I skipped Record Store Day this year. (Yes, I know it was three weeks ago—forgive me for being slow.) I just wasn’t in the mood to celebrate. Sure, there were records I really wanted, like the Fucked Up punk compilation LP,
David’s Town (limited to just 750 copies), or the Beach Boys 78 rpm double 10-inch, or the Radiohead 12-inch (which turned out to be a U.K.-only release). I just couldn’t will myself to get out of bed on a Saturday morning and queue up for the mad scramble to the limited-edition vinyl RSD display and the subsequent wrestling match/feeding frenzy for the store’s one copy of Nirvana’s
Hormoaning—which would be flipped mere minutes later on Ebay for five times the original list price. I don’t need records that bad.
I did the Record Store Day thing last year. I hit a local shop (not one I normally frequent, but the one closest to home), thinking I’d easily get my hands on a couple RSD exclusives I wanted. I got there just before the store opened only to find a mob of about 40 people massing at the store's entrance. It looked like Walmart on Black Friday—albeit on a smaller scale, though the crowd was just as pathetically dressed. Anyway, most of what I had come for had already been snapped up by the time I squeezed inside. I still managed to acquire a handful of records I was interested in and picked up some decently priced non-RSD used records as well.
However, most of the hour I spent in the store was focused on observing the activity and behavior at the dedicated RSD-exclusive vinyl display. One fashionably disheveled dork indiscriminately grabbed one of every release and then walked off with a massive stack toward the counter, where he flipped through his bounty and cast aside the ones he didn’t want—which themselves would get snatched up by circling vultures who had followed him. It was ridiculous. Mostly what I witnessed was disappointment from late arrivals (i.e., the sad sacks who got to the shop 10 minutes after it had opened) and found the RSD carcass virtually picked clean of its exclusives—save for those Hole 10-inches, overpriced Wilco box sets and assorted other major label crap. Another observation: most RSD shoppers never left the RSD quarantine area to browse the store’s impressive (though mostly overpriced) vinyl inventory, as well as the small section devoted to the remainders (or dregs) of 2009’s Record Store Day.
I admit it: I have record problem. I have a fairly large collection of LPs, 7-inches, 10-inches, etc., and I’m always tempted by events such as Record Store Day. But the corresponding ugly consumerism, greed and Ebay flipping that accompany this special day are a real turn-off. Don’t get me wrong—I’m all for events that help preserve the dying business of the record store. I just don’t wish to be part of the collector scum scrum.
