For as long as I can remember, independent record stores across the world have celebrated Record Store Day. At first a small initiative to get people to shop at their local record stores, it’s now an excuse for thousands of people to join hours-long queues at record shops across the world to buy one (or several) of the several hundred special releases made for that day that will only ever be sold in stores, and for which pre-orders are not allowed to be taken. As the list of releases has grown, the quality of those releases has diverged. While some of the announced records are long-awaited reissues of rare and important material, others are obvious cash grabs meant to appeal to the completist nature of a certain type of collector. Now, I’ll sort some of these in buckets for you, starting with the most essential and ending with the least essential.
I’ve focused on the U.S. list for this post as this is where we are and will be waiting in line.
Continue reading “Record Store Day 2023 — My Guide to the Most and Least Essential Releases”
