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
By Gwendolyn Elliott April 3, 2018
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.
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