On Saturday, my husband informed me that it was Record Store Day and to honor the day, he wanted to visit two of our local record shops. Count me in, I said.

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know how I feel about record stores. In fact, I’ve written two posts about records and record stores; Things I Miss: Record Stores, and Things I Miss: Record Albums. I lament the loss of large record stores with new albums appearing every day; thumbing through the albums, reading the liner notes, discovering new albums and artists. Some of my best memories involve record stores. I had a huge collection of albums, most of which are now warped and unplayable after being stored for many years. Big mistake. Breaks my heart.

Don and I have been slowly buying vintage vinyl records. And new vinyl is increasingly becoming popular again, which gives me hope. I think there is a real difference in the sound of a vinyl record and a CD or MP3. The vinyl sounds more live, more exciting – less perfect in the best possible way.

It’s nice to be able to download music, of course. I do it myself. But where are the liner notes? Where is the artwork on the album cover? Where are the lyrics?

It’s not the same.

Interesting information: Musician Jack White, who has a store/studio in Nashville, is a big proponent of vinyl. He has a Record Booth in his store where you can record your own record! Don wants to do that. So do I! His store and studio are very cool and are decorated in a wonderfully retro style. In honor of Record Store Day, he recorded the world’s fastest record – recorded, pressed and distributed in under four hours.

Here are some photos of our day.

Don, outside our favorite local record shop.

I look so much like my mother in this photo.

Thumbing through the albums. Ahhh, I’ve missed this! That’s the owner in the background. He’s smart and funny and knowledgeable. Plus, he has a Record Store Cat named Watson who was sleeping on top of the albums that were just to the right of the group in this picture. Watson is inscrutable and clearly the lord of the manor.

I include this simply because I seem to be wearing two pair of glasses. Interesting trick.

Don with a Loudon Wainwright album. He ended up buying it.

Oh, Joni. I have this album somewhere. Hours and hours of memories.

I posted this on Facebook because it made me laugh. A spoken word album of correct pronunciations. Since I have spent years teaching this very subject, I remarked that I could have saved myself all the hours put into creating lesson plans and played the gosh-darned record instead.

Look what I found! A near mint condition soundtrack to my favorite movie. I have this album somewhere, but I know it isn’t in great shape. So I snapped this baby up and it is now living in Mockingbird Hill Cottage, along with an Earth, Wind and Fire album that I also purchased.

I dare you to stay in a bad mood when Earth, Wind and Fire is on the turntable.

Go ahead. Try it.

I dream of a big record store, full of thousands of albums, with music playing and all sorts of music to discover. But, in the meantime, I’m sure happy that these charming shops exist, with owners who love vinyl and want to share that love with everyone.

It’s Earth Day today. Let’s use this day (and every day) to urge our world leaders to finally do something about climate change before it is too late. Or we might just end up with an Earth that is uninhabitable.

And finally, I wrote about this yesterday but I’m not sure how many of you saw it, so I’m reposting:

On another note: Several of you who subscribe to this blog via email have mentioned that you have not been receiving recent posts. This is a Feedburner problem and it seems to be happening across the blogging world. The short answer: there’s nothing I can do about it but trust it will be sorted out eventually. Feedburner often has mysterious glitches. May I offer some easy, practical advice? Most readers subscribe to a blog via email because the blogger doesn’t post every day and they want to know when a new post is up. You know I post every day. Every Day. So, barring unforeseen circumstances, there will be a new post on this blog every morning. Why not simply bookmark the blog on your browser and click on it at some point during the day? Quite frankly, that’s how I read blogs. (The only blog I subscribe to is my own and that’s just to keep tabs on whether the email is working – and it has been working for me.) Bookmark it. You can rest assured that a new post will be up by 10 am every morning. Like clockwork.

Happy Tuesday.