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The Vinyl Countdown

Memphis Record Pressing (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

It’s no secret that vinyl is resurgent. After being eclipsed first by CDs in the 1990s and then by streamed digital music, records were nigh impossible to find in mainstream stores for many years, until around 2008, when the manufacture and sales of vinyl albums and singles began to grow again. Since then, the trend has only accelerated, with market analyses predicting continued annual growth between 8 percent-15 percent for vinyl musical products over the next five to six years.

What fewer people realize is how every step of the process that makes records possible can be found in Memphis. “The Memphis Sound … where everything is everything,” ran the old Stax Records ad copy, and that’s especially true in the vinyl domain: All the elements are within reach. Johnny Phillips, co-owner of local record distributor Select-O-Hits, says “There’s not very many cities that can offer everything we offer right here. From recording to distribution, from inception to the very end. Everything you need, you have right here. Memphis is like a one-stop shop for vinyl right now.”

From the musicians themselves to the final product you take home on Record Store Day, here are the 10 pillars upon which our Kingdom of Vinyl rests, 10 domains which thrive in Memphis as in no other city.

Take Out Vinyl’s Jeff Powell (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

Mastering

A lacquer master, freshly cut on a lathe, offers a level of high fidelity that most listeners, even record aficionados, almost never hear. But Take Out Vinyl, run by Jeff Powell and Lucas Peterson from a room in Sam Phillips Recording, is that rare beast, a vinyl mastering lab, where raw audio from tape or a computer is first transferred to plastic and one can sometimes hear a lacquer playback. It’s not meant to be listened to. The discs cut here would typically be used to create the metal discs that stamp the grooves onto the records we buy, but the lacquer itself is too soft for repeated plays. And yet, for those who’ve heard a playback from a freshly cut lacquer, the quality is haunting.

That was the idea behind the one-off Bob Dylan record auctioned at Christie’s last month for $1.78 million. Spearheaded by producer T Bone Burnett, a new recording of Dylan performing “Blowin’ in the Wind” was cut onto a single lacquer disc, never to be duplicated or mass-produced.

Producer T Bone Burnett (Photo: Jason Myers)

To help make it a reality, Burnett enlisted Powell, one of the world’s most respected mastering engineers. “Lacquers are very soft,” says Powell. “We can’t play these things after I cut them or it destroys the groove. You lose a little high-end every time you play it. T Bone’s idea was to try to capture that sound of a fresh cut lacquer, but one that you could play over and over again, even up to a thousand times, with no degradation to the sound. And that’s what we have accomplished.”

The trick was finding a way to protectively coat the lacquer after it had been cut, and after years of R&D, the labs enlisted by Burnett found the right compound. “T Bone says the coating is only 90 atoms thick,” says Powell. “A human hair is about 300,000 atoms thick — that’s how thin the coating is. It was derived from a protective material used on satellites.”

Ultimately, says Powell, the goal was to reassert the value of vinyl records over digital media. “The purpose of this was not to see how much money could be made,” says Powell, “but to show how music has been devalued to next to nothing. T Bone wanted to establish that a recording like this should be considered fine art.”

Memphis Record Pressing (Justin Fox Burks)

Manufacturing

The notion of a vinyl record as fine art is not so alien to legions of collectors who curate their own personal galleries of albums and singles. But even the rarest of records were mass-produced at one time, and Memphis has that department covered as well. For decades, nearly all of the records recorded in Memphis were made at Plastic Products on Chelsea Avenue. Such was the pressing plant’s impact that an historical plaque now marks where it once stood. But in recent years, a new business has taken up the torch of vinyl manufacturing.

In 2015, the Memphis Flyer alerted readers to the fledgling Memphis Record Pressing (MRP), which arose from a partnership between Brandon Seavers and Mark Yoshida, whose AudioGraphic Masterworks specialized in CD and DVD production, and Fat Possum Records, whose co-owner Bruce Watson first suggested that they move into vinyl production. Now, it’s in the hands of Seavers and Yoshida and GZ Media, the largest vinyl record manufacturer in the world, and the Memphis company is expanding dramatically.

