Black Friday Record Store Day 2019 Exclusive Vinyl Releases - Our Picks
Black Friday Record Store Day 2019 is on November 29th, 2019. At Turntable Lab, we study hundreds of exclusive releases and narrow them into our Black Friday RSD Selection. This post goes one step further, as we pick our favorite releases from our edited list. Please join us at our NYC storefront on Black Friday for in-store-only sales and free with purchase totes sponsored by Edifier. If you can't make it, sign up for stock email notifications for any leftovers.
JAZZ FOCUS 🎷
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Bill Evans
Live at Art D'Lugoff's Top of The Gate / Label: Resonance Records
Herbie Hancock
Directstep / Label: Get On Down
Charlie Parker
The Magnificent Charlie Parker / Label: UMe
Miles Davis
Early Minor - Rare Miles From The Complete In A Silent Way Sessions / Label: Columbia
This year's selections are headlined by several quality jazz releases.
Over the last several RSDs, lost Bill Evans recordings have been some of the most desirable and valuable (check, check, and check). This Black Friday, Resonance Records (who brought us that excellent John Coltrane Temple University recording) brings back a 1968 live recording from the Village Gate. This session was previously only available as a vinyl boxset (current market $150-200), but this version comes in an easy 180g 2LP format. With 2000 copies available in the US (4000 worldwide), this one should be easier to get than previous Evans titles.
Get On Down has recently had the plug for several Japan-only releases. Herbie Hancock’s Directstep (1979) gets its first-ever US pressing, complete with replica JP obi. This album was notable for being one of the early Direct-To-Disc recordings (where the master was cut live with no edits or overdubs), and features some of earliest recorded uses of the Lyricon instrument, Prophet-5 synth and the Sennheiser Vocoder.
Charlie Parker's 1955 album The Magnificent Charlie Parker gets its first ever reissue. Bird and colored vinyl don't usually go together, but you know the yellow wax will look incredible with that David Stone Martin cover.
Our top pick from this set (and perhaps overall) is Miles Davis’ Early Minor: Rare Miles From The Complete In A Silent Way Sessions. This pressing of 3500 is a true RSD exclusive (won't be repressed in the near future, if ever). The 3 tracks here are culled from the rare and pricey The Complete In A Silent Way Sessions boxset from 2001 (it will set you back $300-500). No filler, this is supreme Miles material with the super-funky cuts "Ghetto Walk" (worth the admission for this alone) and "Splashdown;" plus the mellow atmospheric piece "Early Minor."
CULT-ISH 🤲🏽
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Colonel Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade
Live Frogs Sets 1 & 2 / Label: Prawn Song
Edan
Beauty And The Beat / Label: Lewis Recordings
Paul Williams
Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas / Label: Varese Sarabande
Various Artists
Saturday Morning Cartoons Greatest Hits / Label: Geffen
Working around records for 20 years, you start recognizing the strongest pockets of vinyl fandom.
Les Claypool & Primus have some the most engaged vinyl fans (right up there with Ween, and close by King Gizzard). Les Claypool's Frog Brigade's Live Frog Sets might not fly in our shop, but once the leftovers hit the site, Claypool fans will surely pick up this 2001 live recording, which appears on vinyl for the first time. Part 2 curiously features an unabridged performance of Pink Floyd’s legendary 1977 concert album, Animals, commoners will never understand.
We're superfans of Edan around here (he put down our fave LIVE! AT THE LAB since opening the new store and I don't think he was even trying). His 2005 album Beauty And The Beat was once an easy indie hip-hop section pull, but for the last 5 years, you'd be really lucky to come across a copy. In the grand scheme of things, Beauty is like his Check Your Head - the style came back unlocked; looser and fuzzier than Primitive Plus.
Who the hell knew about this one? Jim Henson fans? Holiday music collectors? Jim Henson's Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas was so popular from Black Friday 2018 (copies peaking at $80) that they decided to run another 2500 copies.
