Dara Higgins takes a look at some of the events taking place in Dublin’s finest independent (and not so independent) record shops for Record Store Day 2015
Record Store Day does so much more than just cause backlogs at your local pressing plant. If you’re an independent artist who wants to release on vinyl, Record Store Day is for you! Unless of course your product is caught up in a massive backlog, because of Record Store Day! Because Record Store Day is not like Quinoa day, nor is it like Obscure Coffee Day. Record Store Day IS NOT NICHE. No, it’s mainstream. How do we know this? Well, for one thing there’s the massive backlog at the world’s pressing plants. This is because Major Labels, otherwise known as the 4th Reich, are back, baby, and they’re hip, and they’re jammin’ up those local pressing plants so that the independent artists that Record Store Day used to be so very achingly about can’t press their records. HA HA. See, we thought we’d destroyed the 4th Reich, but apparently not. We just destroyed the CD and now every pressing plant on earth is over subscribed on pressing a million copies of ‘What’s Going On’ and the entire Archers of Loaf back catalogue so that cardigans all over the world can have simply THE BEST parties going.
We also thought we’d destroyed HMV, remember? Then we realised that some poor fuckers had to work there and we felt bad for destroying the music industry. But it’s okay, it wasn’t destroyed, merely putting in a massive order at a local pressing plant for the new National album. They’re so real, don’t you find? So really, really real?
So, once vanquished, yet risen again, and now INFERNALLY hip, HMV are having their own Record Store Day Fest. A fest, no less. It sounds like a slightly moist affair. BUT HEY! They’re not INDEPENDENT. How can they elbow in on this jamboree? How dare they. Well, it’s simps. They’re owned by the same kind of people who are sending massive orders of ‘Pet Sounds’ to every pressing plant on earth insuring that independent artists can’t get their albums pressed in a reasonable amount of time. So they must be hip, right? As if to prove this they’ve gotten ultra hip, independent, Guinness and Heino ON TAP stocking Whelan’s to “curate” their event. HA HA. Doesn’t that sound like a laugh? Those guys, together at last? It’s like Brian Lenihan and Twink have a durty ould ride on Shay Healy’s maggoty grave mound. If you really have to go to that (unarmed, now folks) it goes like this:
HMV Henry Street, curated by Whelan’s:
The Mighty Stef
Buffalo Sunn
Cry Monster Cry
Tucan
The Flaws
Riot Tapes
If that doesn’t sound like some super fun to you, get your head out of your arse, will ya! HA HA. We’re only having a josh. We’ve stuck that first to court a bit of controversy. Click bait, we call it, because clicks are what’s it’s about people. Like a road trip across the Sahara. A lorra clicks, fuck all to see.
If your boat isn’t sufficiently floated by the HMV notion, and let’s assume it ain’t, you could go to Tower Records. They’re independent. Sure, Tower Records was once more powerful than Stalin, but that’s no longer the case. See, we defeated the music industry way back when. You remember. Napster and that. When the fuck will we have the MP3 day? A day when we can visit various venues around town laughing at the artists playing because we’ve stolen their music off the internet. Pay for your product? You’re having a laugh. By the way, where is it? Oh, it’s in a queue in a pressing plant in Czechoslovakia waiting for an ironic repress of ‘The Heat Is On’ to finish. Yeah, right.
Anyhoo, Tower is all about the real musicians. The men who’ve been at it a while. The ones who signed to a major label and decided, fuck this, let’s get out while the going’s good. No, no need to send an A & R man for that “special conversation” we’re waaaaaay ahead of you. Here’s how it’s going down:
Tower Records:
Saturday:
The Urges
Colm MacConIomaire
Sunday:
The Mighty Stef
Mundy
Spies, Cry Monster Cry, Fox Jaw & others will also be performing over the weekend.
Cry Monster Cry getting a second appearance in there, you’ll notice. There must be no more bands left in Dublin. Maybe they’ve just got no product to huck, given the amount of time you’d have to wait to get it back, what with the… sorry, where was I?
Tower also have a café that serves food and drink and charges accordingly, and it sells Major Label vinyl, like a repressing of David Bowie’s classic 1974 release ‘Aladdin Sane’. While that was being pressed for those special few who walk among us that didn’t already have one of the many millions of vinyl that was pressed all the way up 1990, or the CD, or the remastered CD, or even a fucking download from iTunes, some local wankers had to wait six months for a test pressing, BECAUSE THAT’S HOW IT GOES, FOLKS. We destroyed the music industry, remember? All of us. The country is still run by corrupt, self serving, avaricious cunts but we got rid of Golden Discs. Take that, chainstore! We’ve got the internet now! Except when we want to walk around town with a bag full of novelty coloured 12 inches, like the sound track to ‘Assault On Precinct 13’ which came out in 1976, and actual working artists who want to release music NOW have to wait a few extra months to accommodate John Carpenter’s, let’s be fair, CLASSIC soundtrack. Which is available fucking everywhere online, BUT HEY. Let’s OWN STUFF. Am I right?
This is what Freebird are doing:
Cloud Castle Lake
Brigid Power Ryce
Lynched
We, The Oceanographers
I’d go if I were you. But I’m not you. I’m old. I ache in the places where I used to play.
How many years of my life did I spend in Freebird? Jesus, loads. Some of my records still have the iconic polythene sleeve. You know the one with the smudged decal of the bird? The titular free bird? You probably have no idea what I’m talking about. You’re young. Tattoos are your currency. You think they make you look hard, when really they make it look you fell asleep on some old Beanos and the ink transferred onto you BUT IN ANYWAYS the Rage, which is about so much more than just records (it’s also about really, really expensive records) are doing this;
10:00am: DJ Dennis Cassidy
11:00am: Cutmaster C
12:30pm: Record Spot DJs
01:30pm: Jet Setter
02:30pm: Other Creatures
03:30pm: Myles Manley
04:30pm: No Monster Club
I absolutely agree. There are no words.
And of course, there’s Record Store Gay, which gets a different name because gays are different. Which is why we’re having a referendum, isn’t it? To make us all exactly the same. Record Store Gay is taking place in Outhouse and features some acts. It’s a surprise, but don’t let that put you off. And buy their special record, because all proceeds go towards the Yes Equality campaign. This is important because when we’re ALL EXACTLY THE SAME we’ll realise that the major labels and the government and the man are shitting on us all, crushing each and every one of us into dust, regardless of age, race, sex or sexuality. We’re all fucked. Everyone.
But in the meantime. Yay. Records, or something.
An A-Z of this year’s Record Store Day releases can be found on this thread.
