Record Store Day: Fairfax City Spins Saturday

FAIRFAX, VA — 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.

Fairfax has a couple of stores participating in National Record Day: Mobius Records, 1409 Main Street, Suite D, and the Record & Tape Exchange, 9448 Main Street.

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Mobius Records buys and sells albums of whatever vintage, but it also specializes in new releases and current artists. Here's some of what it has planned for Saturday.

The Record & Tape Exchange also buys and sells albums of various ages. It updates its inventory daily and offers quality advice from knowledgeable employees. For Saturday, its doors open at 8 a.m. Specials include 50 percent off the price of all used vinyl $5 and under, and 30 percent off all CDs and DVDs.

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.

Image via Record Store Day