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Vinyl Fans Preparing For Annual Record Store Day

"Vinyl Record Player" by Nan Palmero is licensed under CC BY 2.0
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Flickr

Record Store Day is April 22. And it happens to be the 10th anniversary of the day that celebrates independent stores across the country, as well as all the music fans and artists that keep them thriving.

Our very own Abe Beeson is a bit of a vinyl junkie and sat down with 88.5's Kirsten Kendrick talk about his ever-growing collection, and what he’s looking forward to on Record Store Day.

Interview highlights

Vinyl reflects the value of the music: "I think because I love music so much, I want to have music in a format that reflects my love of the music," Beeson said. "If you have a piece of vinyl that's something special. Music online is not worth anything, literally, people are getting that stuff for free."

The thrill of the hunt: "I try to make a point of going into record stores without any expectation of buying something. I want to be able to just go in there and enjoy the browsing, the window shopping, the hunting. Hey, if I find something, great. But I don't want to just spend money because I have $20 burning a hole in my pocket. My record collection is too big for that now ... I've got, I think, eight crates ... and then four, seven-inch crates full."

Credit Parker Miles Blohm / KNKX
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KNKX
KNKX jazz host Abe Beeson is a bit of a vinyl junkie.

Hunting in strange locations: "One of the more exciting trips I had was a recent trip to South America for a jazz festival, Buenos Aires, Argentina. And I found a little jazz record store in Buenos Aires and I happened to find a copy of Art Blakey's classic jazz album "A Night At Birdland" from 1954 with Clifford Brown on trumpet and Lou Donaldson on saxophone. It was an Argentine pressing, so that's something I'm not going to find back at home. And it felt really special."

Record Store Day: "As any true record collector will tell you, every day is Record Store Day. But it's a special day. There's a lot of fun, exciting things that come out that day ... and the world of jazz has been one of the more exciting parts of Record Store Day lately. A lot of old recordings have been long out of print, or maybe they've never been released. And there's a record company called Resonance that's been putting out a lot of unreleased Wes Montgomery albums and a few records from Jim Wilke's recordings at the Penthouse in Seattle back in the 1960s where he was doing radio broadcasts."

Kirsten Kendrick hosts Morning Edition on KNKX and the sports interview series "Going Deep," talking with folks tied to sports in our region about what drives them — as professionals and people.
Abe grew up in Western Washington, a 3rd generation Seattle/Tacoma kid. It was as a student at Pacific Lutheran University that Abe landed his first job at KNKX, editing and producing audio for news stories. It was a Christmas Day shift no one else wanted that gave Abe his first on-air experience which led to overnights, then Saturday afternoons, and started hosting Evening Jazz in 1998.
Ariel first entered a public radio newsroom in 2004 while in school at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. It was love at first sight. After graduating from Bradley, she went on to earn a Master's degree in Public Affairs Reporting from the University of Illinois at Springfield. Ariel has lived in Indiana, Ohio and Alaska reporting on everything from salmon spawning to policy issues concerning education. She's been a host, a manager and now rides shotgun with Kirsten Kendrick as the Morning Edition producer at KNKX.