A couple of Saturday mornings ago, my friend Stephen texted me while he was standing in line outside of a business here in town. Alongside scores of other enthusiastic and likeminded people, he was waiting to be let into a record store. The occasion, as he informed me with a little frisson of anticipation, was “Record Store Day, 2023,” and he was in search of new music releases on vinyl.
The organization behind Record Store Day, which began in April 2008, explains that it’s a day “for the people who make up the world of the record store—the staff, the customers, and the artists—to come together and celebrate the unique culture of a record store and the special role they play in their communities.”
There are about 1,400 independently owned record stores in the United States, and indeed they are special part of a local art scene and provide something distinctive to it. If you have a favorite record store of your own these days, you already know this.
The day is intended to celebrate the business of independent record stores and it does, but it also celebrates something else. It celebrates a way of listening to music that was all but on life support not too many years ago. It also celebrates people who want to listen to music in a certain way and who are very serious about it. People like that are good for the art world.
Each year bands and record labels create several special edition albums that are available only on this day and in those stores that take part in record day. Bands themselves often appear at a store and meet fans, take pictures, and sometimes perform. In addition to the United States, this year stores in Europe, Mexico, Japan, and Australia took part. Organizers call it the world’s largest music event.
My friend says his primary mode of listening to music is through streaming services, but that he likes to have his favorite things on vinyl. Most people today listen to music by streaming, but there’s something to be said for the more purposeful and almost ritualistic act of putting an album on a turntable and listening to it. Not to mention that album cover art—which is sometimes very creative and serious and important to the overall package (think of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band) is not an element of streaming music at all. What the action does, is set the music apart from the rest of the workaday world and in going through the procedure of bringing up music on a turntable you’re doing something very specific to prepare yourself, and those with you, for the act of listening to music. It makes engaging art more thoughtful and more purposeful.
When records were the primary way in which most people listened to music there was very little that was ritualistic about it. But now, playing music on vinyl is akin to going to a museum to see a beloved work of art in person instead of looking at a picture of it. It builds a little psychic space around the act of engaging with art, and doing that reminds us that art is something to be taken seriously.
-
What makes storytelling so powerful? Unlike the stereotype of a dry lecture, storytelling is one of humanity’s oldest art forms—capable of sparking imagination and transforming the way we experience information. Actor Daveed Diggs, best known for his Tony-winning role in Hamilton, says art was the key that made American history finally feel like his story. In this segment, we explore how the power of storytelling—and art more broadly—can reshape the way we engage with history, learning, and the world around us. -
Sometimes art inspires more art. Composer Paul Hindemith found that spark in the paintings of Matthias Grünewald, creating Mathis der Maler—a piece that became both a symphony and an opera. It’s music that wrestles with creativity, politics, and the fight for artistic freedom in the shadow of Nazi Germany.