Memphis Record Pressing (Justin Fox Burks)

As Seavers points out, the world of vinyl has evolved as well. “When we started, we searched the world for record presses, which was really a challenge. Back in 2014, there were no new machines being built. You had to scour the corners of the earth to find ancient machinery and bring it back to life. Fast-forward to 2018, when a few companies emerged around the world that invested in building new machines. We started bringing in these brand-new, computer-controlled machines that were very different from our old machines. And that started the process of expansion. Through 2018-2021, we replaced our aging equipment bit by bit, and in September of last year, we replaced the last of our old machines.”

The pandemic was actually a boon to the young company. “We reopened in May of 2020, and by June our orders had skyrocketed. We were overwhelmed. And by the first five weeks of 2021, we booked three-and-a-half months’ worth of work in five weeks. So to say it overwhelmed us is an understatement. Now we’re sitting on a quarter-million units’ worth of open orders. So, it’s insane to see the demand grow. Before Covid, we had reduced our lead time to eight weeks. Now, it’s frustrating to quote nine months of lead time to new customers because that amount of time is life and death three times over for some artists. That’s why we’re so intent on expanding as quickly as possible.” Construction of additional facilities, expected to be operational in October, is now underway.

Distribution

Once the records are made, where do they go? Thanks to the decades-old Select-O-Hits, the answer is “across the globe.” Johnny Phillips reckons it’s the oldest distribution service in the world, and it may be one of the oldest businesses in Memphis, period. “In 1960, my dad, Tom Phillips, was Jerry Lee Lewis’ road manager. When Jerry Lee married his 13-year-old cousin, he couldn’t be booked anywhere. My daddy put all of his money into promoting Jerry Lee, and he lost it all. So, he came up from Mobile, Alabama, to Memphis and went to work with my uncle Sam, taking back unsold returns: 45s, 78s, and a few albums. We gradually grew into one of the largest one-stops in the South, supplying all labels to smaller retail stores. There used to be over 25 retail stores in Memphis, believe it or not. And then in the early ’70s, we started distributing nationwide. My dad retired, and my brother Sam and I bought him out.”

Over the years, Select-O-Hits has seen every ebb and flow of the vinyl market, including a major uptick after the advent of hip-hop. “We were the first distributor for Rapper’s Delight by The Sugar Hill Gang in 1979,” notes Phillips. That tradition continues today. “We’ve released about half of Three 6 Mafia’s catalog that we control in the last two years, on colored vinyl. And we distribute it all over the world.” And if the distribution numbers are not what they used to be before CDs and then streaming took over, they are climbing steadily. “Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, we were selling half a million vinyl records. But now we’re doing 5,000, 15,000. Still, last year was our biggest vinyl year ever [since CDs became dominant], and this year is looking just as good.”

Shangri-La’s Jared McStay (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

Record Stores and Record Labels

If Select-O-Hits is moving the product around the world, it needs to land somewhere, and in Memphis that means record stores. Though we no longer have 25 retail outlets for vinyl, there are several places to buy records here. The granddaddy of them all is Shangri-La Records, founded by Sherman Willmott in 1988, then taken over in 1999 by Jared McStay, who now co-owns the shop with John Miller.

“The first couple of years,” says McStay, “I had to bet on vinyl because I couldn’t compete with the CD stores, like Best Buy or whatever. I was getting crushed, until I realized I could never compete with them. In the early 2000s, they were phasing out vinyl, and even stereo manufacturers stopped putting phono jacks on their stereos. But I had tons of records.”

Around the same time, Eric Friedl was running a small indie label, Goner, which ultimately became the Goner Records shop when Zac Ives joined forces with Friedl in 2004. They too leaned into vinyl from the very start. “I think Eric had done maybe two CDs at most when we joined forces and started expanding the label in 2004,” says Ives. “Out of his 10 or 11 releases, I think only The Reatards had a CD release. The rest were only on vinyl. There was no giant resurgence of vinyl for us. Those things came up around our industry, but we never left that model. And that’s how it was for most smaller, independent labels, especially in punk and underground realms.”

