News Record Store Day 2012 Perspectives: The Band

Lawrence: I think it’s genius idea. It’s very strange now that if you want to buy a record, you almost have to go somewhere that’s like an antiques store. It’s very specialised. And I think Record Store Day makes it alive again, makes it feel exciting, because not everyone can get to a place like Rough Trade so it opens it up to them and kind of brings them in. High Fidelity is pretty much my favourite movie. The bit about buying the Stevie Wonder record is exactly the archetypal record store guy where when you ask him for something that isn’t freeform jazz, he wails on you.
Martyn: I do remember coming here for Record Store Day last year and there was some really awesome stuff. There was a big Flaming Lips thing and a Floating Points single but it like £25 and I was like, ‘Oh, I totally can’t afford it.’ There were tears in my eyes looking at all these awesome vinyl and I couldn’t buy anything.

Have you all taken part in the day as customers?
Thom: When I’ve had money to spend!
L: This Record Store Day is probably going to be the best one because we finally just got a little bit of money so you can finally go and buy that single. They’re doing a Flaming Lips thing this year as well.
Ma: I liked the Franz thing last year actually, it was a covers EP.

The Record Store Day website states that it wants to promote music as an art form this year. What do you make of that?
L: It’s amazing because we’ve been to Germany and France a bit now and the record stores over there and the people - there just seems to be an appreciation that music is still an art form, rather than just something to be thrown away. We’ve always talked about how we wanted to treat our music as like high pop art - we treasured it like that. Plus, I think there are still people that want to do that but you have to treat it like that or people don’t see it as that. In other countries, Record Stores almost seem like hallowed ground but in a nice way. So it would be nice if people remembered that. A vinyl is such a beautiful thing to hold, take home and spend time with. You don’t quite get that with downloads. But obviously, they’re really useful when you’re on tour because you can’t just take your vinyl box with you.

Do you have a strong sense of loyalty to a particular format? Are you very much vinyl people?
L: Eight track.
Mike: Hissy, noisey, eight track.
T: When you’re buying a collectable thing, it’s very nice to have it in vinyl form. Actually, a few days ago, I bought the ‘Doolittle’ demos by The Pixies, which we listened to yesterday and it was disappointing because it was just a worse version of ‘Doolittle’. But it’s interesting to hear. And something like that which is quite niche is really nice to have in a large format.
Mi: Exactly. I’m a big fan of vinyl. It’s like you just hear everything better. It’s a process. It’s almost like a ceremony, taking the record out of the sleeve and taking time to just sack off everything else and just listen, not be distracted by anything else, it’s just how people who made the record wanted you to listen to it.
T: There’s a lot of forced nostalgia around it, I guess, which might annoy people when talking about back in the day when you used to sit around in a room and put a record on, you used to have to listen to the whole album. But you’ve got to work through that and realise that there is a different atmosphere when you’re listening to vinyl. It’s just a separate experience, that’s not to say it’s better - you need to realise that both are valid as a music fan.
Ma: I remember I came for an interview here when it first opened and they put you in circles of people and people just came around taking notes on what you were talking about. We were basically just talking about music, which I feel quite informed on, I spend all day listening to it but I don’t collect vinyl. And people were really up on 7’s and this that and the other and I thought, ‘Whoa, I’m so out of my depth here.’ I politely walked out. I’ve embraced the digital thing a bit. I’m not really a vinyl collector but I definitely would like to be if I was richer.

Speaking of collecting, some people do buy vinyl just to collect while others buy it to listen to and there’s quite a marked difference. How would you prefer people to treat your music?
L: I like the idea of wearing a vinyl out. You’ve just listened to it so many times that you have to buy it again.
Ma: I’d be quite disppointed if someone bought our album on vinyl and then never listened to it.
L: It’s like Toy Story 2, right? They buy the toys and they leave them in the box but that’s not what toys are for, they’re to be played with.
T: Actually, I didn’t like when we found our 7’ of our first single in a clothes shop in Paris. It just didn’t seem like the right place for it. It was just sitting there. I didn’t know people bought 7’s in clothes shops.
Ma: Beggars do quite a cool thing where if you buy the vinyl - and they do really cool packaging and stuff as well - you get a download code so you get an mp3 of it as well.
L: I like the idea of someone having the mp3 on their desktop but like, ‘Don’t open it. Don’t double click on that folder.’
Ma: Don’t touch my dongle!

Is Record Store Day something you’d like to get involved with in the future?
L: Yeah, definitely but like you said, our record comes out quite soon after so for us that’s our focus. But next year hopefully we can put something together really cool. I think it’s definitely nice in this age where things have become a bit dispersed and it’s not so easy to get things from artists you like that isn’t just on the net and available to everyone, to have things that can just be for real fans that they can keep and have hold of. There’s always gigs and things with little things you can take away that you kind of really love a band to have. When I was growing up, it was REM and The Smiths and if I got a bootleg vinyl, it was like, ‘Oh my God, this is amazing!’ Now you can just click online and download every gig they’ve ever done since 1987.
T: it’s not for everyone I guess. You want people to get hold of your music and listen to it however they can but you realise that the people who come into record stores and are really obsessive about it are essentially the ones who keep it all going so if there are more of them, that can only be a good thing.
L: They’re also possibly the ones most like the people in bands because I think if we weren’t in bands, we’d be the guys coming in hands pressed against the glass to get the blue vinyl copy of ‘Soft Bullet’. We share their obsession, definitely.

Citizens! will release their new album ‘Here We Are’ on 28th May via Kitsune.