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Chris Willman
Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic
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Record Store Day may know what it’s doing, traditionally scheduling the biggest sales day of the year for independent music retailers on the Saturday after tax day. You are very, very, very confident you’re going to be getting a hefty refund, and that’s why you can blow into your local shop and lay down hundreds of Benjamins on an actual stack of wax, right? Or, you’ve just realized that you’re so far behind on what you owe the IRS, the only momentary relief for your despair is some retail therapy. Whatever the case, it’s time to go tithing in your nearest brick-and-mortar house of musical worship, picking up as many vinyl exclusives as your arms and wallet can handle. Consumerism feels good in a place like this.
The long list of vinyl exclusives (and at least a couple of CDs, too) has something for the proverbial everybody, from youth-skewing Taylor Swift, Katseye and “Kpop Demon Hunters” releases to new entries from dad-rock dynasties like Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd and Neil Young … along with plenty of indie-leaning fare (hello, Dijon) and jazz. We couldn’t cover all 355 releases, but we’ve picked out about a tenth of them to spotlight here as highlights of America’s most crucial holiday. (And for handy reference, we’ve included a full list of every title if you scroll to the end.)
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Bruce Springsteen, ‘Live From Asbury Park 2024’
(6050 copies on LP, black vinyl, RSD Exclusive) (3700 copies on compact disc, RSD First)
He’s a prince among No Kings proponents. And now you can relive his 2024 tour, whether or not you’ve been able to make it to the ’26. Previously available only on Nugs and never on a physical format, this captures his homecoming performance in Asbury Park at the 2024 Sea.Hear.Now festival and spans over three hours of a boardwalk-adjacent performance that took place in front of 35,000 people. Some music fans who are still partial to CDs complain that Record Store Day is too exclusively fixated on vinyl, so they should be happy that Springsteen and company have seen fit to release this in both formats for indie stores, spread across 5 LPs or two CDs. By the way, if wrangling five records feels a little unwieldy, each disc does come in its own dust jacket with its own cover photo, encased in a slipcase. (The LP version is marked RSD Exclusive, meaning this is the only pressing that will ever be done; the CD set is RSD First, meaning that it will probably be repressed for a more general release.)
