Arts
Read More ›
3 Seattle Record Store Owners Wax About Their Favorite Albums
In honor of Record Store Day, store owners from Silver Platters, Beats and Bohos and Sonic Boom dig their favorite LPs out of the crate
This article originally appeared in the April 2018 issue of Seattle magazine.
This article appears in print in the April 2018 issue. Click here to subscribe.
Saturday, April 21 marks the 11th annual celebration of Record Store Day, the retail event credited with single-handedly saving the independent record store and reviving demand for vinyl (according to Billboard, “2017 marks the 12th straight year of growth in vinyl album sales,” and last year, for the first time, vinyl outperformed digital music downloads).
In celebration, a few local record store owners weigh in on their favorite albums.
Mike Batt, Silver Platters
Various locations; silverplatters.com
“The first is Ken Nordine’s Word Jazz, from my parents’ record collection. He has been called ‘the voice of God.’ It’s just this spoken word over a bed of jazz, intellectual, but humorous. It was the first record that got me thinking about recorded sound, and listening on different levels. The second is Five Leaves Left by Nick Drake. No matter which mood I’m in, it always puts me in the right place, and brings me right back to where I’m supposed to be.”
Omaima Wolf, Beats and Bohos
Greenwood, 7200 Greenwood Ave. N; 206.395.4468; Facebook, “Beats and Bohos”
“There’s just so many. I love Can, Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, Soft Machine, early proto-punk music. Good music is good music. There’s something about The Feelies’ first album, Crazy Rhythms, that I really like. It’s different than all their other albums. I heard they were drinking chlorophyll when they made it.”
Mike Pitts, Sonic Boom
Ballard, 2209 NW Market St.; 206.297.2666; sonicboomrecords.com
Iron Maiden: Live After Death. “It was the first record I ever owned, the first I ever loved. I didn’t know about [collecting] etiquette at the time; I used it as a poster for years, [the cover] is a pretty elaborate painting, with the band’s gross zombie mascot on it. It’s not hanging up at home now, but I still have it.”
Find information about participating local stores and specials at recordstoreday.com.
Follow Us
Rearview Mirror: Spinasse at Home, a New Spa Experience, and Seattle Mag’s Reader’s Choice Awards
Things I did, saw, ate, learned, or read in the past week (or so).
YOUR VOTE MATTERS Everyone has a favorite restaurant, coffee shop, or local boutique. Call me old-school, but I will die on the hill that Caffe Vita has the best coffee in town. Disagree with me? Now’s your moment to speak up. Each year, we survey Seattle magazine readers, asking them to weigh in on everything…
Studio Sessions: Ling Chun
The Seattle-based artist brings playful color to ceramics and neon while exploring memory, transformation, and life between cultures.
For Ling Chun, creating begins with something sensed before it can be named. Working with clay, glass, light, and sometimes synthetic hair, the Hong Kong-born artist gives physical form to things that words cannot always hold. “For me, the magnitude of making goes far beyond the object that is eventually produced,” Chun says. “The object…
The Magic of PAX Is Stronger Than Ever
PAX West draws more than 100,000 people to Seattle each year. Co-founder Jerry Holkins reflects on what the gaming convention set out to change, how its community has grown and why gathering face to face still matters.
Access to game news as it was happening was difficult back in the day. Even with the advent of the internet, communication between game publishers and journalists was still a very elite affair. I used to fake credentials—via fax machine!—to attend the Electronic Entertainment Expo, mostly just known as E3. It was simultaneously as loud…
Your Guide to Bumbershoot 2026
Navigate Seattle’s wildest end-of-summer weekend with 20 picks spanning Death Cab for Cutie, Blood Orange, wrestling, skateboarding and—obviously—movies made in 48 hours.
Four years after Bumbershoot returned with its quirkiness revivified, Seattleites broadly acknowledge the two-day multimedia extravaganza as a welcome finale to the summer festival season. Fests like Bumbershoot are designed around a choose-your-own-adventure model, but if you’re the kind of person who looked at this year’s sprawling lineup—featuring multiple bands, artists, and exhibits happening at…