April is always a great season for Philadelphia music fans.
The first Record Store Day of the year spins into action this Saturday, April 12, bringing excitement for vinyl aficionados and cassette lovers alike.
Once a niche celebration for die-hard fans, Record Store Day has grown into a beloved annual tradition throughout Philly and beyond, and Metro has the inside track on the top music picks to explore this weekend.
Taylor Swift, ‘Fortnight’
Though the Swift family hails from West Reading, Pennsylvania, Philly has forever claimed its top selling singer and songwriter as our own. And this most soulful of tracks – featuring Post Malone at his best – from her recent Grammy-nominated Album of the Year, ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’ gets a regal treatment worthy of a queen. Not only is this single’s B-side, “Fortnight [BLOND:ISH Remix]” available on vinyl for the very first time on Record Store Day, the sleeve’s cover is done up in a cool silhouette of Swift, and its vinyl is gleaming white.
Todd Rundgren, ‘Initiation’
Upper Darby’s Todd Rundgren’s ‘Initiation‘ album – celebrating its 50th year anniversary this May – was actually controversial when it was first released in 1975. Along with capturing the blue-eyed soul singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist at his most mystically thematic and musically experimental, its length — 67 minutes long — was too much for the early versions of vinyl to handle, and often sounded warped and weird. (Although, for some listeners, they assumed that was just Todd doing his thing.)
Now, Rundgren’s earlier experimental progressive rock complexities and prayerful side-long instrumentals such as ‘A Treatise on Cosmic Fire.’ get the RSD treatment. Cut directly from Runt’s original stereo analog tapes and newly pressed on two colored vinyl discs, ‘Initiation’ sounds amazing and illuminating.
The O’Jays, ‘Super Bad’
The Sound of Philadelphia’s roughest, biggest selling harmony trio The O’Jays – Eddie Levert, William Powell, and Walter Williams – actually hailed from Ohio and were on their way to Philly when they recorded this soulfully soaring 1971 album. Though The O’Jays didn’t score any of its signature hits from ‘Super Bad,’ the album is as funky fresh as all-get-out, and now, for RSD 2025, it’s on purple vinyl.
Warren Zevon, ‘Piano Fighter: The Giant Years,’ ‘Hindu Love Gods’
The forever-caustic and humorously downbeat songwriting singer Warren Zevon lived on Rittenhouse Square for a time in the mid-1980s, right before this spate of recordings represented by the 4-LP Record Store Day-only ‘Piano Fighter: The Giant Years’ box and his teaming with the members of R.E.M. (not named Michael Stipe) that resulted in their ‘Hindu Love Gods’ albums.
If you loved the late Zevon’s deep, throaty vocals, chatterbox patois and his film noir musical and lyrical sensibilities, both of these records are for you, with ‘Hindu Love Gods‘ giving Zevon’s barbed words a particularly hard, alt-rock edge.
Ry Cooder, ‘Live at The Main Point 1972’
Bryn Mawr’s The Main Point coffeehouse-turned-concert-venue is long gone (1964 to 1981) with its legend for hosting giants such as Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen & the E-Street Band in-tact. Yet, you don’t see many live documents from its glory days. This is a good one: twangy guitarist, composer and Buena Vista Social Club producer Ry Cooder performing a dusty handful of his tangiest blues moments (‘Police Dog Blues,’ ‘Someday Baby Blues’), a few of his oddball, arcane storytelling sessions (‘Jesus on the Mainline,’ ‘F.D.R. in Trinidad’) and a cover of the only track Captain Beefheart has a hit with, in ‘Ditty Wah Ditty.’
The Killers & Bruce Springsteen, ‘Encore at The Garden’
New Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen decided to show up and show off to his greatest new wave imitators, The Killers, just want it means to be The Boss by joining them at New York City’s Madison Square Garden for a rock-out encore medley performance of ‘Badlands,’ ‘Dustland,’ and ‘Born to Run.’ This Record Store Day EP is the next best thing to being there without having to overspend on beer.
Sun Ra, ‘Nuits de la Fondation Maeght: Deluxe Edition’
Record Store Day loves its big, multi-volume vinyl box sets. Prince has one. The Grateful Dead has one. But Germantown’s Sun Ra and his Arkenstra have the biggest box with ‘Nuits de la Fondation Maeght’ and its six albums of rare live recordings from two of its most famous nights in August 1970.
For all of Sun Ra’s “space is the place” branding and his repute for making technicolor avant-garde jazz, these concerts in France were the first time that he and the Arkestra they had left the shores of North America, so these shows in France were received with a heroes’ welcome. And the music, their 12 side-long carnival medleys, never let the audience down. The aliens had truly landed for once and for all in 1970.
Plus, the large box features restored photos from the 1970 shows by renowned snapper Philippe Gras, so this is great package to own, whether you love Ra or just enjoy vinyl products by the pound.
