Philly Record Store Day fail


In Philly for the holidays, thought I'd check out Record Store Day offerings while here. My experiences:

(1) The place I used to go to on Record Store Day -- a shop called AKA Music -- is now permanently closed.

(2) Milkcrate Cafe & Records -- which used to be a pretty unassuming shop with a decent and varied selection -- is now apparently too hipster-ized to participate in record store day. Saleperson's quote when asked: "We don't participate because the releases aren't up to our standards." (meaning, I think, insufficient punk or obscure electronica). Flipped through the bins, literally nothing whatsoever of interest to me.

(3) Third stop: Beautiful World Syndicate. People raved about this place when I lived here and I checked it out a couple of times, but was always deeply unimpressed, both with the selection available and dismissive attitude of their (also hipster) staff. They also don't participate in Record Store Day, and the few minutes I spent browsing the used bins reinforced that I truly never need to go there again.

(4) Liquid Vinyl Underground: Closed on Black Friday.

(5) Bridgeset Sound: Did not participate in Record Store Day. Otherwise, a small but good selection (nothing I didn't already have, though) and a nice staff.

(6) Final stop: Repo Records. Not much there is to my personal taste, but they do have a high quality (if small) jazz selection. Picked up an original mono copy of Coltrane's Ole and a couple other things.
chipcarterdc
If by "contemporary," you mean music released in the past couple of years or so, no, not really.  I'll occasionally download a catchy new song for my gym playlist, but beyond that, the only instances of contemporary music on vinyl that I can recall buying in the past couple of years are:

D'Angelo, Black Messiah
Norah Jones, Little Broken Hearts
Jerome Sabbagh, The Turn
Vanessa Fernandez, Use Me (which I bought on the strength of online reviews, but found to be so horribly execrable that I truly couldn't listen to it after the first couple of songs)
Melody Gardot, My One and Only Thrill (truly excellent)
Cecile Salvant, Woman Child
Cassandra Wilson, Coming Forth By Day
I believe record store day is 4/20.

4/20 is not only the record store day btw. There are 2 RSD per year one in November and another in April. One in April is much bigger. Record selling business is at question right now: Current releases pressed off the digital files getting ignored by most of the analogue listeners and good used copies are almost impossible to get. I'm always running around to find descent collection to purchase, but most of the time hit onto the abused junk that I wouldn't even think placing even under the cheap needle.
Record Store Day has ALWAYS been the third Saturday in April.  They started Black Friday Record Store Day three years ago, like I posted above.

RSD in 2016 will be on April 16th and BFRSD will be on November 25th.