RSD 2015: Toaster Strudel Day

I love Baltimore. It's one of my favorite cities in the US. I once described it as what would happen if New Jersey and Savannah had a baby. I mean this with all the love in my heart. To me, Baltimore is an interesting and odd mix of Southern charm and Northeastern industry that is both grimy and endearing. If the commute were better I'd probably live in Baltimore. Since I moved back to the DMV I've celebrated Record Store Day in DC and Virginia so it's time to take a little trip and visit Charm City and one of my favorite record stores, The Sound Garden.

Joining me on this year's adventure are RSD champion Anita and RSD newbie Matt. Our planning was relatively easy: there was an email circulating yesterday that involved snack planning (we're counting this as a road trip), coffee orders, and an inexplicable picture of a kangaroo. I also made mix CDs (yes I burned them on actual CDs). This was a major conversation topic on the way home - Matt is convinced that I need to sign up for Spotify immediately. Anita complimented my extensive liner notes. I'm a person who buys records so I don't see mix CD making stopping anytime soon.

I digress.

If I had to pinpoint what I enjoy most about RSD it would come down to two things: the record hunt and the feeling of community that you feel in a record store. I get that digital music is easier in many ways (accessibility, storage, sharing) but I have never felt the same downloading a song as I do listening to it on a record or a CD. Or physically giving someone music or finding that one album that completes a collection. It's satisfying in a way that downloading music is not. Nick Hornby said it best, "Record stores can't save your life. But they can give you a better one." I like to believe that the majority of people who come out for RSD feel the same way or at least love a band or a musician enough to enjoy the spirit of the day rather than buying up special releases and selling them on eBay. I can dream.

Today was an absolutely beautiful, sunny day; more summer than spring. I dare say it was the perfect day for waiting in line outside a record store and for a privateer festival. That was our first surprise of the day: a privateer festival was going on just up the street from The Sound Garden. I had no idea this was going on but was wondering why a guy was getting into a costume in the parking garage where we parked. As we joined our newest friends in line at The Sound Garden, a stream of pirates (ladies too) and privateers and fans of pirates and privateers paraded by on their way to the festival. (Fun fact: a privateer is basically an authorized pirate; a government wants to use the ships and crews so they authorize them to attack vessels on their behalf.) I give them all credit for excellent costumes and enthusiasm that can only be matched by an RSD fan in line in the hot spring sun. Pro tip: always bring sunscreen to RSD - I am paying for forgetting this as I type.

I've had to wait in line before but not like this. The Sound Garden just expanded their vinyl room and set up a great flow for the day. The entrance was actually the back entrance of the store and then you exited through the front where the used CDs and DVDs are. That way, people who didn't want to come to RSD could still shop. However, they could only let so many people in at a time so we waited about two hours just to get in. Hats off to The Sound Garden staff though; the line moved as fast as it could, they were super helpful and friendly (as they always are), and the new vinyl room is wonderful. It was easy to find the RSD special releases and browse the regular new and used vinyl. 

What was most fun this year was waiting in line. I know that seems silly but it was. We made friends with the people in front of us and chatted with them throughout the wait. Matt and Anita had not met prior to today but got along famously so our conversations were fun and interesting (and didn't involve work talk or mega awkward lulls). There were Wayne's World jokes ("Car", "Game on") and a discussion with the couple in front of us about what the new vinyl room would smell like (Matt's answer: Dave Grohl's hair; true answer: new paint, fresh wood, and plastic). Anita and I also did a mildly dramatic reenactment of past RSDs that was both funny and a little sad. The best part of our line friends had to be the guy who told a young woman who asked him why we were waiting in line that it was Toaster Strudel Day and we were waiting for free toaster strudel. She believed him. I'm not sure what this says about him or her. Of course this led to a discussion of how else we could answer this question and my absolute failure when a guy asked me the same question. I told him the truth and Matt called me on it. The guy was on the indie/punk rock boy spectrum of my "type" so I wasn't going to lie. Full sleeve tattoos are distracting.

So what did we end up with for two hours in line, a parade of privateers (which honestly was a gift in itself), and a sunburn? For the first time in four years I actually bought almost exclusively RSD releases with only three non-RSD albums in the mix (Big Star and Johnny Cash). I was pleasantly surprised when I found the Alex Chilton 7" special release (the only special release I really wanted); I may have squealed when I found it. Matt had initial RSD newbie panic when he first started looking around but recovered quickly and found several items on his list. Anita was really just browsing but did find an odd Heart record where they sing with Sarah McLachlan. Who knew?

All in all a successful RSD. We all got some new additions to our collections (special releases and stuff we just like), we made some new friends, my plan to dress like an extra in a John Waters movie worked (apparently), and we ended our day with the Matt College Tour through Baltimore. This culminated with a very late lunch at Ryan's Daughter (excellent food by the way) where we ran into one of Matt's friends, Derek with whom we discussed how Baltimore and Detroit are similar (this may explain my Baltimore love a bit more - you know how I love Detroit). This is my fifth RSD and I believe it's my favorite so far. It was exactly the day that I wanted it to be without doing anything but enjoying myself and my friends. It wasn't overly planned, there were privateers, and I spent time hanging out with a bunch of people who love music the way I love music. And who don't mind a plastic dinosaur coming along for no apparent reason (his name is T-Rex Manning). Until next year...

