Just in time for Juno Awards Weekend, Rockin’ Richard’s Record and CD sale will be held at the Victoria Inn on Sunday, March 30 from 10 am to 4 pm.
Victoria Vinyl Village is what the hotel should be called for this huge sale held in the hotel ballroom, filled with literally tons of vinyl (LP’s, 45’s and 78’s).
Sixty vendors will be located at 83 tables, filled with all types of music memorabilia such as autographed items, CD’s, DVD’s, videos, books, instruments, stereos, posters and many other collectibles.
Richard Sturtz, and his brother-in-law, Alex Reid, have been bringing collectors and vendors together for the past 14 years in the spring and fall. Approximately 500 to 800 serious (and curious) music enthusiasts have visited the ballroom over the years.
When they started doing the show in 2000, they only had 25 tables at The International Inn (changed to The Victoria Inn a few years later).
Rockin’ Richard’s show (“Not convention,” as Richard says, “I don’t like that word.”) is the second largest of its kind in Canada, after Toronto with their 95-99 tables. (Per capita, the Winnipeg show would be larger).
Richard and Alex filled the collector void in 2000 after Mark Corner, who used to hold record shows at the Norwood Hotel, moved to Calgary.
Mark’s last show was at the Crescentwood Community Club in 1999. Before him a fellow named Larry K used to put on record shows at various venues throughout Winnipeg in the 90’s.
It’s quite interesting how music formats that have been available to music lovers over the years have evolved, starting with 78 rpm (that’s rotations per minute — how many times the record spins in a minute) to 45 rpm (a 7-inch record with 1 song per side) in the 60’s, to the Long Play or LP record which contained about 20-25 minutes of music per side.
Then came the audio tape with those 8-track cartridges, which basically and literally chopped an album into 4 sections with the horrible result of fading out a tune in the middle of the song at the end of track 1, then fading in at the beginning of track 2; very strange concept. Of course 8-tracks had their problems like the tape breaking or slowing down (which was usually adjusted by sliding a pack of matches under the cartridge).
Then in the 70’s came the two sided cassettes which were an improvement over the 8-tracks, but they would also break or get chewed in the cassette deck once in a while. They would also lose their high frequencies after many plays.
Then came the digital age and the compact disc or CD, which the music industry said would last a lifetime. Not true.
The nice thing about CD’s was that they could hold 80 minutes worth or music. That’s like a double album. The 80-minute length was set based on the duration of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. The downside of the CD is that it lacks the warmth of an LP. But the ‘industry’ (such a nasty word — something funny happened to music when it became an industry), kept pushing them onto the public.
Next in the chain of music formats was the dreaded ‘mp3′ which so many people are now so used to for so long that there is a whole generation of people who don’t have a clue what an audiophile recording is.
Steve Jobs, the man who brought us the Ipod, was a huge fan of vinyl and was having serious talks with Neil Young on how to deliver high quality recordings on a small listening device. Steve passed away before this could be realized, but recently at the SXSW Music Conference in Austin, Texas, Young launched the PONO, bringing audiophile recordings back. Definitely a step in the right direction. The device can hold 128 GB of music (approximately 2,000 records).
For some people, the LP record never did die contrary to what music company executives would like you to believe. Over the years, they have profited from repackaging and reselling the same recordings over and over again. But some believe that the music industry people blew it, and now musicians are making their own recordings and sending them out directly to lovers of music.
If you believe that vinyl is not a dead medium, you may want to check out Rockin’ Richard’s Record and CD Show at The Victoria Inn this coming Sunday. There’s plenty of parking and you never know what treasures you might find.
For more info go to Rockin’ Richard’s Record and CD Sale on Facebook.
