Deluxe 5150 coming March 27th

I feel your pain, Ron.

My record store day adventure began at a small shop that has taken the pledge. It was set to open at 8am. I joined the line around 7:30a, and was about 60 people back. Another 25 or so joined after me. The doors opened early, and everyone was let in all at once causing a big jam in the store. I spotted a VH copy in a guys hands, but I couldn’t locate a copy for myself. I asked the guy if he saw more than one copy, and he said no. So I’m assuming the store got only 1 or 2 copies.

I made my way to the next pledged store, and found them to be closed.

I drove on to the third shop, and as I parked I was amazed by the line out front. I joined the line and must have been 100 people back. It was now 8:36am. Turns out the shop had opened at 8am, but were limiting the number of people in the store. As some came out, others went in. My hopes were low, but as I stood in line, I found the time to look up store #2. It is apparently run by Jewish owners, and as such, are closed on Saturdays. Mental note taken for next time.

Once in the store, I found the VH, and saw that there were two copies left after I nabbed mine. I gazed around the store, thinking I understood how they were handling checkout, and joined at the back of the line. There were two registers, and the way the line snaked around the store, it looked like there were two lines. I was pleased with myself as I looked to be in the shorter line. Of course that was all an illusion, as I hadn’t spotted the turn around at the top of the store, which routed everyone back around. There was only one line, and I was in it. I reached the checkout counter exactly 2 hours after I got in line outside the store. They were obviously quite busy.

While in line I noted that they put out more copies of the VH title, probably 10 or 12! By the time I checked out, a good half of those had already been plucked and were also waiting to be checked out.

Despite the “limit one RSD title per customer”, I still saw people coming out with tote bags and boxes of purchases! The shop was running a sale on used inventory at the same time, so I suppose either those folks stocked up on a whole bunch of RSDs, or had picked up a bunch of used titles to take home.

Even though it was still kinda early, I decided that since I had been up since before 6am, I would grab some lunch (Raising Canes). All in all, an okay morning.

I had a similar experience as Ron’s with the Van Halen album.

I woke up at 0530 and drove 90 minutes to my “nearest” record store 99 miles away. I arrived around 15 minutes ahead of schedule (I may have exceeded a speed limit or two…I can’t confirm this). When I arrived ai was 10th in line and this store didn’t open until 10 AM. We experienced a cold front so everyone was dressed for the weather. Luckily, I had a blanket in the car so I was able to keep fairly warm. These damn blood thinners I’m on make it hard to keep warm.

This is a nice store and I’ve shopped there previously. But, when it comes to RSD they tend to do 2 things: they’ll take requests via their FB page as to what people think they should order, and then only order 1, maybe 2 (and this is a STRONG maybe), of those items. So, by the time you get in the title you’re looking for might be gone as has happened to me before. And, this morning wasn’t any different since they only ordered 1 copy of the Van Halen album. I’ll have to start looking around tomorrow for mail orders. I did notice that the bins where they stored this year’s RSD titles were sparsely stocked. There are 2 other record stores I frequent, 1 in Lincoln and 1 in Omaha, and they always order mass quantities to try and make sure everyone gets what they’re looking for.

It wasn’t a total loss, though. I scored the Pink Floyd “Live At The Los Angeles Sports Arena”, The Cars “Heartbeat City Live”, Stone Temple Pilots “Live At Rolling Rock 2001″, and Elton John “The Remixes”.