Combining a record shop with a record label is a time-honored tradition in Memphis, going back to Stax’s Satellite Records, and it carries on today through Shangri-La and Goner, which have both been named among the country’s best record stores by Rolling Stone. Both stores’ dedication to vinyl relates to their investment in live bands. Gonerfest, which brings bands, DJs, and record-shoppers from around the world, will be enjoying its 19th year next month, and Shangri-La has hosted miniature versions of that for years.

“We’re having Sweatfest on August 13th,” says McStay, “and we haven’t had one in three years because of the pandemic. There are going to be thousands of bargain records. We’ve been hoarding them for three years!” Meanwhile, local bands will perform in the parking lot, a pre-Covid mainstay of Shangri-La for most of its existence.

Though Goner boasts its own label, and Shangri-La has spawned at least three (Shangri-La Projects, plus the loosely affiliated Misspent Records and Blast Habit Records), not all stores do so. River City Records opened last year and, along with Memphis Music and A. Schwab, is already doing a brisk vinyl business in the Downtown area. Meanwhile, the city has several vinyl-friendly labels untethered to any retail outlet, namely Back to the Light, Big Legal Mess/Bible & Tire, Black and Wyatt, Madjack, and Peabody Records. These local imprints and the bands they sign, in turn, feed into the doggedly local support that the above mastering, manufacturing, and distribution businesses offer. As Powell says, “Anybody local, I’ll always try to move heaven and earth to get them ahead of the line a little bit and treat them special. Because you know, it’s Memphis, man!”

Memphis Listening Lab has thousands of LPs. (Photo: Jamie Harmon)

Archives, Audio Technology, Community Radio, and DJs

A wide swath of this town’s music lovers are brazenly vinyl-centric, and that demographic has a ripple effect in other domains. The Stax Museum of American Soul Music, for example, boasts the huge archive of Bob Abrahamian, a DJ at the University of Chicago in the 1990s, with more than 35,000 singles and LPs, now being cataloged by a full-time archivist, Stax collections manager Leila Hamdan.

Then there’s the Memphis Listening Lab (MLL), founded last year on the strength of the music collection of John King, a collector’s collector if there ever was one. As a promoter, program director, and studio owner, he’s collected music all his life. Now, his roughly 30,000 45s, 12,000 LPs, 20,000 CDs, and 1,000 music books reside in the public archive of the MLL, free for the listening and even free to record. Further, MLL has hosted countless public events where classic or obscure albums are played and discussed in depth.

The listening lab also benefits from a less-recognized aspect of vinyl culture in Memphis: the technology. Being outfitted with high-end, locally made EgglestonWorks speakers enhances the listening experience at MLL considerably. And the city is also home to George Merrill’s GEM Dandy Products Inc., which markets his highly respected audiophile-grade turntables (one of which MLL hopes to acquire).

Another archive boasting EgglestonWorks speakers is the Eight & Sand bar in The Central Station Hotel. The private bar was envisioned as a place to celebrate Memphis music history, and its dual turntables are duly backed by a huge vinyl library of mostly local music. “Chad Weekley, the music curator, is doing an incredible job there,” says Ives. The bar now plays host to the DJs who enliven Gonerfest’s opening ceremonies, and the hotel has even offered package deals combining room reservations with gift certificates to the Goner shop.

And let’s face it, this town is crawling with great DJs. In a sense, they are the ultimate vinyl record consumers, and thus help to drive all the other institutions. “It’s similar to a band,” says Ives, “because you’re taking your knowledge of music and putting it back out into the world in some way. I love hearing somebody’s personality coming through their radio program or DJ event. … Sometimes at venues like Eight & Sand, sometimes on community radio.”

The latter is clearly fertile ground for those who favor the sound of vinyl. Both WEVL and WYXR sport turntables in their on-air studio rooms, not to mention their own vinyl libraries. As WYXR program manager Jared Boyd says, “I’m a record collector myself, and for a time I was DJ-ing at Eight & Sand and using those turntables. So, when we started the radio station, we wanted people to be able to have that experience without having to go down to Central Station. We wanted these people who collect deeply to broadcast these really unique finds. I particularly wanted to cater to people who use records.”

