Record Store Day 2013: An introduction
And so the countdown begins…
The sixth annual record store day is upon us with the blog set to feature all sorts of RSD13-special interviews and segments in the coming five days. I thought it best to take an extract from a recent G-Man interview with guitarist Dave W. from U.S. spacerockers White Hills to open the week long special.
“It’s like when you look at the demise of massive music chains. Virgin’s gone, we had Tower Records here [in America and now] it’s gone too. HMV’s in peril… But then you look at independent record shops who are thriving and I think the reason they didn’t die is there’s so much to be said about someone walking into a store, hearing a record they wouldn’t have heard in a HMV or Virgin and having a personal interaction with someone within that store. I can’t tell you the countless number of bands that I was turned onto when I was a teenager by going into the local independent record shop where I grew up. It was vital to me. I hung out there. After school it was straight down to the record store, scraping up whatever change I could find to buy whatever record that was turning me on at that moment. You can’t get that from a computer.
When I lived in San Francisco I worked in a used record store for years at a time when the dot com was booming in California and everyone was ‘ebay this, ebay that’ blah blah blah. The guy who owned that store always said to me ‘This store will never die. Stores like this will never die.’ People need human contact and a screen will never replace it. People need to go into places like record stores and he was right – that store has survived and has been there 30 years.”
Dave W. (White Hills)
– Record Store Day takes place across thousands of independent record stores on Saturday, 20th April
– For further Record Store Day content click here
Independent record stores in the Republic of Ireland:
- Plugd Records (Cork) – www.facebook.com/plugd (Located on 1st floor of Triskel Arts Centre on Tobin Street – behind Soho off Grand Parade)
- Tower Records (Dublin) – www.towerrecords.ie (6-8 Wicklow Street – just off Grafton Street)
- Elastic Witch (Dublin) – elastic-witch.tumblr.com (Located at the back of the Twisted Pepper on the ground floor – 54 Middle Abbey Street)
- The Secret Book & Record Store (Dublin) – www.facebook.com/The-Secret-Book-and-Record-Store (Located at 15A Wicklow St, Dublin)
- Freebird Records (Dublin) – elastic-witch.tumblr.com (15A Wicklow St, Dublin 2)
- Sound Cellar (Dublin) – www.freewebs.com/soundcellar (Located at 47 Nassau St Dublin 2)
- The R.A.G.E. (Dublin) – theragedublin.tumblr.com (Located at 16b Fade St Dublin 2)
- Wingnut Records (Galway) – www.facebook.com/wingnutrecords (Located in The Bell, Book and Candle at Small Crane)
- Rollercoaster Records (Kilkenny) – www.facebook.com/wingnutrecords (Located in The Bell, Book and Candle at Small Crane)
- Wingnut Records (Limerick) – www.facebook.com/wingnutrecordslimerick (Located in Moviedrome, Henry Street)
- Wingnut Records (Waterford) – www.facebook.com/wingnutrecords (Located in Hard Times, 2 Peter Street – just at the entrance to City Square)
- Ben O’Neill Music Shop (Waterford) – www.benoneilldungarvan.com/ (Located in 19 O’Connell Street, Dungarvan, Co. Waterford)
- Wingnut Records Athlone (Westmeath) – www.facebook.com/wingnutathlone (Located within The Sound Factory)
