Heard it through the Snapesvine: Record Store Day/Comiket 2012

Highly recommend you read these thoughts on Record Store Day…

laurasnapes:

Since Record Store Day’s inception in 2008, there have always been plenty of critics of the way the day executes its intentions. However, this year was the first where I really felt that RSD was starting to miss the point. To start on a positive note, one of the loveliest things about the celebration was the sense of neighbourhood it engendered - if I walk around east London on a normal day, I’ll barely see anyone I know. On Saturday, I bumped into about 20 friends and acquaintances, including, serendipitously, an old friend called Joe who I hadn’t seen for years, but got to know, and subsequently worked with, at Truro’s sadly departed Solo Music around 2004.

Someone once told me that I was “definitely one of those people who makes friends in record shops”, and that perceived fey and phoney sense of community was the reason the person in question stayed away from them. He was entirely correct (at least, about the former), and whilst it’s naive to expect that there should be a sense of camaraderie to the RSD bunfight in an aircraft hangar-sized shop like Rough Trade East, it’s this that RSD should be celebrating, rather than commerce.

It’s no original tirade, but selling 7”s for £7.99 whilst the ordinary records wait patiently for the overpriced showboating singles to have their day in the sun is nutty; why produce unnecessary amounts of extra vinyl (and particularly in the case of singles, in batches much larger, optimistically and vainly so, than the average indie single run) when there’s plenty of exciting releases sat on the shelf 52 weeks a year? I’m not immune to the charms of a limited, well thought-out bit of vinyl that seems perfectly pitched - St. Vincent’s hardcore 7”, Field Music’s Pet Shop Boys covers and Oscar Cash plays Metronomy made their way into my shopping basket, and I would have bought the Mad Men single if it hadn’t been eight quid - but far too many labels are perceiving RSD as a chance to sling out any old toss, any album track or flimsily constructed box-setof old material just for a decreasing piece of the pie. 

On Pitchfork last week, I helped compile an edit a feature about staff and writers’ favourite record shops, nearly all of which came with a story that transcended the idea that these places are just sites of commerce. I love buying music physically and do so most weeks a year (I am currently under a self-imposed purchasing ban after going a bit wild in Bristol’s second hand shops), but for RSD to continue to be a viable and credible event, it needs to move away from the notion that it’s all about plumping your record collection (but with well thought-out conceptual releases remaining the commercial lifeblood of the day), and focus on people and places; perhaps attracting less likely customers by in-store performances, the promise of a beer, and getting them to stay a while - rather than the one-in, one-out conveyer belt that I saw at two of the three shops I visited on Saturday, which felt more like a Primark-style hellhole than an experience I’d wish to repeat. 

As that person who decried the idea of making friends in record shops pointed out - and not unfairly - many of the ideas around these places are based in artifice and romance, about sustaining your belief in the worth of buying bulky items at higher prices from a real shop rather than sucking them down the internet tube into your pocket for a fraction of the cost (if any cost at all). On Saturday, I told a friend how delighted I was that there were young people of about 12, 13 in the queue at 11am, to which he pointed out that, next year, a 13-year old in the queue will be entirely of the post-Napster generation, so finding out where they inherited or honed the belief in purchasing physical products will be thoroughly interesting. If RSD was their first experience of record shopping (again, it’d be interesting to see a survey to find out if it really is anyone’s entry point into this noble hobby), how does the artifice of the day compare to the experience and myths they’ll build around these places in the future? Because if the whole lot is based on artifice, give me the sustained year-round illusion than a day of commerce and competitiveness masquerading as community. 

Down the road from Rough Trade East on Saturday, the Comiket comics convention was taking place at the Bishopsgate Institute, another showcase of the merits of physical art and its creators, and one that perhaps (I’m no expert in the field, so do argue with me if I’m wrong) has a far more symbiotic relationship with the web than music. Many of these artists produce web comics, given away for free five days a week, 51 weeks of the year, which are often then compiled into physical books and sold: customers paying money for a physical manifestation of something that they’re encouraged to enjoy for free on the internet. Comiket felt much more appealingly executed than Record Store Day: the artists were turning up for fans and new customers to show them what they do on a day-to-day basis, providing honest representations of their craft. RSD uses bells and whistles and the words ‘exclusive’ and ‘limited run’ to create a false sense of urgency and panic (I went to three different shops in an hour looking for Ryan Adams’ Bob Mould cover), whereas an event like Comiket seemed more interested in creating long-term, more meaningful relationships between the artists and their fans. This comparison is by no means watertight, as these are individual traders rather than shops for one thing, but I know for certain which event made me the most intrigued and excited on Saturday.