The door, covered in posters of upcoming shows and indie releases, sat wide open on this sunny, cool April afternoon. People filed in on a steady basis while the music spilling out was not the kind one would normally hear, unless of course you happened to be in downtown Athens, Ga.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat of the people who don\u2019t have what I ain\u2019t got? Are they victims of my leisure?\u201d blared the lyrics from the late-great Minutemen singer D. Boon while a sea of two dozen album hunters milled about from bin to bin. It was Record Store Day, a celebrated holiday for the world\u2019s lovers of vinyl, and Wuxtry Records was at the center of the turntable goodness, as it\u2019s been for decades upon decades.<\/p>\n
Athens is an anomaly when it comes to record stores, a town that touts multiple vinyl spots while cities 10 times its size can\u2019t count one in its midst. Just two years ago three record stores sat within a five-block radius of one another in downtown Athens \u2014 Wuxtry joined Schoolkids Records (run by the lead singer of feted band The Glands) and Lo Yo Yo Stuff Records \u2014 but the closing of Schoolkids and the recent downsizing of Lo Yo Yo have sliced into the Classic City\u2019s vinyl selection.<\/p>\n
Yet Wuxtry remains as stalwart as ever, a store steeped with its own musical history and named by many publications as one of the top record stores in the country. There\u2019s the storyline of how during a shift one former employee (Peter Buck) got to talking with a customer (Michael Stipe) about their shared taste in music. The two went on to form a band you might have heard of. Several years later there was another former employee (Brian Burton) who, when not selling records, would spin them at area venues wearing a large mouse outfit. Things worked out rather well for Danger Mouse.<\/p>\n
The music geek I am, I go into Wuxtry quite often, not always to buy but to look around for vinyl I\u2019ve sought for years (where are you, original version of Bad Brains\u2019 \u201cRock for Light\u201d?). But Record Store Day is something special, boasting a hefty haul of items available on a limited basis, of which Wuxtry has them all: Titus Andronicus\u2019 12-inch aptly named Record Store Day<\/em> (only 800 available worldwide); Sigur Ros\u2019 12-inch Agaetus Byrjun<\/em> (982 available); Superchunk\u2019s 7-inch \u201cVoid\u201d b\/w \u201cFaith\u201d (a scant 600 made).<\/p>\n This list goes on.<\/p>\n For the past four years Wuxtry has released its own Record Store Day album featuring a compilation of songs from Athens and Atlanta bands. I have the other three, so it\u2019s the first thing I picked up when I walked through the door. This year Wuxtry paired with a local venue \u2014 Caledonia Lounge \u2014 for a Record Store Day concert featuring many of the bands on the album, and buying the album earned a free pass to the show. I knew what I was doing later.<\/p>\n I picked up the Titus Andronicus (because the band RULES, and will be in Athens in three weeks, YES!) and grabbed the latest from Athens band Tunabunny, a foursome of indomitable might who echoes the sound Athens legends Pylon. Tunabunny is on the Happy Happy Birthday to Me label, a label whose owner (Mike Turner) also happens to work \u2014 at Wuxtry Records. A note aside the album reads it\u2019s the best release in 2012. Not sure how it got there, but it turns out to be true.<\/p>\n After some added sifting I couldn\u2019t find another elusive vinyl release \u2014 the latest from My Bloody Valentine. I headed to the counter to ask John (John Fernandes, part of the Elephant Six Collective, founding member of Olivia Tremor Control and Circulatory System) if a copy of mbv was in the store. \u201cNo, that\u2019s a hard one to find,\u201d he said. \u201cThey might be only selling it through their website, but we might have it soon.\u201d<\/p>\n Turns out you can\u2019t have everything, even on Record Store Day. Hey, you always need a good enough reason to come back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The door, covered in posters of upcoming shows and indie releases, sat wide open on this sunny, cool April afternoon. People filed in on a steady basis while the music spilling out was not the kind one would normally hear, unless of course you happened to be in downtown Athens, Ga. \u201cWhat of the people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1075,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[208,213,214],"class_list":["post-1074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","tag-lo-yo-yo-records","tag-record-store-day","tag-wuxtry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1074"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1076,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions\/1076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}