Tomorrow, April 18, is Record Store Day all across the globe. Vinyl records are definitely worth celebrating. I wrote this poem (inspired by Record Store Day) a few years ago, and I’m sending it out to all the vinyl-philes, and to the record stores that stand out in my own experience/memory — Homer’s in Lincoln, Nebraska and Pitchfork Records in Concord, New Hampshire, in particular).
Your Record Store
The one just barely breaking even downtown,
holding out across from the town common–
the one that deals almost exclusively in vinyl.
The one run by guys
who may or may not truly revere the analog,
who may or may not have Opinions about digital,
about the ephemerality and soullessness
of the download, et cetera, but who spend
whole shifts DJ-ing the store, music reaching
to the vintage pressed tin ceiling, rolling
down the aisles of milk crates.
The only playlist’s already printed
on the black disc’s swirling eye; any shuffling
requires warming up the second turntable,
which is do-able, but why disrupt
the string of songs assembled
in that order, for your pleasure, by artists?
At the coffee shop they give you the bum’s rush
if you don’t keep plugging the refill meter
to buy your tabletop and free wi-fi,
and the boutique saleswoman gets nervous
if you examine every shirt she’s got in stock.
But here, it’s understood you could spend
unaccountable hours flipping, flipping, flipping
through the bins, drunk on musty liner notes,
inspecting for scratches. It’s a good
Saturday afternoon’s labor, thumbing your way
from A to Z, across the vast archipelago
of genres and sub-genres–the taxonomy itself
a kind of music. You’ll always find something
good to spin here, an hour-long dissertation
on Miles Davis or Husker Du, or another album
demanding that you take it home, begging
for your needle in its groove.
Liz Ahl 