Record Store Visit: Vintage Vinyl - Fords, NJ - Record Store Day 2012

The 2nd installment in my visiting a record store posts.  While I would like to get out to record stores more often than I do, frankly I just do way more mailorder these days.  So many labels have exclusive versions of their records only available directly from them, and as much as I like supporting the record stores, I also like to support bands and labels as directly as possible.  In an ideal world I'd split my time 50/50, but times have changed since I was young.

Anyway, Vintage Vinyl is a store I am very familiar with.  I've been coming here since the mid 90's.  It was one of those stores that commanded a special trip since it was about an hour away from where I lived at the time.  By far the biggest store in the area, plus they had some pretty smart buyers, so you'd always find something unexpected in the racks.  It's a pretty good mix of vinyl & CDs.  Old stuff, punk stuff, indie stuff and from what I gather a pretty impressive metal section, though that's not really my bag.  Big enough to cover all genres, but smart enough to stock good records in every section.

For the past 4 years, Vintage Vinyl has been my Record Store Day stop. They get more stock than anyone in the area and every year I manage to get just about everything I need there. 2012 was more of the same.

The Record Store Day 2012 releases were pretty underwhelming this year, so for the 1st time in 3 years, I didn't line up early in the morning before the store opened.  I wandered in around 11:30 in the morning and only had to wait in line for about 10 minutes.  Went up to the counter and sure enough, they had 2 of the 3 records I wanted.  Picked up the Little Richard LP and the Otis Redding/Aretha Franklin split 7" (both will have their own posts in the next couple of days). After that I dug around for a bit, but didn't come across anything else that was worth picking up that day.  I did, however, take a fascinating picture of the CD section inside.  At least on this day, there was no one there; everyone wanted vinyl!

This wasn't the only store I stopped at on Record Store Day, but it was the one I went to explicitly for RSD releases.  I also went to another old time favorite, but I'll post about that next week so I have a few days to post about records.