Indie and cartoon heads get together on 1995's Saturday Morning Cartoon's Greatest Hits. Just check the caliber of the artist that were involved: Ramones, Liz Phair, Sponge, Matthew Sweet, Butthole Surfers, Helmet, Violent Femmes, Sublime, The Murmurs, and many others covering theme songs from Speed Racer, Spiderman, Ren & Stimpy, The Flintstones, Scooby Doo, The Jetsons, Fat Albert and more!
REISSUE GODS STRIKE! ⚡
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Gray
Shades Of... / Label: Ubiquity
Jonathan Fire*Eater
Wolf Songs For Lambs / Label: Third Man
Phish
The Story Of The Ghost / Label: JEMP Records
Arcade Fire
Neighborhood #1 7" / Label: Legacy
The Reissue Gods straddle the grey area between right and wrong... fueling the eternal battle of the holders vs. the wantlisters.
In the case of this Gray album, the musical world undoubtedly needs more copies of this around. Founded by Jean Michel-Basquiat and Michael Holman, the band has its roots in early 80s New York Art / No-Wave scene. Shades Of, the band's only album, was actually recorded in 2010, nearly two decades after a Basquiat's death. It has become a cult want-piece with a lone 2013 pressing on the band-specific Plush Safe Records (prices range from $200-300). As for the sound, Shades Of sounds like it could have been released on MoWax during the label's peak (or a grittier Beastie Boys’ The Mix Up). This new deluxe version on Ubiquity Records includes "Drum Mode" which was absent on the original vinyl release; plus a bonus third disc of remixes from Gaslamp Killer, Liquid Liquid's Sal P, Todd Rundgren(!), Hank Shocklee(!!), Free The Robots, and others.
Going to college in NYC in the 90s, Jonathan Fire*Eater held mythical indie status, but oddly the physical formats weren't easily copped through the usual broke college kid outlets. 1997's Wolf Songs For Lambs, their second album and major label debut, was hard to track down on vinyl at the time. Seems like vinyl rights were licensed out to a smaller Deceptive label, which equals a tight secondary market ($70-100, very few copies on the market). Jack White and Third Man to the rescue with this RSD colored vinyl exclusive. By early accounts, this one will be heavily allocated (but we'll probably see a black vinyl version in 2020).
Phish's Story Of The Ghost also gets its first reissue since 1998, which should relieve the crazy secondary market pricing (anywhere from $100-400). We're no experts on Phish albums, but seems like Phishheads rate this one highly. There's going to be 8000 copies pressed, so don't panic.
Arcade Fire's Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) 7" is one of the band's collecting grails (perhaps their top grail). Personally, we wish the labels let rare 45s live their own solitary life, throw whatever b-side material that's not available into a boxset or something. In the case of this b-side, "My Buddy" is a true gem. It's an Alvino Rey Orchestra live broadcast from 1940 (which features Win Butler's grandparents in the band).
JB SPOTLIGHT
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J.B.'s
More Mess On My Thing / Label: Now-Again Records
James Brown
Live at Home With His Bad Self: The After Show / Label: Polydor
We don't collect sports cards, but we've been getting into watching online card breaks. We're expecting the same surprise egg vibe here when we crack open this pair of lost James Brown recordings. Finding a nice fat break or bassline is akin to finding that signed patch Doncic rookie.
First up, Egon's venerable Now-Again Records has unearthed the demo Bootsy Collins and his band recorded for James Brown in 1969 that earned them the name The J.B.s. We've already heard some incredible moments on "When You Feel It Grunt If You Can" on Now-Again's first J.B.s release (presented here as a "Complete Take" version), but we can't wait to hear "More Mess On My Thing" and "The Wedge."
Live at Home: The After Show also smells promising as hell. This is an 'after show set' of Live At Home With His Bad Self (which itself is an expansion of a 1969 live show that was heavily edited into the LP Sex Machine) This has some true JB nerdus potential. The pre-release description promises stage patter, false takes, re-takes, rehearsals, and a Marva Whitney appearance.
