April 18 is Record Store Day. The National Association of Recording Merchandisers is sponsoring this celebration of “the unique culture of indie record stores all year long” with sales, in stores and other mayhem. NAMBLA, I mean, NARM has the backing of fellow sponsors Music Monitor Network, the Coalition of Independent Music Stores and the Alliance of Independent Music Stores. It has the historical success of Record Store Day 2008, which saw sales spike at independent record stores all across the land. And it has the musical celebrity endorsements of such talent as Chuck Berry, Ziggy Marley, the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne, Norah Jones and Sir Paul McCartney, who says, “There's nothing as glamorous to me as a record store. When I recently played Amoeba in LA, I realized what fantastic memories such a collection of music brings back when you see it all in one place. This is why I'm more than happy to support Record Store Day and I hope that these kinds of stores will be there for us all for many years to come. Cheers!” Ben Harper even gave a shout out to a store where I blew all my college loans, Rhino Records in Claremont.
Yeah, Record Store Day has everything going for it . . . except Orange County. According to the online map, we are but a desert of little pop up thingies indicating participating venues.
No Vinyl Solution of Huntington Beach, no Pepperland of Orange, no TKO Records of Fountain Valley. I'm not saying those places aren't holding events tied to Record Store Day, I'm saying they are not part of the NARM's map that shows Fingerprints in Long Beach being the closest store that is. If you have something against Fingerprints (shame on you!) or spending money is all of Los Angeles, your next closest choices are Lou's Records in Encinitas and Mad Platter in Riverside.
The gas to get to one of those should equal about a used disc and a half.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.