Record Store Day: The Most Improbable Comeback of the 21st Century

by Larry Jaffee

Overview

Record Store Day: the Most Improbable Comeback of the 21st Century provides the official inside story on how Record Store Day managed to revive the vinyl format from oblivion over the past fifteen years with some of the biggest artists jumping at the chance to sup-port independent record stores. This alliance and renewed camaraderie between artists and record stores set in motion the world's largest annual music event: Record Store Day.

The voices of numerous artists, record store owners, and the creators of Record Store Day take the reader from this phenomenon’s shaky beginnings through the crisis of 2020, illustrating how record stores went from irrelevance to irrevocably changing the music industry forever.

Record Store Day is sure to appeal to record collectors who line up the night before in a quest to snare limited-edition collectibles on vinyl, while capturing the important role that independ-ent record stores play in their communities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644282557
Publisher:	Rare Bird Books
Publication date:	04/12/2022
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

Larry Jaffee is the cofounder of Making Vinyl and a New York-based journalist (larryjaffee.com), whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Billboard, among numerous other publications. When not listening to music on vinyl, Jaffee teaches writing and journalism at local colleges.

Table of Contents

Foreword Kosmo Vinyl 9

Chapter 1 The Report of My Death Was an Exaggeration 15

Chapter 2 Noise in the Basement 30

Chapter 3 Do You Wanna Dance? 47

Chapter 4 Enter Metallica 58

Chapter 5 Message to Love 61

Chapter 6 Money Changes Everything 74

Chapter 7 Wild World 82

Chapter 8 The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man 102

Chapter 9 Gimme More 124

Chapter 10 Born to Run 131

Chapter 11 You Can't Always Get What You Want 170

Chapter 12 Rebel Rebel 184

Chapter 13 Shake It Off 190

Epilogue 204

Acknowledgments 208

Cast of Characters 211

Editorial Reviews

A complete and colourful book that needed to be written. Hats off to Larry Jaffee who stepped up to give us the definitive history of a phenomenon that, for all its crowds and mayhem, changed the course of independent music—saving not just thousands of stores, but easily as many indie labels. When it comes to Record Store Day, the Churchillian formulation surely applies: never have so many owed so much to so few. This story stands testament to what we’ve all seen and know to be true: when counter culture gets organised in clever ways, it can turn battles that once seemed so lost.” 

—Gareth Murphy, author of Cowboys and Indies: The Epic History of the Record Industry

"I've spent much of my life in record shops, observing the world from both sides of the counter. Larry Jaffee's book really captures the atmosphere and importance of the independent record store, and the fresh injection of life given to the trade by Record Store Day. Indies provide a unique service; the knowledge and passion of the people who work there is matched only by the passion of their customers. As more and more of our purchases are being made online, it is essential that we do whatever we can to bolster and support the independent specialist. Record Store Day gives us an annual reminder of the importance of our local, independent experts."

—Darryl W. Bullock, author of The Velvet Mafia, David Bowie Made Me Gay and Pride, Pop, and Politics 

From the Publisher