The Music

And so we come full circle, following vinyl’s great chain of existence back to the reason we all want it in the first place: music. And it’s undeniable that the music this city produces fits our predilection for vinyl — from Jerry Lee Lewis’ piano swipes to the guitar/organ growl of “Green Onions,” from the choogling riffs of power pop to the crunching, distorted damage of punk, the sounds of this city lend themselves to the weight and warmth of music’s greatest medium. Just drop a needle on your favorite band and you’ll hear the truth in Brandon Seavers’ words: “Memphis is the grit to Nashville’s glitz,” he says. “And grit sounds a lot better on vinyl.”

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Music Music Blog

For Saturday’s First COVID-Era Record Store Day, Local Shops Get Creative

CREDIT: J.D. Reager

MIchael Donahue

Eric Friedl and Zac Ives of Goner Records

Over the years, Record Store Day (RSD) has become one of those rare commercial “holidays” that have a real sense of community to them. Even as vinyl sales have grown in recent years, there is a camaraderie among the artists, fans, and retailers of LPs that is almost contagious.

Now, with contagion at the front of everyone’s mind, that is an enthusiasm that needs to be handled carefully. Memphis’ two primary record shops, Shangri-La Records and Goner Records, have each come up with their own solutions to the conundrum of how to celebrate vinyl en masse without violating social distancing guidelines.

Shangri-La, for example, will make use of its ample parking space. As their website explains, “you will be able to line up outside in the parking lot areas that will be marked six feet apart. It is IMPERATIVE that you stay on the demarcated space as we let one customer (plus anyone with whom that customer co-habitates) in the store to shop at a time.

“Each shopper will have an individual time of ten minutes to shop the RSD bins, make selections, and check out. After that, the next customer enters and it will continue in that fashion until 1 pm. After 1 pm, we will begin allowing customers to make individual appointments as we have been. Instead of 45 minute appointments, however, we will be limiting them to 20 minutes each to allow for additional Record Store Day shopping.”
J.D. Reager

Jared McStay, co-owner of Shangri-La Records

Of course, masks will be required throughout the process, and anyone who’s been in contact with someone who has symptoms should stay home. Given the idyllic weather of late, it promises to be an enjoyable outing for all.

Goner Records, meanwhile, has a more elaborate plan: a lottery for the first customers served on RSD. And today is your last chance to sign up for it. As co-owner Zac Ives explains:

We thought, maybe we can just dovetail this with things we’re trying to do with Goner TV. And do the best we can in a weird situation. So we came up with this goofy idea to have everybody sign up. We’ll do a random lottery for the order, and then we’ll have four phones set up and we’ll just start calling everybody, going down this list, pulling records for them, wrapping them up in a bag, and they can come pick it up later in the day.

We will have an emcee, cutting in live from the shop in our broadcast. So people can see where we are on the roll of numbers. We’re gonna make it as fun as we can. We’ll have a box of doughnuts and some coffee. Trying to keep everybody going from 9:00 until noon. And then at twelve, we’ll turn everything over to the website. Everything that’s left at that point will go up on our online store and people can order from there. But to be in that first three hours, you’ve gotta be signed up by Tuesday.

Instead of all the RSD releases coming out at once, they spread it out over three months, I guess with the idea that that would lessen any kind of mob. We don’t want to have a ton of people in one place, and maybe this is a way to spread that out on the shop side. So the releases will be split into thirds, the last Saturday of August, September, and October.

Goner is not releasing any RSD albums. We do have pre-orders up for the Archaeas record and the Optic Sink record. The Rev. John Wilkins CD is coming out in September, but the LP is delayed until November, and we’ll have a pre-order of that available as well.
Explaining the process, Ives can barely suppress his air of amusement. “It seemed funny to us, the whole telethon nature of it.”  There’s no telling what shenanigans could occur, so tune in and find out, even if you miss today’s deadline. See the Goner Records website for details. 

