Another Record Store Day has come and gone, and though I wasn’t able to grab everything I wanted, I would still consider this my best ever haul for the holiday.
Record Store Day Haul
This year, I opted for just two different record stores, mainly because I have been busy as all hell lately and I didn’t feel like waiting in line, considering I got pretty much everything I wanted at the first two shops. hit. We started the day a lot later than most and popped into the Record Pub in SE Portland. This is a really great record store that I have covered in-depth already, but this shop is about half beer bar and half record store. Like many other record stores around Portland, there were shenanigans going on all day here, including DJs, free mimosas, live music, and more.
This isn’t the biggest record store in the city by any means, but they had a solid selection of Record Store Day releases available. Here, I picked up the Waxahatchee 7, which featured the songs ‘Mud’ and ‘Much Ado About Nothing’. Both of these are fantastic tracks, and if you’re interested in folk or country music in the same tradition as artists like Gillian Welch or Alison Krauss, it will probably be right up your alley.
After that, we popped over to Jackpot Records, on SE Hawthorne. Jackpot is one of the oldest and most well-known shops in the city so I was expecting it to be fairly busy by the time we rolled up around noon. I was right. There was a line about halfway down the block, but things moved pretty quickly, and we were inside in about 20 minutes. The free coffee also helped make the wait more bearable. The bouncer at the front of the shop alerted us to everything that was already sold out. (Oasis, Charli XCX, Post Malone) Jackpot seemed to get just about every single record store day release in abundance so it was more of a “which ones can I afford today?” situation. Eventually I went with: The 13th Floor Elevators – Houston Music Theatre Live, MJ Lenderman and the Wind – Live and Loose, and The Replacements – Tim. There were a couple of others I was eyeballing, but ultimately I was happy to grab everything that was on my list. (Besides Oasis, but I never really stood a chance)
What’s Next for RSD
There are a ton of nay-sayers out there that are against what Record Store Day has become and view it as a cash grab by record labels that requires you to stand in line for hours on end. Is this true? Well, kinda. Most shops that are getting a significant number of the RSD releases will probably have some pretty serious lines, and yes, it feels like a ton of the releases are unnecessary at best. However, Record Store Day was never about special releases. The whole point was to have a day to celebrate your local record store. In that regard, Record Store Day is still extremely important. In many ways, I wish there was less of a focus on the releases themselves and more focus on celebrating record stores and giving yourself an excuse to go out and discover new music.