For the third year in a row, Record Store Day, will be celebrated this coming weekend.  Wait! You’re going to ask: what is a record store?  This is the part where I die a little on the inside.  With the world shoulder deep in the digital age, some see it archaic to have to leave their home, get in a car, drive, park, enter a store and begin looking through racks for an album they need to own.  Who wants to do that?  ME!  That’s who.

Record Store Day is the celebration of neurotic folks, like myself, that still believe in purchasing physical albums to play in Walkmans, record players, stereos and what have you.  It is on this day, musicians show their gratitude to independent record stores across the country and release limited edition material to the foaming masses.

With big box stores reducing the size of their music selections, independent record stores have a chance to start winning folks back.  Since Wal-Mart, Target or Best Buy have limited offerings, you can take a trip to the small store and really find what you want or be convinced to purchase something else that you wouldn’t otherwise think to pick.  Not that I’ve ever done that to someone before, but it does happen to some unsuspecting victims.

To really get in the spirit of the event visit their website to see what stores are participating, what releases are offered and some all around general music news.  Many stores have live music by local artists, and tons of free samplers.  As the day nears, check the site for updates about releases and locations.  Some of us have the Super Bowl, the rest of us have Record Store Day.

To be honest, it seems like purchasing CDs, real, tangible CDs, is a dying trend. People like iTunes (well, I don’t). They’re satisfied with hearing a song once or twice on Youtube, and not actually getting the hard copies of the music they like.

“Hey, wait! Weren’t you the one who wrote an article on Grooveshark, an online tool for listening to music, just a couple weeks ago?”

Guilty as charged. I often hesitate to buy CDs, especially when I’m just exploring new artists, because I don’t know if I’ll ever want to listen to the music again after making it through an album once. However, once I know that I’ll be listening to an album more than once, I think it’s only fair to pay credit where credit is due, and start spinning the real CD.

“But CDs are so expensive.” Well, compared to “free music,” it’s impossible to argue that CDs don’t cost the extra buck, they do. CDs are worth the extra buck. Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean you have to spend $13+ on a newly released album. There are all sorts of discount prices available if you take a couple minutes to search for the best deals. If you don’t have time to find the absolute lowest cost on a CD, I’ve found that YourMusic.com has been a very reliable and cheap Web site for buying CDs.

YourMusic is a branch of BMG Music, which my family has been using for years. They constantly offer great deals on CDs. For example, currently, every CD on the Web site is selling for $6.99. That’s with free shipping and handling, no strings attached (unless you count the fact that you have to subscribe, but it’s a free subscription). They have thousands of CDs including the Black Eyed Peas latest album The E. N. D. (Energy Never Dies), Owl City’s Ocean Eyes, John Fogerty’s The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again, and George Strait’s Twang. They carry just about every genre of music.

Like music? Get the real thing, and get it cheap at YourMusic.com.

There comes a point in the career of most musicians where someone will compile an unbelievable amount of stuff in a box and market it to the salivating masses for some outrageous price.  And we, like idiots, will go and drop the money for material that has never been commercially available before, so we can show it off to other people.

This past week Columbia Records released a massive Miles Davis retrospective box set.  It includes all 52 of the albums he recorded for Columbia on 70 CDs, the CDs are even designed to look like miniature vinyls, along with a live DVD of rare concert footage and a book of photos and essays on Miles.  I’m not going to tell you the price tag, you’ll cry, but for what you get there is no substitute.  If you are a casual listener, I wouldn’t recommend jumping in with this.  For a die-hard fan, you probably have many of these albums from the remastered editions that were put out a few years ago.  Although, if you happen to pick this up, I’d love to borrow it from you any time.

Back in 1997 Soundgarden disbanded, and grunge officially died.  For over a decade we, the fans, have had to suffer through Chris Cornell’s side projects and solo albums in hopes that he’ll get the original band together.  A little Internet poking lead me to an article that Cornell and co., will be releasing a Soundgarden box set.  Not of their albums, instead B-Sides and new material that was recorded after their last album but never formally released.  The biggest ‘if’ of the whole deal is that the band could get back together next year for a tour.  Don’t get your hopes up yet; I want the box first before anything else.

“Why not London?” asked Caleb Followill to the sold out crowd during the June 30^th show this past summer, and why not London?  Considering England embraced these bearded Southern gents when their first album came out this is a thank you to the people that propelled them into the status they are in now.  Nothing says thanks like filming a live DVD in front one of the biggest crowds they ever played, if you don’t count the Glastonbury Festival from the previous summer.

I saw the boys back in 2007 at the Orpheum in Boston, and not much has changed since then.  I mean that in the best sense possible.  Some bands blow up with some extra album sales and get a crazy light show, but not the Kings.  Rather than pull away from their music with lighting and effects, you have a simple set, minimal talking and a lot of great songs.  Nothing against the bands that use effects, but maybe they are compensating for something. 

The Kings plow through big hits and incorporate new songs with a good selection of old ones.  You can see how they have grown on the stage and road during this performance, and opening for U2, Bob Dylan and Pearl Jam helped a lot as well.  They all look comfortable on the stage and don’t try anything too adventurous- they do what they do best: give a great live show.

Songs like “California Waiting”, “On Call”, “The Bucket” and “Crawl” all proved to be huge fan favorites.  You also have their latest hits “Sex on Fire” and “Use Somebody” but it is “Cold Desert” that gives you the chill that these guys could really be great.  Until they release a new album, enjoy this tidbit to hold you over.

I recently read about the amount of music stores closing across the country in Rolling Stone.  It hadn’t struck me, until a few days ago, that F.Y.E. is the only national chain record store in operation, which is pretty depressing.  I used to visit Record Town or Strawberries as a kid, I rarely went into Tower Records and I’ve never seen a Virgin Megastore.  Is this a sign of the times? What is on the horizon as iPods begin to take over?

Borders is said to be cutting a percentage of their music and movie section, Wal-Mart might do the same.  People just aren’t buying CD’s anymore, or they are going back and buying vinyl, but soon we may not need these stores to buy and listen to music.

As an audiophile this makes me sad.  Pretty soon I only will be able to buy music from Best Buy, and they don’t have a great selection.  Small independent chains are holding on still, thankfully, but for how much longer?  Whenever I go in to Newbury Comics I feel compelled to purchase something to keep them in business, even a pack of gum or a bumper sticker.

Don MacLean and I each have a sacred store where we’ve heard the music; I just don’t want to see those stores close.  Buying music online is no fun at all because you can find everything you want, there is no ‘thrill of the hunt’ when you point and click.  I have dreams of coming across rare albums at music stores and finding something special.  Please don’t take away my dreams, or I may have to break down and get iTunes.

With iTunes and online file sharing, it should be no surprise that the local record store may be a thing of the past. Going the way of the dodo bird, over 3,100 local music stores have closed in the U.S. since 2003 (according to Almighty Institute of Music Retail).

What is lost when these stores go is the local flavor that a record store provides not only to a neighborhood but also the local music community. The store staff and clientèle represent a collective knowledge base that you don’t find on Walmart online music download.

The economist in me knows that you can’t stop progress, but the historian in me knows that something is lost when local flavor is lost in the retail music world.