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Music Music Blog

Record Store Day “Back to Black Friday” Highlights

The debut album by The Bangles recently got the Record Store Day treatment

Afghan Whigs- Black Love (Expanded Edition) Rhino 3LP
While it truly hurts my brain to think about how this band’s 1992 – 1996 three-album hot streak might or might not resonate with folks today, Black Love was nonetheless one of the definitive documents of this ’90s underground rock anomaly. And let’s not forget that Memphis’ own Paul Buchignani was the Whigs’ drummer on this album, having built a relationship with the band after working at Ardent Studios, where they recorded 1993’s discography high-point, Gentlemen (parts of Black Love were also done at the studio). Black Love has never been reissued on vinyl since its original release in 1996. No pressing count is given for this expanded 3LP edition.

Record Store Day ‘Back to Black Friday’ Highlights

The Bangles- Ladies and Gentlemen… The Bangles LP (Omnivore)
 Founded in 1980 as The Bangs before avoiding a potential legal kerfuffle by changing their name to (The) Bangles, this all-female quartet emerged from the L.A. punk/hardcore reactionary offshoot sub-scene that (unfortunately) designated itself the Paisley Underground. So with The Dream Syndicate, Salvation Army/The Three O’Clock, Thin White Rope, Green On Red and The Blasters as contemporaries, the material recorded and released by the Bangles between 1981 and 1984 isn’t exactly a dead-ringer for 1988’s #1 mega-smash ballad “Eternal Flame”, the almost-shelved novelty nonsense of “Walk Like An Egyptian” or even the Prince-gifted “Manic Monday” that kicked off the band’s period of success in 1985 (but even their hits, save for the ballad, were toothier and more guitar-oriented than other pop confections of the day).

Ladies and Gentleman… was curated by the band and originally appeared (via their own Downkiddie! Records imprint) in digital-only format exactly two years ago on Thanksgiving Day 2014 and this marks its first time on vinyl. Along with their debut 7” from 1981 and the self-titled 12” EP that followed in ’82, Ladies and Gentlemen also features a strong selection of rarities/unreleased/etc, including the band’s great cover of Love’s “7 and 7 is”. Edition of 2000.

Record Store Day ‘Back to Black Friday’ Highlights (2)


Big Star Complete Third Vol. 1: Demos to Sessions to Roughs 2LP (Omnivore)
This will no doubt be a no-brainer for many, especially anyone who’d prefer a staggered approach to acquiring and digesting in its entirety the Complete Third boxed set released earlier this year. Complete Third Vol. 1 is, as the sub-title implies, the first of three 2LP sets that will eventually make up the whole of what is offered by the boxed set. 2500 pressed.

Record Store Day ‘Back to Black Friday’ Highlights (3)


Bolt Thrower- Those Once Loyal Metal Blade LP
England’s Bolt Thrower carved their own place in the initial death-metal era of the late-80s/early-90s, not only because they featured a female in their ranks (bassist Jo Bench) but also on the strength of the rhythmic bulldozing effect of massive and dense but melodic guitar + guitar + bass riffing the band perfected around 1990.

Those Once Loyal eschews the Games Workshop/World of Warcraft cover art that came to represent Bolt Thrower albums throughout the ’90s, and instead features a tasteful image memorializing WWI around which the record is themed (all B.T. albums carry a specific war or military-history theme). The band was active on-and-off in in a live capacity since this album’s release 16 years ago but broke up for good following the recent death of drummer Martin Kearns. 1000 pressed on gold vinyl.

Record Store Day ‘Back to Black Friday’ Highlights (4)


Death Grips- Fashion Week/Interview 2016 Harvest 2LP
Two recent instrumental releases, 2015’s digital-only Fashion Week and the Interview 2016 EP (Get it? There’s no interview!) from earlier this year, together on one 2LP set released in a pressing of 3000.

Regardless of whether you regard Death Grips as brilliant, a completely overrated hoodwink, or something in between, there’s no doubt their legacy will be discussed in terms of historical importance and lasting influence a decade from now.

Electric Wizard Witchcult Today (Metal Blade) 2LP
Quite possibly the gold standard in doom/sludge/stoner-metal, the UK’s Electric Wizard floored the metal community (and some outside of it) when, half-a-decade into their career, they dropped the next-level and now appropriately seminal genre landmark, Dopethrone, in 2000. One of the heaviest (essence and execution) bands of all time, Electric Wizard have so far followed that album with five more menacing mountains of riff-craft in celebration of the occult, H. P. Lovecraft, criminal dirtbaggery and the diggity-dank.

