Real Gone’s picks for Record Store Day 2020

Love it or hate it, Record Store Day has become an important fixture on the music-related calendar. From humble beginnings with a few bits and bobs to entice people into independent record shops, it’s now become a huge business tool, giving major labels an excuse to reissue all kinds of stuff. While it now seems more about a money making venture than to highlight small business, there’s still some cool stuff to be found. Never more so than for the 2020 event, where there are a truckload of artificially created rarities that look like lovely items for the keener fan.

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Deluxe vinyl reissue of Thin Lizzy’s ‘Chinatown’ confirmed for Record Store Day 2020

One of the highlights of the many items issued for Record Store Day in 2019 was a heavyweight deluxe vinyl reissue of Thin Lizzy’s ‘Black Rose’.  The expensive reissue coupled one of the band’s very best studio albums with a second LP featuring the album recreated in demo form.

The best news for fans is that those demos appeared not to mirror the anything from the widely circulated Black Rose demos bootleg, giving long-time collectors something worth having.

The same formula is being repeated for this years event, with 1980’s ‘Chinatown’ being chosen for the deluxe treatment.

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REAL GONE GOES OUT: Black Star Riders – Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London 12/10/2019

Nearing the close of 2019, Black Star Riders are on a high. Their fourth album ‘Another State of Grace’ has gained very positive reviews and their current UK tour has been really pulling in the crowds.

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EDITORIAL COMMENT: Record Store Day 2019 – Was it worth it?

…And so ends Record Store Day for another year.

As with previous events, we enjoyed the build up more than the event itself. There’s a pleasure in perusing the list of releases, wondering if any of your favourite bands will issue a must-have coloured vinyl LP, or keeping your ear to the ground for oddities that might even be too obscure or limited to make the main list. We’ve enjoyed sharing our top picks for the day with fans and readers…and as always, we’ve raised eyebrows and a wry smile at photos on social media of middle aged men who’ve abandoned their families to sit on a fishing stool under a blanket outside of their favourite stores at 6 AM. You’ve got to admire that kind of tenacity – especially on what turned out to be a particularly Arctic April, weather wise.

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RECORD STORE DAY 2019: Real Gone’s top picks

When Record Store Day first began, it was a great idea. Those who were regulars at independent record shops like Avalanche in Edinbugh and Resident in Brighton could potentially get their hands on very limited, exclusive items. It was a celebration of record buying culture, more than anything. Over the years the event has grown. After all of the major labels sensed a potential cash cow, it increasingly became about reissuing stuff en masse at inflated prices.

Record Store Day has become an event full of mixed feelings. There are now tales of people not actually visiting their local (and favourite) stores on RSD as the crowds of unfamiliar faces have made the experience quite stressful. People queue for hours in the hope of finding one of the many artificially created rarities – a lot of which seem to appear on ebay just hours later at even more inflated prices. In recent years, there have even been dealers “pre-selling” their RSD wares on the internet up to two days before the event that was supposed to get people into their shops.

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