Local Record Stores Celebrate Record Store Day on Saturday, August 29

Record Store Day is celebrated on August 29, according to recordstoreday.com, Record Store Day was established in 2007 by a small group of Record Store owners and employees who wanted to celebrate the

"nearly 1400 independently owned record stores in the US and thousands of similar stores internationally"

According to the recordstoreday.com, website, the first Record Store Day was established on April 19, 2008. Things have drastically progressed with there now being approximately 1400 Independent Record Store owners today as well as Record Store Day participating stores on every continent except Antarctica.

I've been collecting records/vinyl since I was about 10 years old and even when I went to college at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio (about 437.2 miles away...about 7 hrs and 2 min away) I lugged all of my record collection with me.  That led to me getting a slot on the college radio station, WUSO, once per week from 3a - 6a, on Tuesday mornings, to share my music with whoever was up late studying.  I was a record album freak...and I still am.  Anytime I pass by a 'Garage Sale' I'm done ... everything I was going to do gets brushed aside just so I can pull up and see if they have ANY records for sale...Garage Sales are absolutely the BEST places to get vinyl...I have Beatles albums that someone was selling for $5.00 each ...ARE YOU KIDDING ME?...No I'm not!

Record Store day is especially attractive to me because it's sentimental.  I'm from Rochester, NY and I can't remember the name of the Record Store, but I do remember the owner's name was Jessie and the store was right across from Fight Square in Rochester on Main Street not far down from the corner of Jefferson Ave and Main Street.  If I wasn't getting my music from Jessie, I was in Midtown Plaza at Record Theater (which was headquartered in Buffalo, NY) searching for my next album.   The strange thing about my record store ventures when I was young was that there was no "Black" Radio Station.  The closest I ever got to hearing any music produced by a Black person was on WBBF with Ferdinand Jay, who now owns Jay Advertising in Rochester.  He would play James Brown, Aretha Franklin, The Tempts, and some of the mainstream Black Artists but mainly The Stones, Beatles, Beach Boys, etc.  My album buying technique was to look through the "Soul Music" section at the Record Stores and choose the albums with the coolest album covers... probably the reason I had all of Funkadelic's albums, which were eventually stolen from me :(.  Here's a pic of my record collection currently ... well, most of it anyway...there's more in the basement and garage ... lol!

Here's a list of Record Stores participating in "Record Store Day" including some local stores: (click the link below)