Any fan of metal or heavy music should be cozy with this band’s post-Y2K discography, proof that something forward-thinking, singular, absolutely crushing and catchy as hell can be done with the doom/sludge/Sabbath template. Electric Wizard has a knack for giving their best songs the most asinine titles, as is the case with sample track below, “The Satanic Rites of Drugula.” This pressing of 1000 (one clear disc and one silver disc) isn’t likely to remain in print forever.

Record Store Day ‘Back to Black Friday’ Highlights (5)


The Geto Boys “Mind Playing Tricks” 12″ (RapAlot)
Never before had a known quantity in the then-exploding gangsta/hardcore-rap genre let its guard down lyrically in such a fearless and honest manner as did this Houston crew on their 1991 masterwork, We Can’t Be Stopped.  “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” was the most prominent example of this, tackling the reality of mentally unraveling as a result of the lifestyle and surrounding environment.

As with other releases in this legendary group’s (who should be just as retroactively respected and huge as NWA, IMHO) back catalog, the song carries a dark sense of humor and is insanely infectious. Proceeds from this 12″ will go to The JED Foundation, which works to promote emotional health and suicide prevention among college/university-aged students.

Record Store Day ‘Back to Black Friday’ Highlights (6)

GWAR Black Friday Ltd. Edition Picture Disc 7″ (Metal Blade)
An EP of two cover medleys that GWAR did for The Onion A/V Club in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Oderus (the late Dave Brockie) features on the A-side version of Billy Ocean’s “Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car” (which morphs into The Who’s “Baba O’Riley”), and his successor, Blothar (Michael Bishop, GWAR’s bassist from 1988 to 1999) handles on B-side’s medley of The Pet Shop Boys’ “West End Girls” (re-imagined as “West End Ghouls”) and “People Who Died” by The Jim Carrol Band. Hey, why not?

Record Store Day ‘Back to Black Friday’ Highlights (7)

Mike Watt + The Bobblymen The Bobblymen 7” EP (ORG Music)
I would wager a guess that “bobblehead” is not copyrighted but Mike Watt has a knack for coining his own terms so maybe that explains the unfortunate name of his latest backing band. Moniker and equally cringe-worthy cover art aside, drummer Bob Lee and members of Watt’s Missingmen and Secondmen bands assist in realizing three songs he wrote but never recorded some 35 years ago during the early days of the Minutemen. Edition of 1000.

Record Store Day ‘Back to Black Friday’ Highlights (9)

Other recommendations worth checking out:

Tav Falco & Panther Burns “Sway” b/w “Where The Rio Del Rosa Flows” 7” (ORG Music) Ed of 1000.

Isaac Hayes Do Your Thing Now 12” (Again Records) Ed of 2500.

Rudy Ray Moore This Ain’t No White Christmas LP (Traffic Entertainment/Dolemite Records) Ed of 1200.

Napalm Death/Melt Banana “Like Piss To A Sting” split 7” (Ipecac Recordings) pressing of 2000,

Xiu Xiu Knife Play LP (Graveface Records) Ed of 2000.

American Noise Volume One: Smart Studios Era 1 LP & The Smart Studios Story documentary DVD.

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Music Music Features

Record Store Day 2016

CREDIT: Chris Shaw

For Shangri-La Records, prepping for Saturday’s 9th annual Record Store Day means opening a few hours early.

“We said 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., but usually we open a little earlier because of the big line of people. As soon as we’re ready, we let them in. I think last year we opened at 8:30 a.m.,” Shrangri-La Records owner Jared McStay says.

Bolstering the lot of official Record Store Day titles Shangri-La plans to have on hand Saturday will be a major increase in the rest of the store’s stock of new vinyl.

“We’ve done a lot of other ordering and will have more new inventory than we’ve ever had,” explains McStay.

