Record Store Day is less than a month away, and once again we are looking forward to spending the day at Derricks Music on Oxford Street. We are hoping to see lots of you there again this year and some new faces no doubt.

What is Record Store Day all about and why do we enjoy it so much?

Record Store Day is the one day of the year (or actually two this year) when over 200 independent record shops all across the UK come together to celebrate their unique culture. Special vinyl releases are made exclusively for the day and many shops and cities host artist performances and events to mark the occasion. Thousands more shops celebrate the day around the globe in what’s become one of the biggest annual events on the music calendar.

Having a close relationship with Derricks Music for many years, we came together with the idea of making RSD a little bigger by partnering with them on the day and doing a little something special for our customers.

For the 2014 event we were lucky enough to have the vacant upstairs of Derricks available, so we decided to take down a really nice system to play vinyl all day and maybe try to coax customers into playing their brand new purchases. In the weeks leading up to the day, the buzz had started that this was going to be a rather special Record Store Day. Lots of our customers were unfamiliar with the event and once they had learned all about it they were quite excited about the opportunity to get hold of some rare and special recordings.

Record Store Day publishes the list of forthcoming releases every year approximately two to three months in advance just to whet the appetite. But with some recordings having as low a pressing number as 500 it can be hit and miss if you will be able to get what you want on the day.

It’s the day before RSD2014 and time to set up our display. We had been lucky enough to get lots of goodies from Rega, including tonearms in various states, from the original bare casting through to the finished product along with a cut away tonearm showing all of the internals. We had motors and power supplies, basically everything that goes into making the turntable that you cannot see with the finished product.

With the Hi-Fi all set up and singing along and everybody happy, it came down to the plan of attack for the day. Christos (Mr Derricks) said “I think we’d better make an early start – there’s gonna be a big queue!”. It was agreed that I would be there for 8.30 am ready to open the doors at 9am. At home that evening I had great pleasure in picking a selection of my own records to play to show off the system.

The day had arrived, I headed in early to get parked up and walk across town. As I made my way down Oxford street, the main street through the City centre, I could not believe the sight that greeted me! We had expected a queue, but to have a queue that went out of sight and quite literally around the block was amazing. Christos opened the door to me, I pointed at the queue and said “look at that!”, “that’s not it” Christos replied “it’s almost up to the Kingsway”. We knew right then that this was going to be one busy day.

I made my way upstairs, got the system nice and warm and laid out my collection of Joe Bonamassa albums (just to wind up Christos, who is not the biggest fan shall we say) and awaited the opening of the doors. The buzz outside was fantastic, lots of people eager to get their hands on their wish list. The doors opened and the young man at the head of the queue was on his way to the counter. Managing to get all of the records he had wanted was just reward for the 3am start to be first in line! The stream of customers picking up their RSD goodies then coming upstairs to see our set up didn’t stop for hours, I nipped back down stairs at eleven o’clock and the queue was still down the road. It would be early afternoon before we could take a well earned tea break, the boxes and boxes of RSD records had been decimated to just a handful being left on the counter. Safe to say the day had been a roaring success.

The collection of Joe B’s albums has grown quite a lot since then!

After such a fabulous day, playing and talking music and Hi-Fi to lots of lovely people we were obviously going to keep this day in the calendar for the next RSDs.

Fast forward to 2015, plans in place to take some of our wares down to Derricks for the day. There was an extra special treat in store for the attendees this year. Rega had announced that they were going to make a limited edition RSD turntable based on the famous RP1. So, we thought what better way to reward all of the dedicated music lovers, some of which will be queueing up from the early hours of the morning than to give them a chance to win one of the RSD Rega turntables in a free prize draw. It wasn’t too long after that when we had our promotional posters up detailing the special prize and the buzz had started once again.

The day went off as predicted, a huge queue with lots of happy customers introducing each other to new bands and music and entries piling up for the chance to win “the Rega”. We were going to make the draw at four o’clock in the hope that we could get the winner back to the shop before closing time to be able to present it to them, and so it was soon time to pick the winner…...

We asked one of the customers in the shop at time to pull the lucky slip out of the box and it was up to me call the winner.. Ring… ring…. “hello”…… “it’s Nic here down at Derricks”… the next reply is not suitable for printing but let’s say the winner was very very pleased! We were all creased laughing at the reaction, made all our work and effort worth while. It seemed that the prize draw was going to be another fixture for Record Store Day that would continue, and it still does…

For 2016, another limited edition RSD turntable from Rega. The press release read: “The artwork on the Rega RP1 turntable has been designed by iconic Sheffield artist, Pete Mckee, most well-known for his work with Oasis, Teenage Cancer Trust, Warp Films and Arctic Monkeys. The turntable will go on sale in Record Store Day participating stores and Rega dealers on Saturday 16th April. Only 500 RP1s with the ‘Club Rega’ design have been made, making it a very limited and much-desired collector’s item.” This was definitely going to be a fabulous prize for one lucky person!. After the success of the 2015 event, the word was getting out about what we were doing, so much so the local newspaper ran an article about the upcoming event.

