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Eagle Valley Music and Comics celebrates Record Store Day, April 22

Some of the unique records at Eagle Valley Music & Comics on Wednesday in Minturn. Record Store Day takes place Saturday.
Chris Dillmann | cdillmann@vaildaily.com |

If You Go …

What: Record Store Day

When: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday, April 22.

Where: Eagle Valley Music and Comics, 211 Main St., Minturn.

More information: Call 970-476-1713, same phone number they’ve had for 32 years, or go to their Facebook page or to recordstoreday.com.

Saturday is interstellar Record Store Day, which means that all intelligent life in our spiral arm of the universe will be heading to a local mom-and-pop record store. Around here, that means Eagle Valley Music & Comics in Minturn, across the street from Sticky Fingers Café, which is good to know because, along with vinyl LP recordings, you’ll need sustenance.

500 albums and more

When we caught up with store owner Tom Robbins, he had been pricing albums for seven straight hours, more than 500 albums that all showed up at his store for Record Store Day.



Yeah, that’s a lot of albums, but it takes people like Robbins — and you — longer because we linger over album covers and read the liner notes.

“It’s part of the ritual, the experience, getting out of your chair, selecting a record, taking it carefully out of the sleeve and placing it carefully on the turntable. Then reading the cover and the liner notes,” Robbins said.

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“There’s not much of a ritual in turning on a device and letting it run.”

If you go back far enough, then you remember blowing a significant portion of your paycheck on impulse buys in your local record store.

And that, Robbins said, is the idea behind Record Store Day.

Vinyl is rolling again, as younger people discover it. It never really went away, but in our “click here” culture, it suffered some hard times.

Streaming and records are the two forms of music that are still growing, Robbins said.

Yeah, electro gadgets are small and convenient, but they’re tough to look at. Digital downloads are simple and you can stuff zillions onto a player smaller than the pack of non-filtered Lucky Strikes your grandfather used to keep rolled up in his T-shirt sleeve.

“True audiophiles will tell you that listening to music on vinyl is still the best sound, and they’re right,” Robbins said.

Eagle Valley Music & Comics has been in business 32 years. Robbins worked there through high school before he bought the store. They started carrying comics in 2006, hence the name expansion to Eagle Valley Music & Comics.

He usually opens at 10 a.m., but people get in line early. So as long as they woke him up anyway, Robbins usually opens that store early.

“The early audiophile gets the album,” Robbins said.

A decade of hits

Saturday is the world’s 10th annual Record Store Day and celebrates the wonders and glories of independent record stores. There are participating stores on every continent except Antarctica.

It’s getting to be a pretty big deal.

Metallica spent hours at Rasputin Music in San Francisco meeting their fans for the first Record Store Day. In 2013, co-Founder Michael Kurtz was made a Chevalier of the Ordre Des Arts et Des Letters in France, honoring Record Store Day’s contribution to the cultural and artistic life of the French people.

Ian Gilian, former Deep Purple lead singer, weighed in with this:

“Buy real records in real shops, or I’ll come round your house and scream at your mother,” Gillian famously said in support of independent record stores.

All kinds of special albums and CDs are being released just for Record Store Day.

You have red records, splattered records and all kinds of designs.

Staff Writer Randy Wyrick can be reached at 970-748-2935 or rwyrick@vaildaily.com.


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