“We ordered direct from Sundazed, Matador Records, Merge Records, a few one-stops, and a cool import wholesale house, to name a few distributors. I’m making a big bet on Record Store Day this year, as we pretty much over-ordered, but it’s usually a good day. I don’t know if you’d call it a store-wide sale, per se, like our ‘Purgefest’, but we’ll also be putting out bins of good discount records that we’ve never had out before.”

After “excuse me,” “can I squeeze in there?” and “sorry” have been politely uttered into an ambient drone for five or six hours, a veritable parking lot mini-festival will commence at 2 p.m. with Toy Trucks, followed by Fresh Flesh, and Jana Misener — formerly of the Memphis Dawls. Next up will be Tim Prudhomme’s recently conceived band, Dimplebones. Headlining the afternoon will be James and the Ultrasounds, the band’s first local appearance since returning from a European tour.

Wedged in between Prudhomme’s Dimplebones and the latter is the reunited original lineup of McStay’s primary musical endeavor, the Simpletones. One of the true gems to come out of the Memphis underground scene of the ’90s, the first incarnation of the trio featured McStay on guitar and vocals, Jim McDermott on bass, and Mark Miller on drums. This version released the Joe’s Cool Sign demo tape and a clutch of fidelity-challenged but fantastic 7″s between 1991 and 1994 before switching monikers to the less litigious “The Simple Ones.”

“We’ve been practicing most of what’s on the Joe’s Cool Sign demo tape and a lot of what’s on our three 7″s that came out before our Shangri-La releases for what will hopefully be a good 30-minute set,” McStay says. Last but not least, Shangri-La’s parking lot Record Store Day extravaganza is dubbed “Jughead Fest” due to its falling on McStay’s birthday (origins of the nickname are unclear).

Chris Shaw

It will be no sweat to split one’s afternoon between Shangri-La and what’s planned a mere 1.6 Midtown miles away at Goner Records. Timed with cross-rocking between the two destinations in mind, Goner will be presenting a three-band bill at the Cooper-Young Gazebo that kicks off at 1 p.m. with Austin, Texas’ Nameless Frames, a garage-y, post-punkish trio with a debut, self-titled full-length on Super Secret Records released this past February.

At 2 p.m. will be the live experience that is Aquarian Blood, the extra-Ex-Cult project of J.B. Horrell and his wife Laurel that not only debuted on vinyl with a 7″ that was Goner’s official Record Store Day 2015 release but, more importantly, had its first full-length scheduled for release on the label later this year.

Then, at 3 p.m., the venerable Tyler Keith & the Apostles will rock the Cooper-Young intersection an hour closer to its future Sunday morning hangover. Regarding the hours leading up to the music, Goner will be accenting their Record Store Day haul (which will in turn be YOUR haul, or part of it) with a bulking up of store stock, which means more of the best prices on great used vinyl that one could hope to find on a nationwide level.

Oxford, Mississippi’s participating venue, End of All Music, is giving goodie bags (of limited edition store-related swag) to customers who purchase records throughout the day and will certainly be stocking nearby Fat Possum Records’ three Record Store Day titles: the 10th anniversary edition of Jay Reatard’s amazing Blood Visions LP on white vinyl (also includes a 7″ of Blood Visions demos), a 12″ EP of a Daft Punk edit medley of five Junior Kimbrough songs into one 15-minute piece of music (the b-side is etched), and the Junior Kimbrough Tribute LP featuring Iggy Pop, the Black Keys, Spiritualized, and others (on clear vinyl). For other End of All Music-related Record Store Day news, make sure to check out the store’s blog.

For a list of all Record Store Day releases, visit www.recordstoreday.com

Record Store Day at Goner Records with Aquarian Blood, Nameless Frames, and Tyler Keith, Saturday, April 16th at 9 a.m. Free.

Record Store Day at Shangri-La Records with Fresh Flesh, Simpletones, Dimple Bones, and James and the Ultrasounds, Saturday, April 16th at 8:30 a.m. Free.

