Blur and other Record Store Day goodies!

Blur and other Record Store Day goodies!

I was excited to learn that Blur's first single in many years would be a Record Store Day exclusive, but I was sad to hear it was limited to 1000 copies and would only be distributed in the U.K. The band realizes that fans all over the world are rabid for new material so they have posted the new single on their site as a free download. Get it!

My only actual purchase this year was the vinyl version of The Flaming Lips' Dark Side of the Moon, which sounds fantastic on a record player.* I still have mixed feelings about Record Store Day as an actual event -- it still feels like bands / label profiting off nostalgia for an institution that no longer really exists -- but hey, anything that can get Blur to put out a new song can't be all bad.

*A huge thanks to Eric Ander$in for helping me track down that particular slab of vinyl. I got a late start and most places were completely out, but he called around for me and finally tracked down a copy for me at the downtown Reckless Records location, which oddly still had two dozen copies, leading me to believe they were more or less off the beaten path for most music entusiasts shopping for exclusives.