Some thoughts on Record Store Day...

This might end up a bit freeform, i apologise in advance in case this gets a bit meandering.

Saturday 18th April 2015 is the first Record Store Day for a few years that i haven't partaken of. It isn't especially down to a lack of enthusiasm, more the fact that i was working my 33rd consecutive Saturday. But moaning about your work patterns doesn't make for an interesting music blog, so i'll air a few concerns i have about the event.

There have been a few voices who have aired irritations with RSD as a concept. The spectre of the buyers who purchase only for instant resale (generally for the most commercial or marketable acts) are of huge irritation to many bloggers and Twitter users. I can't say i approve of the actions of those who buy only to resell, but the capitalist society we live in dictates that people will exploit a market. Personally, i lay more blame at the door of those who buy from eBay and the like at massively inflated prices. It is the same argument as those who declare irritation at the high cost resale of gig tickets. I can understand the urge to attend a gig, but less so to own something that it is probably possible to own on another format at a fraction of the cost. 

Part of the hysteria is generated by the ridiculously limited runs of some titles which will obviously be huge sellers and the blame for this has to be laid at the door of the major labels. As an example Tony's Muziekhuis (probably Belgium's largest independent record shop - https://www.facebook.com/TonysMuziekhuis) posted on Facebook in the week preceding RSD15 that they were not expecting to receive any copies of the Foo Fighters 10" EP and that there were only 25 copies being made available to the whole of Belgium. This is a state of affairs which benefits (at most) 25 people, whilst leaving hundreds disappointed. But how can this be seen as A Good Thing by anybody? Surely leaving the market to cope with a fraction of the product it needs to meet demand is just crap business. It isn't as if RSD products should be making anybody a loss - given the high retail prices, there should easily be enough value in there for everyone along the food chain to take their cut. Three or four times as much product of a highly desirable title means three or four times more people get to enjoy it, the retailers take more money, the distributors, record companies and bands make more money. Unless i'm very much mistaken, everyone would be a winner. So why the bullshit just to create hysteria?

Another factor that irritates me is the sheer mass of releases which are aimed squarely at the 6 Music audience. Don't get me wrong, i think 6 Music has its place, but a huge majority of the RSD releases over recent years have been aimed at squarely at middle aged white men who always wanted a job on the NME to sneer at anything they didn't think was cool enough. Dance, most electronica and pop all get squarely ignored because they are deemed unworthy by the illuminati who like all the cool music that you should like. The sort of thing you should like (and therefore buy on RSD) is a one sided 7" reissue of a b-side which features one of Husker Du belching.

I have been quite underwhelmed with some of the releases i've purchased on previous RSDs. I'd like to think that if somebody is going to go to the trouble of repressing something that it would be worth listening to and a banal remix of something isn't worth shelling out bordering on a tenner for a 7". By far the best release i've bought was the Bis LP from 2014 (Data Panik Etcetera), which is a solid album and i didn't resent spending £20 on it.

Thanks to the likes of Last Shop Standing, i am frequently told that new record shops are opening regularly. Sadly this isn't the case in the West of England. We have lost Head in Weston-super-Mare and Acorn Music in Yeovil over the past year and to my knowledge no new shops have opened in their place.

Of course, these gripes also sidestep the sheer hell of how normal British values of personal space and queueing disappear for the morning of RSD as we flick through boxes full of obscure reissues that just might be obscure for a reason.

Well done for reading this far. I had originally intended to write a list of RSD issues i'd like to see, but i'll add that to another post.