As we had come to expect, the day was a roaring success. Another fun packed day with hordes of people, panic set in at one point as we had run out of our competition entry forms! Perhaps one of the funniest parts of the day was when I threw a curve ball with my music choice. As I mentioned, Christos is not the biggest fan of my taste in music but very generously gives me free reign as to what I play through the day, as he would say “not another woman and a guitar!”. It was around about 2pm and we could see that Christos was getting withdrawal symptoms from his old men with Les Pauls, so…. sneakily I put on a Shirley Bassey record…… “THAT’S ENOUGH” Christos shouted! as he scrambled to find one of his choices to put on before he had a meltdown. Then the penny dropped that it was a set up, Sian and myself had planned it all along - it wasn’t nasty …. honest.

Some images of the day..

On to 2017… and by far my favourite Record Store Day to date.

This was going to be the 10th Anniversary Record Store Day so we felt big plans were needed. After the success of the 2014 system upstairs at Derricks, the plan was to do the same again but with a monster system with the flagship Rega RP10 turntable as the star of the show and play my own RSD records from previous years. The now expected start of the day was the manic rush of eager beavers queueing from silly o’clock in the morning, smoke coming from the till and boxes of records emptying at a rate of knots and all to the sound of music from upstairs, beckoning people like an ice cream van to a six year old!

Having played quite a few of my favourite RSD purchases from previous years, I thought it time to give Elvis a whirl. A 2016 release I purchased was “Elvis – I’m Leavin’” - This special Record Store Day release includes masters from Elvis’ sessions at RCA Victor’s Studio B in Nashville in May 1971, a period in which several folk writers’ material surfaced spontaneously amid gospel and holiday recordings, plus others with similar provenance: from Dylan’s “Tomorrow Is A Long Time” in 1966, to then-contemporary pop-folk such as “Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues” in 1973, this is Elvis in an introspective mood, masterfully creating definitive versions of iconic compositions that resonated with him for his friends in the studio – and for us. Limited to 5,000 copies.

After the first play of it in 2016 I was amazed at the voice I was hearing, it sounded like nothing you would hear on the radio of his, I guess it’s much like the current Tom Jones recordings of songs that the artist really loves rather than songs the record companies pushed upon them.

After playing only a couple of tracks on the big system a few people came upstairs asking who it was that they could hear from downstairs, and after I had told a few that it was Elvis and seeing the surprise on their faces I decided to put the cover out of sight and give the volume a bit more grief. Some more people came upstairs with the same question … “who is this?…. it’s great”, so I told them to have a guess and nobody guessed correctly! I showed them the album cover and the reply was “that’s not Elvis!”. Another Elvis album that had the same effect was the 2015 RSD release of “Elvis - Sings”, a collection of songs written by various other artists and perhaps the best “that’s not Elvis” is his version the Ray Charles classic “What’d I say”. Roy Orbison was the most popular guess at that one! This became a theme for the day as it was such a crowd puller so to speak, every time I played it the same thing happened, and from there on in it has been known as the “That’s not Elvis day”.

My Elvis RSD release colelctin so far. More to come this coming RSD fingers crossed.

Of all the RSD days I have had the pleasure of at Derricks this really is the stand out day for me. The fact that what people could hear drew them upstairs to come and hear more and find out who it was spoke more to me about why we all love music so much, and to a greater extent why I got into the Hi-fi industry in the first place. Hearing something that suddenly makes you want to hear more and find new artists (even though the artist wasn’t exactly new) is what I love to do, I have always said that I could not bear to hear the same record over and over for thirty years. We often get people calling into the shop and asking me to play them some music that they may not have heard before, and ask where I heard it. Mainly I get to hear the majority of new music on the radio, especially the late night Radio 2 shows like Bob Harris and Paul Jones. But, the other great thing is getting to know the lovely people in your local record shop -your hi-fi will thank you for it!. Chris and Sian at Derricks have a standing joke with me now - “there’s a new album by a woman playing a guitar, do you want it”, or I may walk in - and from behind the counter appears a new album by an artist they know I like knowing I will want it. Perhaps the best example of this was quite recently when there was a release of “Prince-One nite alone” on vinyl had been released that I didn’t know about. As I walked in Christos pointed to it and said “be wanting this then” - uh…….ooooh yes! So, wherever you live please make sure to go check out your independent record shops, they are often cheaper than the mail order people and big shops and what’s better than having your new LP in your hand and not waiting for the postman?

As RSD 2021 approaches (June 12th) we really hope that this one will go with a bang once again. We will of course be offering a Rega P1 turntable in a free prize draw and have some goodies to give away on the day to some lucky customers. With the possibility of Covid restrictions still being in place we may not have the chance to have a big system playing again but we will be there to take all your competition entries, answer any questions about your systems and of course talk about Elvis.

To find out more about Record Store Day 2021 click here and we hope to see you at Derricks on June 12th. You never know - you may be the lucky winner of a Rega P1 turntable.

Nic, Chris and Ade - Audio T Swansea

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To finish, here are some images from previous years and some of my own cherished RSD records.