unboxing vinyl

April 19 '08 was the first national Record Store Day- and I missed it. I knew about it, wanted to go to my old faves, but the gut was not in the mood for browsing a public place. Unfortunately, the gut rules.

Apparently, there were some pretty decent freebies to be had for making the rounds, and luckily some can still be found for a buck- like these two vinyl album samplers:



Choice Cuts from Universal Music Distribution. Over-stuffed with 15 songs from a diverse group of artists. Nothing here I didn't like, 7 are really good, and 3 songs I liked so much- one being Shelby Lynne (which I already have- and LOVE- on vinyl), Ludo's Love Me Dead, and Yoav's Club Thing which after hearing once I checked him out on youtube and iTunes- seeing there is not vinyl available I ran out to find his CD while I picked up a couple other copies of these samplers for friends. I found Yoav's CD for 4 bucks, and would LOVE for this to be on vinyl. When I got home, I checked out Side 2- some nice Southern rock type stuff with Ryan Bingham and One Flew South, and Whiskey Town as a great closer.

Pretty sweet record for a buck, or if ya nabbed one for free back in April. As expected, plain inner sleeve, and real crap quality vinyl I had a hard time getting to sound decent on my cheapie system- but I still love it and got used to the muddy sound and groove debris after a few songs. Big kudos to Universal for pressing this up exclusively as a giveaway for the day.

Jack Johnson's label Brushfire Records had this Volume 1 Sampler pressed up in time for the event, though I don't think it was meant as a freebie since the sticker says Free MP3 album download with purchase, and it's sold on the brushfirerecords.com online store for $8. The vinyl quality is MUCH better than the Universal freebie, and only 4 songs per side.

While it's a real nice album- at the end of Side 1, I couldn't remember anything I'd just heard. It all kinda sounded the same. Does Jack mostly sign very similar artists or something? Side 2 seemed more of the same at first, but G Love & Special Sauce stood out enough that I might check out their record too. Zach Gill's Beautiful Reason was also a standout before a Rogue Wave of blandness wrapped up the side. It's not a bad record at all- probably a much better record on a more mellow day, but today it mostly was just a forgettable set.

Record Store Day on youtube
RecordStoreDay.com