LABHEAD PICKS 🗿
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Pylon
Cool / Dub 7" / Label: New West Records
The Comet Is Coming
The Afterlife / Label: Impulse
Tune-Yards
Sorry To Bother You Original Score / Label: 4AD
Monster Movie
Last Night Something Happened / Label: Graveface
On normal days, these records you could easily find on The Daily or our #TTLexpansions and #TTLselected programs.
Pylon is a band's band. This 7" is a 40th anniversary reissue of the Athens group’s debut release. With just two tracks you get a sense why this band was so influential. For 1979 punk, "Cool" sounds so measured and polished; while "Dub" is a precursor of 80s punk and thrash (sounds like something you'd hear in a late 80s skate video... skatevideosite.com check = no appearances), and also includes a lyric about record shopping: "I'm going downtown, To buy a record..."
The Comet Is Coming, along with Shabaka’s other group Sons Of Kemet, have reinvigorated Impulse!'s roster list. 2019's Afterlife was a digital-only companion album to Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery (2019). For Black Friday, we get the vinyl version for the first time. Need to hear that title track on a loud system.
Sorry To Bother You was one of our favorite films of the past year. Didn't know until this record was announced that Tune-Yards was responsible for the score. With 21 short tracks (ranging from 0:40 to 3:26), this will transport you back to Boots Riley's tripped-out cinescape. Does include "This Is My White Voice" featuring Lyrics Born and Lateef The Truthspeaker.
Monster Movie’s Last Night Something Happened is one for the shoegaze completionists. Christian Savill (Slowdive) and Sean Hewson (Eternal) put this record out in 2002 with a scant vinyl pressing of 500 copies. This is a first time reissue, and Graveface have done it proper with 180g colored vinyl in Stoughton gatefold, plus a bonus 7" which features material from their first EP (never before on vinyl).
MASS APPEAL 👪
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The National
Live at the Greek Theatre Cassette / Label: 4AD
Pearl Jam
MTV Unplugged / Label: Legacy
Sublime
Roots of Sublime / Label: Geffen
Nas
Stillmatic / Label: Get On Down
Just a PSA: Haters can hate, but it's cool as hell that 'big name' artists support indie record stores by participating in RSD. The Lab thanks you.
We might never get to do this, but we have a romantic vision of this triple cassette release from The National. Take it on a road trip to the Catskill Mountains, find an old tape deck at a flea market, turn on the fireplace, press play, have sex with a cantaloupe.
Before there were memes, who remembers Eddie Vedder's possessed look during Pearl Jam's 1992 Unplugged session? Hard to believe that this was never issued on vinyl. Although they're pressing a massive unit of these (13K), note that it is a true RSD Exclusive.
We stepped out of the Don't Hate On Sublime clinic a couple years ago, and we're loving life and walks on Long Beach with our dog. This comp, which pairs up Sublime cover-style tracks with the original recordings, is the last step of true liberation. Did you know "Pawn Shop" was an interpolation of Wailing Souls' delicious "War Deh Round A John Shop?" Was the connection between "I Love My Dog" and Bad Brains "I Love Jah" that apparent, or are we just bad at this game? Probably going to grab a Baha-style taco after this.
We've been interested in how different generations perceive hip-hop albums. Listening to the ROAD Podcast (you should check it), we were blown away how depending on your age and location, what you thought THE Gangstarr album would be. To us, there's only one right answer (Daily Op followed by Hard To Earn), but for others it's undoubtedly Moment Of Truth. When we first saw Stillmatic on the RSD list, we almost passed just cuz we're stubborn New Yorkers. It took a younger mind to break our myopic view. We asked him where does Stillmatic rank amongst Nas albums, he replied "I mean as a midwestern millennial who was too young to really experience Illmatic, Stillmatic is the one for me." WOW #okillmatic?
HONORABLE MENTIONS
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