Trip #7: Pull Another Record From Your Sleeve
Everything you need to know about Record Store Day, AOTY candidates Lana Del Rey, Daughter, and Runnner, trip down memory lane to 2016, and much more!
Welcome to The Wax Museum, where we showcase vinyl from the past, present, and future worth having in your record collection.
Enjoy your stay, new trips every Wednesday!
Your Museum Guide for Wednesday April 19, 2023
The FUTURE Exhibit (Record Store Day FAQs, Upcoming Vinyl Releases)
The PRESENT Exhibit (Tracking 2023 Album of the Year)
The PAST Exhibit (2016 Hall of Fame Retrospective)
The RABBIT HOLE Exhibit (Marc Rebillet, Vanity Fair longread)
Exit Through The Gift Shop
🎧 Listen to this Trip on Spotify and Apple.
The FUTURE Exhibit
Discover what’s upcoming this week in the world of vinyl.
Record Store Day is this Saturday, April 22! The global event celebrates independent record stores and the culture of vinyl. This is the physical music collector’s Black Friday. Here’s what you need to know ahead of the big day.
Q. What stores are participating in Record Store Day?
A. There are 1400 indie brick-and-mortars in the US and thousands of similar stores internationally. Here is the full list of stores. If you are in Orlando, I’ll see you out there, we have plenty of unique spots worth checking out.
Q. What vinyl releases are available?
A. Here’s the full list in web and PDF format. There’s 300+ vinyl, broken up into three categories:
Exclusives: vinyl only available at indie record stores.
RSD First: vinyl first available at stores, but may be online at some point.
Small Run/Regional: vinyl specific to a region or store, or press runs /1000.
Q. What are the hot ticket items?
A. The reigning queen of vinyl Taylor Swift wins this category with folklore: the long pond studio sessions on grey vinyl pressed to 75,000, which sounds like a huge number until you remember Midnights did 1.57 million units in a week, the largest vinyl sales week of the 21st century.
Other collectable releases include Ol Dirty Bastard’s Return to the 36 Chambers on picture disc, The 1975’s live concert with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Blur b-sides, Beach House leftovers from the Once Twice Melody sessions, and stuff from Pixies, U2, Madonna, Donna Summer, and Björk just to name a few.
Q. What vinyl are you buying, trusty Wax Museum curator?
A. Thanks for asking! I wrote in more detail in Trip #1, but here’s the cliff notes:
London Grammar - If You Wait (10th Anniversary)
Larry Lovestein (Mac Miller) and The Velvet Revival - You
Broken Social Scene - You Forgot it in People (20th Anniversary)
Various Artists - Jazz Dispensary: Hotel Jolie Dame
Since writing that, I’ve gotten hyped for another release: a Dan Carey dub reworking of Foals' 2022 album Life Is Yours, titled Life Is Dub. Give me a full record of this and I’ll be happy.
Q. Will vinyl be available online, and what kind of prices are we talking?
A. For a rough idea on price, Rough Trade has a bunch of listings with price included. If you can’t make it in person on Saturday, many stores put their leftovers online as early as the next day. Rough Trade is putting all remaining copies up Sunday at 8 AM. Follow my vinyl deal Twitter for the latest.
Q. What are some tips for having a successful Record Store Day?
A. Plan ahead and research the releases that you want; if you are after a popular item, get to the store before they open. The best releases tend to sell out quickly. Be patient as there may be long lines at some stores. Otherwise, hit up a few shops, most retailers do special events and store specials. Happy digging!
Upcoming Vinyl Releases
Full list of vinyl releases, reissues, compilations
Coming Out This Friday, April 21
Black Honey - A Fistful of Peaches
Daughter - Stereo Mind Game
Dr. Dre - The Chronic (20th Anniversary)
Everything But The Girl – Fuse
Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra - Plays Well With Others
Parcels - Parcels
Run the Jewels - RTJ CU4TRO
Ryuichi Sakamoto - Music For Film (Black & White Splatter Vinyl)
St Paul & The Broken Bones - Angels in Science Fiction
Clear Vinyl | Yellow Splatter Vinyl
Sublime - $5 at the Door
Black Vinyl | VMP Tangerine Vinyl | Yellow Vinyl | UO Orange Vinyl
Tiesto - DRIVE
The War on Drugs - A Deeper Understanding (Tangerine Vinyl, reissue)
The White Stripes - Elephant (20th Anniversary Red Smoke/Clear with Red & Black Smoke)
The PRESENT Exhibit
Tracking Album of the Year 2023, featuring albums worth having in your vinyl collection.