Prelude to Record Store Day

My sniffling means two things: spring is finally here and Record Store Day is right around the corner! I always seem to get a cold/major allergy attack right before RSD. It would make more sense if it happened afterward since I spend the better part of a day in record stores, digging through bins of dusty records. Maybe it's my body's way of building up a tolerance for dust before the big day. I'm not a doctor so I really can't say.

One of the things I enjoy most about RSD is that I get to add "new" music to my collection of both CDs and records. By "new" I mean things that are probably older than me and are by bands that either don't exist anymore or haven't put out new music lately (with some notable exceptions). I've never been the kind of RSD participant that gets up at the crack of dawn to get in line to get the special releases; I tend to go a little later in the day and enjoy the live music (if I'm at a place with live music) and search the stacks for items that will fit into my musical library. I have a running list in my head that I look for anytime I go to a record store:

• Bowie
• Lou Reed and/or The Velvet Underground
• The Replacements
• Classic musicals
• Random 70s hard rock bands
• Big Star
• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
• Sleater Kinney
• Johnny Cash
• Dolly Parton
• Any 80s movie soundtrack
• New York punk bands from the 70s

I also like to find unusual album art just for fun. I also keep a second running list of things that my friends or brother might enjoy. You never know what you're going to find and it might be the thing that makes your friend happy. Win win as far as I'm concerned.

I like to collect things, not in a hoarder kind of way, but in a these are the things I enjoy and that make me an interesting person to talk to way. I always have enjoyed collecting things - books, stuffed animals, Legos, Barbies, Rainbow Brite toys, Russian nesting dolls, owls, music, shoes. Collecting is comforting; that's actually one of the psychological aspects of collecting. It provides the collector with a connection to a memory or a place or a person. Some collectors do it for money but most of us just like our things and stuff (to be technical). I don't consider my collecting of anything a hobby per se; with the exception of RSD, I don't really go out of my way to get any of the things I like and I have a limit on what I will spend on most items. I was reading an article this week about a man who basically bankrupt his family to collect coins. The story ends happily with them getting something like $30 million when the collection was sold but why would you want to put people through that type of stress for stuff you like? That I don't understand.

Collecting is actually a characteristic of one of my top five strengths according to the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment.  The strength is input and this is what the assessment has to say about input and the need to collect:

You are inquisitive. You collect things. You might collect information -- words, facts, books, and quotations -- or you might collect tangible objects such as butterflies, baseball cards, porcelain dolls, or sepia photographs. Whatever you collect, you collect it because it interests you. And yours is the kind of mind that finds so many things interesting. The world is exciting precisely because of its infinite variety and complexity. If you read a great deal, it is not necessarily to refine your theories but, rather, to add more information to your archives. If you like to travel, it is because each new location offers novel artifacts and facts. These can be acquired and then stored away. Why are they worth storing? At the time of storing it is often hard to say exactly when or why you might need them, but who knows when they might become useful? With all those possible uses in mind, you really don't feel comfortable throwing anything away. So you keep acquiring and compiling and filing stuff away. It's interesting. It keeps your mind fresh. And perhaps one day some of it will prove valuable.

This description makes me feel good about lots of aspects of my life. Why do I feel the need to memorize quotes from my favorite movies or random facts or the names of presidential assassins? Why do I read constantly? Why do I collect records? It also helps to prove that I would make an exceptional addition to any trivia team and would probably kill it on Jeopardy. If I combine my third strength, learner, with input I can actually combine several aspects of learning into my person: loving learning for the sake of knowledge collection and its use AND loving the actual process of learning. Not only does this help explain my collecting but it also makes my career trajectory make sense when I step back and consider the jobs I've had and even the things I do in my free time (tour guide, docent). To some extent everything has been learning centered in either the input or learner way. Finally something makes sense.

I'm in the middle of one of my new hire training classes right now and I caught myself saying the exact same thing to this group that I have said to at least the last four or five groups: we are very good at teaching students what their weaknesses are and what they're not good at but we don't spend enough time teaching them what their strengths are and how to use those strengths to be the best them they can be. We do this as adults too; it's easier to focus on the negative than to really have a vocabulary of positive when it comes to who we are and what we enjoy. I don't mean to say that we should never think about improvement or anything. We just need to do it in a way that doesn't make us feel bad all the time.

If none of this makes any sense, blame the cold/sinus/allergy medicine I'm taking. I feel like my brain might be a jumble of things right now and I'm surprised that this isn't one long string of words like "bicycle, unicycle, unitard, hockey puck, rattle snake, monkey monkey underpants."*

Next weekend: I'll take you on my annual RSD adventure all the way up to Baltimore at the Sound Garden. Check it out!

*From Lorelai's famous rant in the Gilmore Girls episode "Santa's Secret Stuff" (season 7, episode 11).