It has been quite a while since I last did a Record Store Day; in fact, it has been eight years. The reasons for this are many but mainly it’s been because the date has clashed with other things in many of those years and then there was COVID too. However, this year I decided that I would rejoin the queues and try and get my list of items.
Choices, choices
Since making friends with Andy in the first queue I joined way back in 2015, we have been regularly meeting to discuss our vinyl purchases, and this year we also discussed where to go for RSD. I thought that the choice had been nailed on until the day before when we realised that there was a store closer. Should we stick with what we knew or go with the closer option.
The issue with the original choice had the disadvantage of there (probably) being 50 people at least in front of us, as they had those spaces reserved for overnight queueing, which we were not going to do. However, we knew the layout there and also knew how much for each item we wanted they would have.
The issue with the local place was we had no idea how it worked nor how much of each item they would have but it would mean much less travel time.
We eventually plumped for the local place and so we set out not knowing what to expect and arrived with some trepidation – how many people would be in the queue before us? The answer was four – result!
People not Scalpers
One of the things that I love about RSD is the people that you meet in the queue. As I have already said Andy and I have remained in touch over the ten years since we met and have become friends.
This year there was the usual interesting assortment of people in the queue around us, including the girl at the head of the queue who had arrived at 10 pm the previous night, wanting to maximise her chances of scoring this year’s big-ticket items: Wicked and, of course, Taylor Swift. One place behind us was a guy who clearly has the hots for Madonna and, allegedly, went to see her 55 times on her previous tour at $500 a ticket each time and before hotels and travel. I like a lot of artists, but I can’t quite imagine doing that.
The people around us were normal punters and were there because they were genuine fans of the artists they wanted to get— nobody seemed to be looking to buy huge swathes fo releases and then flip them on eBay, which was good to hear.
Was it worth the 3 am start?
So the question is was it worth getting up at 2:40 am and queuing in the cold for four and a half hours to bag three possibly overpriced records?
We’ve been really lucky with the weather this year in that it has been warm and dry, but that didn’t mean that it was warm overnight – in fact, it was bloody freezing. However, it could have been a whole lot worse. April is such a variable month for weather, ranging from snow to rain to sun. We got lucky but it took a while to get the heat back into my feet!
The other way we got lucky, other than being fifth and sixth in the queue, was how well organised it was by Pop Classics. Just before eight they came along the first ten in the queue and asked what we were interested in and then bagged these up for us. Once inside it was just a simple case of collecting your goodies and paying. You could still go and have a browse if you wanted but I felt that there wasn’t much point as I’d already spent so much time browsing the list in advance I knew what I wanted so I paid and got out of there. We were back home by nine am.
And the records?
My wants for this year were Peter Gabriel’s OVO, Neil Finn’s Sessions and Propaganda which I managed to get all of. The intention had been to then spend the afternoon sitting listening to the purchases, but in the end I fell asleep!
Would I do it again next year? Probably, possibly, but ask me again when my feet have thawed and the list is out!
