Record Store Day 2018: Alexandria Business Takes Part

For those of a certain age, do you remember when 8-track tapes, then cassette tapes and then compact discs were deemed to be the future of quality music and that traditional vinyl records were doomed to go the way of, say, the car bag phone?

Yeah, well, a lot of folks will tell you there's nothing quite like the rich and deep sound of vinyl records, and a lot of those same folks happen to own or work in still-standing record stores and are ready to celebrate "Record Store Day" Saturday.

Alexandria will have a shop in the mix for National Record Day. It's Crooked Beat Records at 802 North Fairfax Street, which plans to have special releases and stock up on numerous items for the occasion. The store will open at 8 a.m. for frequent customers and 9 a.m. to the public.

Record Store Day was conceived in 2007 at a gathering of independent record store owners and employees as a way to "celebrate and spread the word about the unique culture surrounding nearly 1,400 independently owned record stores in the United States and thousands of similar stores internationally."

Newsweek had a great piece a couple of years ago with the headline: "Why Vinyl Has Made a Comeback." And the New York Times had a good read about record-pressing machines "coming back to life."

Click here for a list of stores throughout the nation (and the world) taking part in Record Store Day. Follow along with Crooked Beat Records for updates on release for Record Store Day.

Additional reporting by Patch editor Skip Wood

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