Spin Music Fair

Make a date to meet at the Fair

The Spin Music Fair is set to kick off on Sunday 31st October at our usual home of Pirates Bowls Club, 4 Cruden Bay Road, Greenside from 9am to 1pm. The usual suspects will be there showcasing thousands of new and pre-owned vinyl records for your delight: Vinyl Junkie, Wayne & Wax, Your Vinyl Fix, Black Wax, Zeppelins, Woodstock Records, Red Dot Records and The Collector Bill plus cool jazz releases from Music ‘n More and Afrosynth Records.

The Future of music is (still) Vinyl

Vinyl record sales are still rising — and it’s younger music enthusiasts who are driving the trend. Even though streaming services dominate music consumption, vinyl hasn’t gone the way of CDs. In 2020, U.S. vinyl sales topped CD sales for the first time since 1986, per the Recording Industry Association of America. This year, sales growth keeps exploding with vinyl record sales up 108% in the first six months of 2021, compared with the same period in 2020. This sales boom has made record stores rare winners in the pandemic-era retail apocalypse — as many music lovers have more time to listen to albums at home and decide to expand their record collections.

For many, vinyl records have become like prints and paintings — art to display in the home. “The album art, the aesthetics of the record itself, the grooves of the vinyl, is something that I’m attracted to” quotes one long time fan. The popularity of vinyl is causing ripples in the music industry, as the skyrocketing demand is straining its supply chain, with vinyl manufacturers struggling to fill the immense demand worldwide. As a result, consumers are dealing with delays on orders, and even the world’s biggest artists are waiting months for their record to hit the shelves. For example, Taylor Swift announced the re-release of her album “Red” several months in advance to ensure the vinyl would be available at the release.

The bottom line is that even as tech changes the way we entertain ourselves — and makes certain forms of media obsolete — vinyl has the powerful asset of coolness to keep it alive. And South Africa is no exception, with new `bricks and mortar` stores opening up regularly and a huge increase in the amount of individual on-line sellers from Phalaborwa to Cape Town. The success of Joburg`s monthly premier vinyl record get together, the Spin Music Fair, (held at Pirates Bowls Club on the last Sunday of each month) is testament to the ever broadening appeal of the humble black (and sometimes coloured) 12 inch record.

The Beatles- Get Back -The documentary

On January 2, 1969, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr kickstarted the new year together on a cavernous soundstage at Twickenham Film Studios in London. The Beatles jumped into rehearsals for a project envisioned to get them back to where they once belonged: onstage. For 21 days, cameras and tape recorders documented almost every moment: first at Twickenham and then at The Beatles’ own Apple Studio, where Billy Preston joined them on keyboards. Together they rehearsed brand new originals and jammed on older songs, all captured live and unvarnished. On January 30, the cameras and recorders were rolling as The Beatles, with Preston, staged what was to be their final concert on the chilly rooftop of their Savile Row Apple Corps headquarters before a small assembly of family and friends, and any others who were within wind-carried range of their amps. The midday performance brought London’s West End to a halt as necks craned skyward from the streets and the windows of neighbouring buildings were flung open for better vantage. A flurry of noise complaints drew police officers to the rooftop, shutting the concert down after 42 minutes. Work to compile an album to be called “Get Back” was carried out in April and May by producer Glyn Johns. The Beatles, however, decided to shelve the project’s copious tapes, film reels, and photos, in order to record and release their LP masterpiece, Abbey Road. Drawn from the tapes made in January 1969, plus some sessions which preceded and followed those recordings, The Beatles’ final album, Let It Be, was eventually issued on May 8, 1970 (May 18 in the U.S.) to accompany the release of the Let It Be film.

The sessions that brought about the Let It Be album and film represent the only time in The Beatles’ career that they were documented at such great length while creating music in the studio. More than 60 hours of unreleased film footage, more than 150 hours of unreleased audio recordings, and hundreds of unpublished photographs have been newly explored and meticulously restored and due for release this November :The new Let It Be Special Edition is joined by “The Beatles: Get Back”, the hotly-anticipated documentary series directed by three-time Oscar®-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson, and a beautiful new hardcover book also titled The Beatles: Get Back. The raw sources explored for the new projects have revealed that a more joyous, benevolent and camaraderie spirit imbued the sessions than was conveyed in the original film.

For vinyl fans there is a single half speed mastered record, newly remixed in stereo by Giles Martin or you can break the bank with the Super Deluxe version featuring 180-gram, half-speed mastered vinyl 4LP + 45rpm 12-inch vinyl EP with 105-page hardbound book in a 12.5” by 12.5” die-cut slipcase. NB At the time of writing Universal Music South Africa has confirmed that they will be bring stock in of the half speed single LP as well as the picture disc prices TBA.

Watch the get back film trailer…