© 2024
NPR for Northern Colorado
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

National Record Store Day Celebrates Vinyl's Revival

Stacy Nick
/
KUNC
Aubrey Jacobs, 27, picks through the racks of records at Bizarre Bazaar.

For all the advantages that digital music has to offer - portability, price, playlists - more people are going back to the turntable.

"A record makes the experience of an album a complete package, and a satisfying one at that, because you have an appealing presentation, and of course you have the old setup of a certain number of tracks per side and needing to flip the record," said Ben Peterson, the vinyl guru at Fort Collins' lone record store, Bizarre Bazaar.

He’s not alone in his appreciation for the old-school allure of the LP. In fact, everyone who makes the annual pilgrimage on National Record Store Day would nod their head along to the beat in agreement.

"I think people just really are kind of getting back to basics, as they would say. You know, living, um, less dependent on technology," said 27-year-old Aubrey Jacobs, as she rummaged through stacks of musty records looking for classical music.

That's her favorite type to listen to in her growing vinyl collection.

"I probably have about a hundred [albums], which isn't that much considering how much a lot of people have, but I'm pretty picky about what I get," Jacobs said.

Dropping the needle on its eighth year, Record Store Day is not only for those looking to find that elusive golden oldie for their collection. It's also about sales of new vinyl releases, which, according to Nielsen, were up 52 percent in 2014.

It's not just the fans getting in on the analog action, singer-songwriter Neil Young recorded his most recent release, A Letter Home, in a 1947 Voice-O-Graph. The project was a collaboration with Jack White, who, coincidentally just broke the record for most LP sales with his album, Lazaretto. The previous record holder? Pearl Jam's Vitalogy released in 1994.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsscSzmjOFY

KUNC Music Director Benji McPhail used to get promotional t-shirts and posters from the record companies he works with. Now he gets… records. Recently he got vinyl from current artists, including Shovels & Rope and The Lumineers.

McPhail got his start as a DJ in 1989, and during much of his early career, he spun vinyl by choice, even though CDs were already becoming more mainstream. Now, he's excited to see a renewed interest in the format.

"You've got guys like Jack White and Neil Young, who really are pioneers in terms of really bringing back the love and appreciation for vinyl, that needs to be there," McPhail said. "I mean, it really does have a better sound to so many people's ears, including myself, that, we don't want this to go away."

Credit Stacy Nick / KUNC
/
KUNC
Fort Collins' Bizarre Bazaar has approximately 50,000 albums - used and new.

Boulder-based record-of-the-month company Vinyl Me, Please began two years ago after co-founder Matt Fiedler saw a need that wasn't being met in the music industry.

"We remembered record clubs of old like Columbia Music House and what not, and just wondered why something like that didn't exist today," Fiedler said. "We had a million songs in our pocket, but we didn't really have any connection to any single one of them."

It's that physical connection that makes the Long Play a format that will never truly go out of style, said Bizarre Bazaar's Ben Peterson.

"It's not something like a, some silly little collector throw-away toy, or fad, or something like that," Peterson said. "It's real music. It's a real format… It's not like a flash-in-the-pan kind of thing. You know, it's real."

Stacy was KUNC's arts and culture reporter from 2015 to 2021.
Related Content