This Saturday, April 18, is Record Store Day! Once a year, independently owned record stores and artists join together to celebrate the art known as music. There are hundreds of artists making appearances and or performing, DJ's spinning tunes, meet and greets, special releases and all kinds of stuff.
Real record stores are sadly a dying breed so it's important to support your local indie shops. These are the places where the staff knows and loves music. A good deal of these shops you can still get your hands on vinyl. You try going to Best Buy to dig through vinyl while sitting on the floor. What's that? They don't have vinyl? How about non-bestselling CD's older than five years old? No? Oh yeah, silly me what am I thinking?! Go ask your local indie store. If they don't have it, they'll order it if it's in print and if all else fails someone in that store can likely tell you where to find it.
Here's a list of shops in the NYC area that are participating. For additional participants, shops in other states and more information, visit www.recordstoreday.com.
Academy Record Annex (Brooklyn, NY)
www.academyannex.com/
Basement Mix Records (Brooklyn, NY)
www.basementmixx.com/
Black Star Music & Video (New York, NY)
www.blackstarvideo.com/
Bleecker Street Records (New York, NY)
www.bleeckerstreetrecords.com/store/bleecker.html
Downtown Music Gallery (New York, NY)
downtownmusicgallery.com/
Earwax Records (Brooklyn, NY)
Etherea (New York, NY)
www.ethereanyc.blogspot.com
Fat Beats (New York, NY)
www.fatbeats.com/
Generation Records (New York, NY)
Halcyon The Shop (Brooklyn, NY)
www.halcyonline.com/
Hall of Fame Music (Jamaica, NY)
www.hfmstores.com/
Harmony Records (Bronx, NY)
www.myspace.com/harmonyrecords
J&R Music World (New York, NY)
www.jr.com/
Kim's Video & Music (New York, NY)
Majors Records & Video (Staten Island, NY)
Other Music (New York, NY)
www.othermusic.com/
Rebel Rebel (New York, NY)
Record Express (Brooklyn, NY)
Rock and Soul (New York, NY)
Sound Fix (Brooklyn, NY)
www.soundfixrecords.com
Toronto based band Metric released their forth studio album, Fantasies, on March 14. Check out the album stream below.
illiamsburg.com 
uryloungenyc.com
loungenyc.com
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned Chester French were hooking fans up with free stuff. Well, they unleashed Jacques Jams, Vol. 1: Endurance this past Wednesday. Did you get it? No? Why not, it's FREE!
Nashville band Paper Route, Chad Howat (bass, piano, programming), JT Daly (vocals, keyboards, percussion), Andy Smith (vocals, guitars, harmonica) and Gavin McDonald (drums), are set to release their full-length debut Absence on April 28.
yc.com