Record Store Day: what a wonderful time of year for nerding out! For the uninitiated, RSD is the day when music labels and record stores come together to celebrate the beauty of record collecting. On this fateful day many record stores worldwide come together to offer beautiful pieces of vinyl and special editions in limited quantities in hopes to harness music aficionados worldwide and get them to visit their local record store. It is an incredibly noble cause and I try to honor it every year. Well, this year was a damn bonanza! Here’s what I scored for myself:

• Belly — Feel (10″ EP)
• The National — Boxer Live In Brussels (LP)
• Buffalo Tom — The Only Living Boy In New York b/w The Seeker (7″ single)
• Patton Oswalt — Annihilation (2xLP)
• Blonde Redhead — Peel Sessions (7″ Single)

Although I will discuss each release in separate posts, I can tell you guys getting up at 6:30am on a Saturday morning was well worth it. Some of these releases will just exist in their very limited run, some will be reissued, but what ultimately matters is being able to support the artists, labels, and record stores participating in this fun initiative.

The long and short…

Even if you weren’t able to cop any records on the day of, it’ll still be worth it to pay a visit to your local store and buy physical records and CDs; it will make listening to music an incredibly richer experience than streaming music or downloading files that will pile up in a big heap with a zillion other and will be just as easily forgotten.