This week features Lana Del Rey, Daughter, and Runnner.
♫ Full AOTY 2023 Playlist: Spotify / Apple ♫
Lana Del Rey - Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd | Lana Del Rey’s ninth album is an ambitious and deeply personal work filled with piano ballads. Clocking in at 77 minutes, most tracks would feel at home in an underground smoky jazz lounge. “A&W” has been getting a lot of love and for good reason; this Stereogum article on the music theory of “A&W” is worth a read. Another song with a mid track switch-up is album closer “Taco Truck x VB”, a beautiful trap remix of Norman Fucking Rockwell!’s “Venice Bitch”.
Get Vinyl: Uncensored cover | White variant | Light green | Standard black
Daughter - Stereo Mind Game | Big fan of this one from the London trio! Returning with their first studio album in seven years, Daughter’s Stereo Mind Game has been on repeat in the foreground and background all week. Songs of despair have never sounded so dreamy. Fantastic stretch of tracks from #2 “Be On Your Way” to #6 “Swim Back”.
Get Vinyl: Eco-mix random color | Standard black
Runnner - like dying stars, we’re reaching out | Noah Weinman, the singer-songwriter behind indie-folk project Runnner, has crafted a nice little debut album highlighted by twangy banjos and warm vocals. The running album motif is connection and communication, and how hard each can be. Weinman even blends these topics in the bones of his songs:
These are songs where the edges have been left deliberately rough because perfection invites predictability, and imperfection imbalances, and those imbalances ask the listener to listen again, and again. And in that listening, the sound can become earnest, can ask a question, can hold a conversation.
Get Vinyl: Cloudy clear vinyl limited to /1700
The PAST Exhibit
Each week we look at a year gone by to find 10 timeless albums that are must-haves in your vinyl collection. We started at 2022, we’re at 2016, and we’re going all the way back to the ‘60s! Yeah baby!
2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | This week is 2016
🎧 Full Essential Vinyl Playlist: Spotify | Apple
Mild High Club - Skiptracing | Let’s start the 2016 playlist off right with the psychedelic jazz stylings of Mild High Club. You can almost smell the devil’s lettuce coming off these tunes, re-imagined old Americana AM radio hits tripped out for a new generation. The Steely Dan homage is all over Skiptracing, and it’s the perfect album to blaze to on this 4/20 week.
David Bowie - Blackstar (★) | The 26th and final studio album by legend David Bowie was released two days before he died of liver cancer, which was unknown to the world at the time. Bowie deliberately attempted to avoid making a rock ‘n roll album while making ★ and listened to Kendrick Lamar's 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly and D'Angelo's 2014 Black Messiah throughout the recording sessions. Like those albums, ★ throws everything at the wall and the result is an experimental funk soul jazz fusion that’s a football spike celebration on an incredible career.
Childish Gambino - “Awaken, My Love!” | “Awaken, My Love” is Childish Gambino and producer Ludwig Goransson’s ode to Funkadelic’s 1971 Maggot Brain and it mostly succeeds. “Me and Your Mama” and “Redbone” go down among the best tracks Glover’s ever laid down and the fact that his voice is not pitched in these songs, that these are all his natural vocals, shows phenomenal growth between this and Because the Internet and Camp.
Run the Jewels - Run the Jewels 3 | “2100” off RTJ3 was dropped the day after Donald Trump’s presidential victory, and was meant to be both a sort of calm against the negativity that permeated the country, as well as a call to action for wanting more for all of us.
Speaking of the 2016 election, Killer Mike pops up in the Hillary Clinton email leak after he threw his support behind Bernie Sanders. “I guess Killer Mike didn’t get the message,” reads an email to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Killer Mike alludes that he was offered money to support Clinton; in a nice twist, Mike now features the email prominently on his merch:
I turned it into a shirt first because I’m a capitalist. And since I did not ― and will never ― take money to back a candidate, I decided I should and could make money using my name since it was used. I also wanna be very public about any government official noticing me because this country has a grand history of killing the shit outta folks that don’t “get the message”.
