I Have That On Vinyl: Recent Buys
It goes without saying that it’s important to support your local record store. Sure, there’s other ways to build your collection, like picking up records at a show or ordering directly from the artist via a platform like Bandcamp, but the best way to fill up your shelves with great music is your local shop. For me, that means making a trip to Driver 8 Records in Fort Collins.
Today, my daughter (age 5) asked to go record shopping while on a walk in the park. I couldn’t say “Yes!” fast enough because I’m always looking for an excuse to spend money on vinyl. So the two of us headed into Old Town, lucked out with a good parking spot, and started flipping through records in search of something for everybody in the family.
Driver 8 is a small shop. It probably contains less records in total than I have on my shelf, but what they do have is straight heat. The recent Used arrivals almost always contains a record I want to spend too much on, and their back catalog collection is spotty but fantastic. The other great feature of the shop is my daughter’s favorite toy: a Fischer Price plastic record player. I don’t know why she loves listening to it so much, especially since at home she has her own turntable for playing real albums, but it sparks joy in her. Today, while I was digging in the bins, she played a few of the little discs before walking over to me and pointing out a classic. “Dad! The Ramones!” she nearly shouted at me as she reached for a Rhino Records copy of Rocket To Russia. “Can we get it?” she asked, and of course I added it to my “wanted” stack.
Ultimately, we settled on one record for each member of the family, but there were dozens of albums I wanted to take home and add to the already overflowing library. For my daughter, she stuck with her first choice of Rocket To Russia. For my wife, we chose the latest Wilco EP (my wife and I saw Wilco while she was 8.5 months pregnant AND my daughter was born while a Wilco song played, but those are both stories for another time). And for my self, I ultimately chose The Mountain Goats’s album The Sunset Tree because I meant to pick it up last year when I saw them at the Gothic Theater, but the merch line was overwhelmingly long and I figured I would stumble across it again at some point in time, and today happened to be the day. Now I can play “This Year” on repeat at the loudest volume possible whenever I need to remind myself that there are good things ahead.
