popularity has grown rapidly and the main staple of the day is limited edition releases on both vinyl and CD, there were 10 limited releases in it's first year but this has grown into the hundreds now. Each year has a different ambassador for the occasion which have included Metallica, Ozzy Osborne, Josh Homme from Queens of The Stone Age, Iggy Pop, Jack White, and this year, Chuck D from Public Enemy. Another great feature of the day is the live acts performing in the record shops, with Conor O'Brien from Villagers due in Tower later this afternoon, at 4pm

Tower Records, Dawson St., my lovely assistant in pink,

it was elbows out & survival of the quickest in there

One of the slightly disappointing sides of Record Store Day is people deliberately buying up extra copies of records with the sole intention of going straight home and charging multiple times the price on eBay or discogs.com. I suppose they are being entrepreneurial in one sense and that's the nature of the beast when you're dealing with limited quantities, but vinyl can be expensive enough as it is, I've even seen some of the records I bought this morning on eBay already for 4 times what I paid for it.

This has been a growing concern around RSD, that it's becoming an opportunity for both record labels and the aforementioned sneaks to take advantage of the average punter. It's almost inevitable and unavoidable though, anything which grows with success and time will be subject to such drawbacks, having said that, for the time being it's still nice to see a very busy day in the smaller record shops once a year and to go home with a bag full of good records.

Some of today's purchases, Pixies, John Grant,

Sam Cooke, The Yardbirds & Richard Hawley

Well, that's pretty much it, I spent enough time waffling about records in my previous post so I'll just leave you with a video of one of the above spinning on the record player and a photo or two, in the meantime, I'm off to sell one of my kidneys.