Record Store Day, every music lover’s favorite holiday, is internationally celebrated each year on the third Saturday in April.
It is a unifying holiday, reminding people all across the world about the joy of purchasing music from local, independently owned record stores.
Despite being only seven years old, Record Store Day is now celebrated by participating stores on every continent except Antarctica. This exciting musical day calls for special CD and vinyl releases, ample music, cookouts, parades and in-store performances by artists both big and small.
Many artists who made special releases on Saturday were releasing either their first vinyl album or their first one in decades. Some big names with releases included: The Allman Brothers, Ray Lamontagne, The Animals, The Civil Wars, CHVRCHES, Sam Cooke, Deer Tick, The Flaming Lips, Fleetwood Mac, Bastille, Kings of Leon, Conor Oberst, Of Montreal, Bruce Springsteen, Notorious B.I.G. and many, many more.
To be a participating store in Record Store Day, a store must be a stand alone B&M retailer, do most business via a physical store location and have a product line consisting of at least half music retail. Oz Music, Tuscaloosa’s own indie record store right off campus, fits the criteria and celebrated Record Store Day this year the right way with an afternoon cook-out and eight in-store performances by local bands, including Knympho Knife, Jimi Squeezebox and the Cajun Gods of Zydeco, Mary Tylosaur and Follow Apollo.
I stopped by in the afternoon with Hannah Grace VanCleave, a senior majoring in public relations, whose father actually co-created the holiday, to hear Kane Root’s in-store performance and experience the high energy of Record Store Day first hand.
Upon entering Oz, I was immediately filled with an overwhelming pride for Tuscaloosa’s music scene. It was immensely refreshing to see a great variation of people young and old, gathered together doing what they love most: listening to music. There were people head-bobbing and foot-tapping, enjoying the show and showing their appreciation, and there were also people scattered across the store, camped out in different genres, grabbing CDs and vinyls left and right.
I was particularly overjoyed to see a father placing a pair of headphones on his young son’s head in the new music release section and handing him a CD case to hold while simultaneously giving him a big “enjoy” pat on the shoulder.
Seeing this small act of love shown through sharing music brought me back to days as a young girl when my own dad would let me tag along with him on his random visits to various record stores across Birmingham, letting me listen to his favorite songs and artists. Those are memories I will never forget, and I owe them to the passionate music appreciators who open stores and make their living out of sharing music.
Something so uniquely special exists in a record store, separating it from any other retail store. In contrast to most stores where people come with a mission-mindset to get what they came for and leave, people oftentimes come to record stores and lose track of time – but do so gladly. It may be one store, but within it, there are thousands of different places to go.
iTunes and Spotify are convenient, of course, but why not take some extra time out of your day to support the people who believe in the physicality of music? Record Store Day may be one day out of the year, but what it stands for is something that deserves constant celebration.
To learn more about other releases you may have missed from Saturday, you can visit recordstoreday.com/SpecialReleases. Now, go support your local record store.
