So like many thousands of others I waited anxiously outside in the pouring rain (or snow in some cases) for the doors of the stores to swing open and for our bank accounts to be drained like it was Christmas and Boxing Day all rolled into one...yesterday was Record Store Day 2011, or if you’re a burgeoning Twitter Head like myself it was refered to as #rsd2011.
Since I still live in a small town with no independent record store to speak of (insert the Chant Wal-Mart Sucks if you like, fine by me) I had to make the almost two hour trek south to “The Big City” of Toronto, this meant a 4am wake-up call so I could get down there early enough to get a half decent place in line, or so I thought. My destination was Criminal Records on Queen Street, and as I pulled up in the pouring rain I noticed a few poor souls already standing outside...it was 6:30 AM, the store opened at 9 AM. This whole experience brought back a flood of memories of my friends and I travelling to either Barrie or Toronto to wait all night outside either Sam’s or Cheapies to get tickets to shows and meeting all kinds of new and different people.
So after I had parked and walked over to get in line with my other RSD warriors the rain had started to come down even harder...and of course I had left the umbrella (which we have a thousand of) at home and all I had on was a hoodie...go figure eh. As I stood there 3 other guys showed up and they had umbrellas, the day was starting to look up. We all stood there in silence for a bit until conversations started to form, and of course they were all music based, who else but music nerds would stand outside in the pouring rain at six thirty in the am just to buy records. We talked about shows we had seen and what we were hoping to get our hands on (My main target for the day was David’s Town by Fucked Up). The countdown had begun, then Josh from Criminal Records pulled up out front of the store like a rock star and walked in, you could almost feel a collective sigh of relief that the long wait was coming to an end.
I checked the time on my phone because as I had realized about an hour earlier my watch was running about 20 minutes slow (didn’t go over to well with the nerds) then I saw that it was 9 o' clock on the dial...so let’s get ‘er on I was thinking in my head. We then got the report from the front (four people ahead of us) that the door was opening. As the door opened we shuffled in to a brightly lit store with the Criminal staff all standing behind the counter waiting for the beautiful black gold requests to start firing at them. We stood in line checking out some of the RSD product that they had placed up on the wall the previous night, it was all nice but what I wanted was behind the counter safe and sound waiting for me to retrieve it. As I approached the cash the guy behind the counter must have recognized me from my Facebook pic because he totally nailed it right on the head what I was there for , the Fucked Up record (we had been conversing for the last few weeks about what was coming in and quantities). So there I am spewing out names of the pieces that I wanted (a little Sonic Youth for my wife, a little OFF! For me) , then the guy that was at the cash beside me, who was one of my music nerds with umbrellas from outside shouts out a title that I had told him about, I then say to grab me one of those too while you at it...then Josh uttered the words that any black blooded record collector wants to hear “That was the last one” , that’s right the guy who didn’t even know about this record before I told him about it had just snagged it right out from under me...I guess all fare in love and records eh?
When I got back to my ride the first nerdy thing I did was snap a pic of the Fucked Up record and post it to Facebook, sorry but it just had to be done, then I sat there and surveyed the damage that I had just accrued to my bank account...was it worth it? Hell Yeah!
The rest of my #rsd2011 in “The Big City” was spent chasing records and watching The Spoons (just Gord & Sandy now) at Sunrise Records on Yonge Street. As I think back now this was a very cool wave of nostalgia to ride and a fitting wave to end the day of rain
Joe Cornelisse-SSGS
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