Record Store Daze (Found Sound)

Just what I need in my life, another Record Store! (No, really, I probably need it.)

Record Store Day is looming.

It's often a personal victory if I'm able to restrain myself from dropping dollar amounts surpassing triple digits - because then, really, I'd admit I have a problem...

But there are all kinds of exciting special deals at spots all around the metro area, (celebrated on Saturday, April 21st) - on top of an overall warm-n-fuzzy ambience of vinyl-enthusiasm surging inside each humble wax shack - each still goaded by the vindication of staying afloat in this still-quite-rough economy of ours...

"But...opening a Record Store? Now??" Chris Butterfield remembers when he was asked about the likelihood of him wanting to work in a new store, another record store!, in the waning days of his tenure at Record Time in Roseville. His tone tacitly inflected a yeah-right reaction... But, of course, this was before the surprising boom-year of 2011 - as Forbes reported last January: "Vinyl Continues Unlikely Recovery, According To New Numbers" -finding it to be year where more vinyl LPs were sold than any other year in the SoundScan era.

It was The Beatles' Abbey Road, more than 40 years after it was released that led the way in vinyl sales, not some indie-art-rock saint like Radiohead or hot-new-thing like Adele or Bon Iver, but still...still...people are coming around, more and more each year, to retail spots stacking vinyl records.

Now, Butterfield (-whom local show-goers might recognize as the suspender-sporting frontman to rock-boogie-blenders Pink Lightning), is assistant manager of a temporarily empty, unopened new record store.

-Found Sound hopes to open up in about a month or so (by early summer at the latest), moving into the old Mother Fletchers vintage clothing store (in the heart of downtown Ferndale).