Kanye West - The Life of Pablo | Could this be the last great Ye album? Say it ain’t so, but it’s been all downhill since The Life of Pablo in this curator’s eyes. The first 5 tracks of Pablo are elite, and the beats throughout the album are typical Kanye excellence.
Get Vinyl: Discogs (all bootlegs)
Rihanna - ANTI | “Same Ol’ Mistakes” off Rihanna’s most recent (!!!) album ANTI is a faithful cover of Tame Impala’s 2015 Currents closer “New Person, Same Old Mistakes.” Rihanna wanted to make an album that felt timeless and forever, unlike some of her older stuff:
I wanted songs that I could perform in 15 years; I wanted an album that I could perform in 15 years, not any songs that were burnt out.
Local Natives - Sunlit Youth | Local Natives again channel Fleetwood Mac vibes on “Dark Days”. The drums and guitars in perfect sync is a joy to listen to. Just a fantastic A side from “Villainy” to “Jellyfish”.
Sturgill Simpson - A Sailor’s Guide to Earth | Another faithful cover here, this time Sturgill covers Nirvana’s “In Bloom” off 1991’s Nevermind. Beautiful reinterpretation, and here’s why it’s autobiography for Sturgill:
I remember in seventh or eighth grade, when Nevermind dropped, it was like a bomb went off in my bedroom. For me, that song has always summed up what it means to be a teenager, and I think it tells a young boy that he can be sensitive and compassionate — he doesn’t have to be tough or cold to be a man.
Glass Animals - How To Be A Human Being | Very fun song off Glass Animals’ banger-filled second album How to Be A Human Being. Be sure to check out the rain-drenched Red Rocks video below, with a perfect synchronicity between Mother Nature and the line “my thunder came and shook him down.”
Frank Ocean - Blonde | It’s been a tough week for Frank Ocean. Sunday was his first performance in seven years, closing out Coachella, and it was a disaster from the start.
There was an elaborate ice rink stage set-up that required many actors and hundreds of hours to create, only for Ocean to scrap the idea hours before showtime. While Coachella crew were melting the ice, news came out that the stream would not be televised, upsetting fans worldwide. Once the show started, it didn’t get any better:
News has since come out that Frank injured himself recently and he couldn’t do the ice rink show on doctor’s orders. Sounds like spin to me, but who knows. He’ll have a chance to redeem his performance this Sunday as he closes out Coachella weekend 2. I personally would love to see “Frank on Ice”.
Remember, the day before he dropped Blonde, he streamed Endless, which was a not-so-subtle fuck you to Def Jam Recordings. Endless satisfied the finality of the Def Jam contract, and then he drops the real album on his own label the next day.
We know Frank is anti-industry, and while thats admirable, sometimes these fights have collateral damage for the fans. We’ll see if he has some tricks up his sleeve for Sunday, or if we need to curb our enthusiasm. UPDATE: Frank Ocean has cancelled his Coachella performance.
The RABBIT HOLE Exhibit
Get sucked down the pop culture rabbit hole with new recommendations each week.
📺 Videos from all trips can be found here. Shuffle for optimal enjoyment. 🔀
Marc Rebillet at Coachella | One guy who did bring the heat to Coachella was Marc Rebillet. The loop station wizard performs a brand new, fully improvised, electro act every time. He’s come a long way since being the first in line for an iPhone and owning a Karen reseller.
Vanity Fair longread | “Inside Rupert Murdoch’s Succession Drama” by Gabriel Sherman is a jaw-dropping look into the chaotic last 12 months for the 92-year-old conservative media baron. It’s HBO’s Succession in real life:
Although he is a nonagenarian intent on living forever, Murdoch has been consumed with the question of his succession. He long wanted one of his three children from his second wife, Anna—Elisabeth, 54, Lachlan, 51, and James, 50—to take over the company one day. Murdoch believed a Darwinian struggle would produce the most capable heir. “He pitted his kids against each other their entire lives. It’s sad,” a person close to the family said.
One of those kids, James, has been accused of leaking stories from inside the dynasty to the actual writers of Succession. The metaness hurts my brain. And it does not end there. The 91 year old billionaire recently divorced his fourth wife, Jerry Hall by email. “Jerry, sadly I’ve decided to call an end to our marriage. We have certainly had some good times, but I have much to do. My New York lawyer will be contacting yours immediately.” One of the terms of the divorce settlement was that Hall couldn’t give story ideas to the writers on Succession… Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.
Exit Through The Gift Shop
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