PORT ANGELES — At least two North Olympic Peninsula merchants are making special arrangements for Saturday’s national Record Store Day.
In Port Angeles, that means an all-day concert in the back room at Mike Colgan’s Coog’s Budget CDs and Tapes at 111 Front St.
The lineup for the free show includes a mix of Peninsula and Puget Sound bands.
Locals include Colgan’s elderly punk band MCFD; the metal outfit Trinity Avenue from Port Angeles; Port Angeles singer/songwriters Luke Meeker and Dakota Long; AK47, a disabled rapper from Port Hadlock; and Wanda Bumgarner, a singer from Forks known for her yodeling talents.
“Wanda’s amazing,” Colgan said. “She’s more punk than anybody.”
Joining the locals will be Poorsport, a punk four-piece from Seattle; Everett rockers Southender; and Seattle post-punk group Urine Idiot.
Music will begin at noon and continue until 8 p.m.
In Port Townsend, Mark Haring, who owns and operates Quimper Sound at 211 Taylor St. in the Undertown, will offer special limited releases of vinyl records.
“The purpose of Record Store Day is to give independent record stores a chance to compete with the big boys,” Haring said.
“We can offer product that isn’t available online or at chain stores, so people come in to buy what they can’t get anywhere else.”
Record Store Day was started in 2007 by a group of fans who asked artists and labels to put out special limited releases of vinyl records, available only to standalone brick-and-mortar retailers.
The limited releases would go to retailers whose main primary business focuses on a physical store location, whose product line consists of at least 50 percent music retail, whose company is not publicly traded and whose ownership is at least 70 percent located in the state of operation, according to the website www.recordstoreday.com.
The first Record Store Day had about 30 releases. It has now grown to about 300, Haring said.
There are a lot of rules, he said, such as a promise that none of the releases will be sold before the official day and that they can’t be sold online.
Haring placed an order for Record Store Day, and on Saturday, he will open an hour early at 9 a.m.
Colgan isn’t buying any official Record Store Day product because of the cost and rules.
Haring, who has owned Quimper Sound for eight years, recently moved the store from a large, open space on Taylor Street to a cozier location in the Undertown that was about half the size.
Over the past few years, his inventory has shifted from a majority of CDs and a few racks of records on the back wall to a majority of LPs.
The new store location is almost all vinyl.
When he bought the store, his own music collection was all digital.
That changed one night when he brought a turntable home along with a few used records.
He plugged it into his television’s sound system, and, he said, his life got back to where it once belonged.
“It’s an inaccurate representation of music to have it be digitally altered. When you turn music into a series of ones and zeros, something gets lost,” Haring said.
“I hadn’t listened to records since the early ’80s and hadn’t sat down and had the Zen experience of letting the music wash over me and getting lost in the sound.
“I thought it was an age thing and I was just getting older.
“But when I hooked up the turntable, I immediately heard a whole difference in the sound.”
Quimper Sound is specialized, compact and well organized.
In contrast, Coog’s has a wide-open, random feeling. In addition to the records, CDs and tapes, the store is filled with memorabilia from the rock ‘n’ roll era — including a handheld basketball video game from the late 1970s and a lawnmower belt.
But the two proprietors have a common interest in, and respect for, vinyl.
Colgan said record stores now serve almost as museums for the history of pop music, with the vinyl records and toys from the same era tactile reminders of a bygone era.
“It makes you feel good to have something in your hand that you lost a long time ago,” he said.
“That’s why I still have this record store.”
Demographics of record buyers have changed, Colgan said, as more find music online.
“Kids don’t really come in here to buy CDs. The kids buy the vinyl,” Colgan said.
“Nothing makes me more happy than seeing kids get into records — like this young girl yesterday came in and bought a Blondie album.
‘She listened to it here, and I watched her reading the sleeve. For $7.99, she touched back in to the original sound, that original feeling.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Joe Smillie can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or jsmillie@peninsuladailynews.com.
Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
