Stuff I Got on Record Store Day

I really hit the jackpot yesterday at my local record emporium. First of all, to celebrate the purchase of my new turntable and in acknowledgment of my middle-age status, I picked up some used vinyl, all of it replacing cassettes I've owned since the mid-1980s: Peter Wolf's Lights Out, David & David's Boomtown, John Fogerty's Centerfield, and the Replacements' Tim. Woot! I also picked up R.E.M's latest, which is really as much a return to their former glory as most of the reviews have been saying, and a 2-CD compilation of Thelonious Monk (for the price of a single CD). All of my selections were 20% off, which was an added bonus.

Apparently, purchasing vinyl selections on Record Store Day was the right choice, because there were a number of vinyl-only freebies awaiting the discriminating music consumer. Once I brought my selections to the counter, the store owner, Tim, began loading me up with all kinds of schwag, including two full-length vinyl samplers from Columbia and Universal, as well as a Destroyer/Wye Oak split 7" from Merge. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Also bestowed on me were the following CDs:

Redeye Distribution sampler
Fontana Distribution sampler
Best of Indie Rock sampler
Best of Metal sampler
Black sampler
Vice Records sampler (a DJ mix)
Happy Birthday to Me: a Sub Pop 20th anniversary sampler
and an EP of Paolo Nutini's "Live Sessions" (I've never heard of him before.)

Now, whether or not these samplers contain any interesting music remains to be heard, but the sheer amount of free music being handed out was a pleasant surprise. I was also given a 2008 Rhino Records wall calendar and offered a bunch of free stickers and pins.

So, not a bad haul overall. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I will spend hours at a time in a record store, whether or not I'm being offered free schwag, but it was nice to see a lot of the record labels getting into the spirit of the day and providing so much free music. This doesn't do much to dispel the average record label's insistence on shooting themselves in the proverbial foot by refusing to adapt to their customers' preferences as far as digital accessibility, or their attempts to criminalize their most loyal consumer base, but at least the local indie joints had one day out of the year where the labels were helping, rather than hindering, their operations. Hopefully, they won't be entirely subsumed by Wal-Mart, Best Buy, or iTunes for many more years.