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Music Music Blog

Misspent Records’ First Black Friday (Record Store Day)

This Friday, November 28 (a.k.a. the day after Thanksgiving), retail stores across the country will be deluged by rabid Christmas shoppers and sale-hunters in a phenomenon that has come to be known as somewhat affectionately as “Black Friday.” Independent record shops, once immune to such commerce-driven chaos, are now solidly in the fray thanks to the expansion of something called Record Store Day (www.recordstoreday.com).

For those who don’t know, Record Store Day is a coordinated, one-day sale/event (as well as a loose collective) that seeks to promote indie record stores in the United States to the masses by offering exclusive and/or limited-edition releases (mostly on vinyl) by well-known artists only at those stores. Originally, it was just a once-a-year happening, usually in mid-April. But in recent years, Record Store Day has added Black Friday to its calendar.

Both Record Store day proper and the Black Friday sale tend to do big business for the participating shops in the Memphis area, like Goner Records, Shangri-La Records, and End of All Music in Oxford, MS. In turn, local artists and labels have started to take notice and get in on the action. One such label making its debut on Black Friday is Misspent Records.

Misspent is the brainchild of a pair of longtime Memphis-music advocates, John Miller and Chaney Nichols.
“We both love working with independent artists who are creating original music that we like and think will grab people when they hear it,” says Miller, who has served time with local music institutions such as the Memphis Music Foundation, Archer Records, and Shangri-La. “I’m from Memphis and Chaney is originally from Mississippi, so we’re really rooted to the music of this region and want to be part of sharing that.”

For their label’s first offering, Miller and Nichols (who for his part ran a successful label in Jackson, MS called Esperanza Plantation for over a decade) partnered with the very much on-the-rise local garage/psych outfit James and the Ultrasounds for a new single, “Robot Love.”  

“We both really liked what James (Godwin) was doing with his band and how they were developing since the Lovers and Ghosts EP that James had recorded by himself,” says Miller. “He’s got a great feel for crafting a rock and roll tune and with that rhythm section driving everything behind him it really is a perfect fit. ‘Robot Love’ has a great shout-a-long type chorus that gets stuck in my head and the whole thing is wrapped in a 0-to-60 package that the band blasts through. The B-side is a fun one too, a crunching tribute to the Alex Chilton-produced ‘Songs the Lord Taught Us’ by The Cramps.”

The single will be released to local independent stores on Black Friday, and will also be available at a release-party on Saturday, November 29 at 10 p.m. at Bar DKDC.

As for what’s next for Misspent Records, Miller remains light-lipped on specifics, but promises more is to come.

“We’ve got ideas for a number of projects with artists and label friends for this next year. We’re pretty open stylistically, so it’ll be fun to see what opportunities arise,” he says.

For more information on Misspent Records or Robot Love, visit www.misspentrecords.com.

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Another exclusive Black Friday Record Store Day release with local ties will drop this week – a deluxe, triple-LP re-issue of The Afghan Whigs’ classic 1993 album Gentlemen.

Recorded in Memphis at Ardent Studios with local producer/engineer Jeff Powell, the album was the band’s major label debut for Elektra Records, and by far the its biggest commercial and critical success. Gentlemen yielded two hit singles – “Debonair” and the title track – on both alt-rock radio and MTV in a prime era of both. The record also helped set The Afghan Whigs apart from the group’s heavier “grunge” contemporaries by incorporating a hefty dose of soul, R&B and ‘60s garage influences into its sound.

“I feel lucky to have been a part of such a great record,” says Powell. “I probably got more work from doing that record than any other I have worked on. It really kind of put me on the map when I was a young engineer and gave me a lot of opportunities to show what I could do in the studio.”

Last month, Rhino Entertainment re-released the record as Gentlemen at 21 in both CD and LP formats. But for the Record Store Day vinyl exclusive box set, a bevy of B-sides, demos, and live tracks that were previously only available on the CD-version, as well a host of other collectible photographs and knick-knacks, have been included in the package.

Additionally – at the band’s insistence, Powell was once again brought in to work on the project.
“I cut the master vinyl lacquers,” he says. “I haven’t heard the CD version, but the vinyl version I cut is pretty much the same as I remember it. It sounds great. It brought back memories.”
For more information on Gentlemen at 21, visit www.theafghanwhigs.com.