By Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
EAST VILLAGE AND GREENWICH VILLAGE — On Saturday music fans throughout Manhattan and around the country will gather to recognize an institution that many have forgotten — the neighborhood record store.
The annual tribute, called Record Store Day, is celebrated with a day of in-store performances, discounts and the release of hundreds of limited edition records.
The sought-after collectibles (see the full list here) are only available at independently run, brick-and-mortar record stores, so customers will have to show up in person to score the one-per-person discs on Saturday.
Owners and employees at several record stores in the East Village and Greenwich Village said Record Store Day, which began in 2007, is their busiest day of the year, with customers lining up outside before the shops even open.
While insiders complain that the limited edition releases are often snatched up by "flippers" — people who buy the items and then immediately resell them on eBay — there are plenty of other attractions to satisfy Manhattan's vinyl devotes.
This year, songstress Regina Spektor will perform for shoppers in the vacant space next door to Other Music on East 4th Street between Broadway and Lafayette. Admission will be limited to the first 100 people who buy Spektor's Record Store Day release "Four From Far," but those who get shut out won't have to go far to find a good time.
Record fans can mellow out with the folks at Good Records on East 5th Street between Bowery and Second Avenue, where owner Jonathan Sklute will be dishing out free food and drink and a collection of $1 records; or they can thrash with the crew at Generation Records on Thompson between Great Jones and Bleecker Streets, where Obits will headline an in-store concert beginning at 1 p.m.
"It's great that there's a day when they honor the mom and pop record store," Jeremy Delon, an employee at the East Village's A-1 Records, said of Record Store Day. "It's just a reminder that we're here."
While Delon acknowledged significant shifts in the store's clientele during recent years (more collectors, fewer DJs, for instance), the longtime A-1 employee and former DJ argued that there would always be a market for quality records, recession be damned.
"If you have good material people are willing to eat rice and beans for a month to able to afford it," Delon, who compared the warm tones of a record player to the comforting glow of a fireplace, said.
Rich Grebanier, of Gimmie Gimmie Records on East 5th Street, suggested that records have endured — in the face more convenient, cheaper and even free alternatives — in part because of their power to bring people together.
"You've heard of people coming over to listen to records — I've never gone over to someone's house to listen to CD's," Grebanier explained.
Beyond the records themselves, vinyl lovers point to the social value of the shops that sell them.
"It's a place for people to come and listen to tunes and develop their tastes," Sklute, the owner of Good Records, explained.
It's also a place for young talent to be discovered – as when Sklute, in a scene straight out of "High Fidelity," gave a listen to a record that had been created by a group of teenaged store regulars.
"They gave me the record and I was like, 'This is you guys? Really?" Sklute recalled of his first time listening to the The Jack Moves' 45. "First we sold 10, then another 10 and another 10."
The band's music can now be found at record stores throughout the city as well as in Los Angeles and Pennsylvania, according to their website.
For Sklute, 33, who left a career in the insurance industry to open Good Records, manning the register and chatting with customers about music is the fulfillment of what he called an "early adulthood dream."
Reflecting on the neighborhood record store, Sklute described it fondly as "a social center for this sometimes disparate and dysfunctional group of people."
Click the "Dig In" tab above for list of opening hours and Record Store Day attractions at Manhattan shops.
