Saturday marks the eighth annual Record Store Day, and local record stores are preparing for an influx of shipments and a swarm of awaiting customers.
Hear Again Music and Movies will open its doors at 9 a.m. and close at 11 p.m. Arrow’s Aim Records will open at noon and close at 8 p.m. Customers are encouraged to arrive early to reserve a spot in line.
“Last year, we had a line wrapped around the building for five hours,” said Andrew Schaer, owner of Hear Again.
Record Store Day has grown every year since its start in 2008. The idea was established in 2007 as a way to celebrate the unique culture of independently owned record stores.
Schaer said he believes the vinyl resurgence has a lot to do with its increasing popularity.
“There’s a very large social dynamic to records that other formats don’t have,” Schaer said. “People get together and spend hours listening to records at night. People don’t do that with hard drives.”
Alexander Tongue is a record store regular who owns a 700-piece record collection, with his favorite being Billie Holiday’s “Lady in Satin,” the first record he purchased at Hear Again.
Tongue, who’s been to record stores all along the East Coast, has taken part in Record Store Day in Gainesville for the last three years.
“I don’t think people in Gainesville are very aware of the fact that we have two of the best record stores in the Southeast in our town,” Tongue said.
[A version of this story ran on page 10 on 4/16/2015]
