Let me paint you a picture: Once a year, a few hundred titles which have never before been released on vinyl get pressed and distributed globally. Each record gets pressed anywhere between 20,000 to a mere 750 times, globally. Said records are shipped to independent record stores without any knowledge of what they get. This beautiful day is called Record Store Day, and this year, this special day fell on the 18th of April.
The music-oriented, queer in me made it my mission to not only be at any participating store, but I was going to collect these records. Places closest to me (the mighty Tron) where all in Auckland, and for this special day, stores open early and are highly attended. What did this mean? I left Hamilton at 5am. With my two flatmates in the car (shoutout to Ruby and Marlie), we were off to the big city each of us with an assignment. Neither of my flatmates are music snobs, nor do they collect vinyls so they were there for one reason and one reason only: GET AOIFE THEIR RECORDS.
Some of the titles I was after were:
Once getting to Real Groovy at 6:45 (doors opening at 8am), we waited and waited. We were in the first 30 people through the door and the moment we (mainly I) were waiting for arrived. Marlie’s missions was successful, I officially had a pressing of Lucy Dacus’ unreleased track “Planting tomatoes” – which I heard live for its first performance at Laneway. After being unsuccessful with the other vinyls, I picked up a few non-RSD records (Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You by Ethel Cain and Blush by There’s A Tuesday) and discovered Southbound Records had “relative amounts of Inbred by Ethel Cain”. As I’m sure you could imagine, this was the best news I had heard since 2016 when Angelina Jolie left Brad Pitt.
So, with my flatmates still by my side, we made the 7 minute drive from Real Groovy to Southbound Records. Their shop opened at 9, at this stage it was only 8:30. I came across more waiting. But eventually I was at the front of the line and got my dirty paws on Inbred!!!! Still, no Wolf Alice, but almost $300 later, I decided that was okay.
With success at Southbound, Ruby, Marlie, and I decided to make our way back to the city centre and somehow, I found myself back in real groovy, ready to spend MORE money. Not to fret, I didn’t spend anymore, unless you count the self-titled album by Muna (the only album by them I didn’t have on vinyl) – which was 20% off (so it barely counts, right?)
There you have it, my RSD 2026 journey, I hope you enjoyed. I also hope you begin to collect physical media because it really makes you so much cooler when your house is filled of rows and rows of DVDs, CDs, books, but mostly vinyls.
