In just five years, International Record Store Day has grown from a shop owners’ cri de coeur that their business isn’t dying into a veritable holiday for music geeks and vinyl heads. Every third Saturday in April, hundreds of indie record shops around the world cut prices, offer exclusive releases, host gigs, and basically send the message (at maximum volume and/or beats per minute) that recorded music you hold in your hands and take home with you lives on in the Digital Age.
For further evidence of the vinyl revival, just look to the screen: the last couple of years have seen a wave of documentaries about indie stores, inveterate diggers, and obsessive collectors – such that we’ve instituted “Vinyl” as a genre in our Music Film Database, and sufficient to fill a second 5+1 list of platter-themed music films.
There’s even a movie now about Record Store Day itself. Filmmaker and music buff Jason Wilder Evans was in Seattle last April working on a couple of projects when he drove past Easy Street Records and saw that guitarists Peter Buck (ex-REM) and Duff McKagan (ex-GnR) would be there for RSD. “I knew I had to be there too,” Evans recalls. He decided on a whim to take his camera, then to get “a list of all the stores in Seattle participating in Record Store Day and [make] a day of it.”
As you get ready for the big day on April 21, check out Evans’ film and others devoted to the wheels of steel and the stacks of wax, and the places where they still reign supreme.
1. Record Store Day: The Documentary (2012, dir. Jason Wilder Evans)
Evans describes his Record Store Day experience as “a multicultural music lovers’ festival” and that’s the vibe of his short doc, built around testimonials and/or tunes from Buck, Duff McKagan’s Loaded, Telekinesis, and others. Along with a side trip to the famed Grimey’s New & Preloved Music in Nashville and the tale of a vintage Big Star white label, the film cuts in scenes from ’50s instructional films on record pressing that remind you just what a miracle it is turning blobs of wax into grooves of joy. The film is slated to be available on demand from SnagFilms on Record Store Day or shortly thereafter. [Update: it’s available now, right here.)
2. Vinylmania (2012, dir. Paolo Campana)
The official film of Record Store Day 2012 takes Italian filmmaker/DJ Campana around the world to explore his and others’ lifelong romance with records. In conjunction with RDS Vinylmania has been screening on college campuses and in record shops all month (including today in London and New York and on April 20 in Paris – check the film site for details), and it will be out shortly in a special edition double DVD in several European countries. (Learn more about the movie in our interview with Campana.)
3. Red Beans and Rice Vol. 2: Audio Vibes (2012, no director credited)
Following up on 2010 digging doc Red Beans & Rice, Milwaukee indie hip hop label Jamille Records offers up another heaping helping of tales from the stacks, with vinyl junkies ranging from a young punkette to a wizened British reggae hound recalling their first and best scores. Refreshing for its preponderance of women, considering how widely record collecting is viewed as a Y-chromosome thing. You can watch it in its entirety below.
4. Last Shop Standing (2012, Pip Piper and Rob Taylor)
Based on the book by Graham Jones, Last Shop explores the “rise, fall, and rebirth” of British indie record stores, whose numbers have begun ticking up in recent years despite iTunes and the recession. Johnny Marr, Fatboy Slim, and Billy Bragg are among those offering dusty-groove memories. The filmmakers are in the final weeks of an IndieGoGo campaign to cover post-production costs in preparation for a festival run and autumn DVD release – have a look here to help out.
5. Brick and Mortar and Love (2012, dir. C. Scott Shuffitt)
With iconic Louisville shop ear X-tacy and its struggle to survive as his focus, filmmaker (and Lebowski Fest co-founder) Shuffitt looks at the cultural and community role played by brick and mortar indies and what’s at stake if they disappear. After a Louisville premiere last week the movie makes its festival bow at the Nashville Film Festival, including an April 21 screening at the aforementioned Grimey’s.
and … Record Paradise: The Musical Life of Joe Lee (2012, dir. Michael Streissguth)
Less a traditional record store doc than a profile of a quirky keeper of the flame, particularly resonant for me in that my own audio education got a major boost at one of Joe Lee’s suburban DC shops. Johnny Cash biographer Streissguth tells the story of this black sheep of a blue blood Maryland family (son of a governor, great-grandson of a senator) whose music jones led him to open a series of locally beloved stores, all called Joe’s Record Paradise, and become a keystone in the Baltimore/Washington sonic scene.