Vinyl Is Alive and Well

The 9 best record stores in Dallas-Fort Worth to celebrate Record Store Day

If you keep up with trend, you may be under the impression that record stores, along with records, have gone the way of the Dodo bird. Not necessarily.

Vinyl especially is experiencing a reemergence. According to Vinylhunt.com, global vinyl sales are at their highest since 1997: $151 million of vinyl sold last year, up more than 50 percent from 2011. Really, if you love collecting music, take a look at the list of special releases from artists of all sizes, shapes, flavors and eras, in honor of upcoming Record Store Day on Saturday, April 20.

Whether new sounds, inexpensive old ones or rare collectibles, much of the inventory in these top Dallas-Fort Worth record stores won’t be available for very long beyond this Saturday. So get some fresh air and expand your music selection — without clicking.

Good Records
Every day is Record Store Day at Good Records on Greenville Avenue. Owned by Tripping Daisy/Polyphonic Spree/Preteen Zenith frontman Tim Delaughter, Good Records is to Dallas what Amoeba Music is to Los Angeles: a music mecca, with a delicious selection of limited-edition vinyl, box sets and fascinating used stuff. Inside, acoustic stage “Live from the Astroturf” hosts 12 hours of live music. Store opens at 7 am Saturday for the collector rush.

Ernest Tubb Record Shop
Ernest’s original shop opened in Nashville in the ’40s and is nothing short of legendary in the world of traditional country. In Fort Worth, Ernest Tubb Record Shop owner Jerry Kay Weeks has been at it more than 20 years at this location. The shop specializes in traditional country, honky tonk, swing, Texas Red Dirt country and gospel, with hundreds of vinyl titles for $1 and special collectibles. For Record Store Day, Weeks is giving away red 45’s by Dale Watson, singing “I Lie When I Drink” and “Thanks To Tequila,” while supplies last. Oh, and live music from the Brazos Valley Boys from 1-4 pm.

Mad World Records
Record stores in Denton are part of the lifeblood of the town. Mad World is well-known and smartly stocked. Live music starts up at 5 pm Saturday, with Spooky Folk, Kurt Baker and more.

Recycled Books Denton
The music collection at Recycled Book in Denton is also regionally famous, and the stores hosts live music Saturday from noon-5 pm, starring well-known RTB2 frontman Ryan Thomas Becker, Tony Ferraro and local spice faves Mariachi Quetzal. For Record Store Day, everything in the store is 15 percent off — books too.

Cloud 8 Records
Tucked inside Dolly Python on Haskell Avenue is collector (and Eight Track Museum curator) Bucks Burnett’s operation, Cloud 8 Records. Burnett counts Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz of Talking Heads fame among his close friends, and Burnett was recently Pete Townshend’s special guest on The Who’s Quadrophenia Anniversary U.S. Tour. There are some magnificent finds hidden at Cloud 8.

Bill’s Records
Bill’s Records has been a Texas institution for more than three decades. His original location at Spring Valley Road was a bit larger, but it still has all the great idiosyncrasies, a music stage in the back and, most important, Bill himself behind the counter damn near every day. Fittingly, Bill celebrates his birthday on Record Store Day with 12 hours — and 26 bands’ worth — of live music.

Forever Young Records
At 11,000 square feet, Forever Young Records in Grand Prairie claims to be the third largest independent record store in the country. It’s an impressive experience: It’s structured entirely to resemble a huge jukebox (including a full Wurlitzer replica entryway), and the vinyl inventory comprises around 30 percent of its total stock. At roughly 5:30 am Saturday, collectors can line up outside to get a lottery number good for dibs on the most wanted limited-edition stuff. Among the hot items: an orange and red 7” vinyl of Iggy Pop’s “No Fun,” with the Black Keys on the flip side covering the same song. Only 7,000 exist, exclusively for Record Store Day 2013.

CD Source
CD Source celebrates its 20th this winter and touts an inventory of 125,000 CDs and 11,000 vinyl titles. On Saturday, the store hosts 12 hours of live music, starting with the songbird voice of Becky Middleton at 9 am, followed by local biggies Fox and the Bird, Home By Hovercraft, Dead Flowers and many more. Along with music, we hear free food will also be in abundance. The store opens at 7 am Saturday, and owner Lance Price also tells us he’s getting in “double the quantity of special releases we got in last year.”

Movie Trading Co
Although not every metro location of Movie Trading Co is participating in Record Store Day, the one on Greenville Avenue has a fine music selection, and it is offering “buy two get one free” on all used CDs and vinyl, as well as special-order editions released for Saturday.

Good Records hosts live music on its in-store stage.

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Movie Review

Faces of Death returns with modern twist on cult horror film

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy - in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks - is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

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Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

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