New Releases

Two of the seasons's most anxiously-awaited new releases are here today:

Bluegrass Gospel Project- The Blue Morpho

Bob Dylan- Together Through Life

Top Ten, Democracy, All Blues

BUCH SPIELER's TOP TEN BEST SELLING CDS THIS WEEK:

1. Leonard Cohen- Live in London

Here's our man on Democracy:



2. Diana Krall- Quiet Nights
3. Decemberists- Hazards of Love
4. Lucinda Williams- Little Honey
5. Elvis Perkins- Dearland
6. Grateful Dead- To Tererrapin: Hartford '77
7. Neil Young- Fork In the Road
8. U2- No Line on the Horizon
9. Miles Davis- Kind Of Blue

Here's a vintage taste of Miles and Trane:



10.Neko Case- Middle Cyclone

Record Store Day, Part 2: Wilco, etc.

Record store day is tomorrow, Saturday. April 18.

Among the special goodies we'll have for sale is the brand new Wilco DVD,
ASHES OF AMERICAN FLAGS.

Here's the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFpHvkrL83s

The official release date for this DVD is next Tuesday, but Record Store Day and Wilco are helping us celebrate with this early release. Thanks !

Quantities are limited, and availability is first-come, first- served.

We'll have some other cool stuff, too.
Please come celebrate the existence of independent record stores with us.

Record Store Day: Saturday, April 18

We're taking part in a worldwide effort to celebrate the bricks and mortar, flesh and blood world of the indie record store. We're talking about the places where you can actually hold CDs or records in your hand, maybe ask somebody a question about music, or hear something strange and interesting playing on the store sound system.
We'll be celebrating with a fresh new batch of deep catalog CDs at a nice discount, along with offering a few items special to Record Store Day.
We hope to see you Saturday, April 18, between 10 AM and 5 PM.

-kmb

I'm From Vermont, I Do What I Want

Yes, we have the bumper sticker! We hope you will come on down, buy one, and show your local pride!

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We at Buch Spieler have become fans of the Lefsetz Letter. Bob Lefsetz is a long-time music industry insider who calls things as he sees them. And he usually sees things pretty clearly; often painfully so. This recent piece, for instance, takes a look at changing realities in music retailing:

http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2009/04/02/mannys/


Finding ourselves among the last record stores standing, we are quite interested in what Lefsetz has to say here. What do you think? About music, about neighborhood stores, about the ways you find and enjoy music in your life?
We'd love to read your comments.


_

Last Record Store Standing?

It's no secret that the economic paradigms of recorded music have changed in recent years. Here in little Montpelier, Vermont, we at Buch Spieler find ourselves among the last record stores standing. We started our mission-- selling music to color the silence; all kinds of music from all over the world for all kinds of people-- more than 35 years ago. We're still in the same building, on the same street, as we we were back then. But the world has changed around us, with downloads and mp3s coming to supplant the hard copies of sonic art that have long been our bread and butter.
Every day we hear from customers who value cover art, liner notes, spinning discs: the ancillaries to recorded music that help bring cultural, aesthetic context-- not to mention a sense, perhaps illusory, of permanence-- to the ephemeral art of organized sound.

I came to work at Buch Spieler in the autumn of 1987. Before that, I'd been a customer for a while. I still remember the first record I bought here on Langdon Street. It was Van Morrison's NO GURU, NO METHOD, NO TEACHER, a perfect album for the hot hazy nights full of fireflies that I remember from my first summer in Vermont.

We'd love to hear from you. What was the first album-- LP, Cassette, CD-- you bought? What do you remember about it, about the times surrounding it? Give us a sentence, a paragraph, an essay; whatever you'd like.
We will return with more rambles soon!
-kmb