We use our newest gadgets to buy some of our lowest-tech gear.

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A colleague today raised this question: Is it ironic, or weird, or even funny, to buy vinyl -- analog music -- online?

The issue was prompted by the news of Vinyl Dreams, a new online-only record store started by Michelangelo Battaglia (a former electronic/dance buyer for Amoeba Music in the Upper Haight) and Darren Davis, who used to own Tweekin' Records in the Lower Haight. The store will be online-only, and it will apparently only sell vinyl. Clearly it's not the first online record retailer -- but it may be the first online-only vinyl shop based in S.F.

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You will remember A Record Store in Space -- the video comedy project of a few mischievous San Francisco record store employees. We brought you the first chapter of this homemade space opera last year, and now the crew has finished Chapter 2. Among other things, it features an "irrational dying star" named Courtney, an assault by superfluous copies of R.E.M.'s Monster, and -- gasp! -- a real live customer (maaaybe). Check it out after the jump.

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​Long ago in the year 2010, on a faraway place known as this blog, we told you about "Record Store in Space (A True Story)" -- the amateur video comedy project of a few rather hilarious S.F. record store employees. The first installment of the series (whose draft script was first written, of course, on a bar napkin) was a silly look at the absurdity of record store employees and the dying retail boxes that employ them... plus an added space-opera subplot for dramatic effect. We enjoyed it tremendously. And now there's another chapter in the series coming online next Saturday, April 16, in honor of Record Store Day. We don't know what will happen to our grouchy characters and their crumbling record-store-as-space-ship, but we do have a preview for you. Hint: It looks painful.
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Like the vinyl rarities that fill the shop, Groove Merchant is rare survivor -- dozens of old San Francisco record retailers have either closed for good or retreated to largely online sales. But Groove Merchant celebrates its 20th anniversary this year with a compilation album on Ubiquity Records and a whole lot of memories -- not all of them good. Staff members have been robbed at gunpoint, thieves have stolen merchandise, and lean times make the business a barely profitable endeavor. Yet Veltri says he can't complain: People are still buying records.

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Jamie Soja

Aquarius Records' co-owner Andee Connors

​Aquarius Records, that delightful retailer of uncommon music on Valencia street, is celebrating its 40th birthday party on Monday with a show at Cafe Du Nord.More >>

Satriani: Not the first to shave his head after balding set in.

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Nowadays, with Guitar Hero turning everyday basement dwellers into rock gods, and electronica granting everyone with a laptop the ability to make impossible masterpieces, a skilled technician like Joe Satriani must feel left behind.

How could one of the Bay Area's most influential guitar heroes and teachers -- mentor of Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammet and famous wanker Steve Vai -- adapt to a listening public that probably couldn't care less about actual musicianship?

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This is sure to be one of those gatherings of the Bay Area music scene for which we should all be grateful: This Sunday morning at 11, more than a dozen local labels -- including Absolutely Kosher, Alternative Tentacles, Slumberland, and Porto Franco -- will assemble for a bagel brunch/record sale/party. Yeah, "Ye Olde Record Label Faire" is in Emeryville (at the headquarters of Absolutely Kosher), but look at this list of sellers and then try to tell us it's not worth making a dash across the big 'ol bay. The labels are even selling their records at "absurd discounts." Musicians, bring your demos. Everyone else, bring your cash and your hangovers.

Back Home from gold panda on Vimeo.

San Francisco video production outfit Yours Truly has shot Best Coast's Bethany Cosentino buying records in Rooky Ricardo's, Seattle folk-rockers Moondoggies jamming in the women's bathroom at the Independent, and Scottish indie pop band Camera Obscura performing in the sun at Ocean Beach. Tomorrow, Yours Truly is holding its first video-shoot-as-live show in the Lower Haight's Robotspeak electronic music store, capturing a set from the wildly creative British electronic musician Gold Panda. Catch the show around 5 p.m., before Gold Panda goes off to open for Health at Slim's, and you might even find yourself on Pitchfork's Tunnelvision. 

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In Store spotlights San Francisco's quirkiest, most beloved, weirdest, and/or otherwise-most-interesting record stores. Our city's unmistakable friskiness and cultural capital emanate from those dusty, creaky, hard-to-find, money-losing, insanely huge, hilariously small, and often-crowded (at least with stuff) outposts of recorded music. We're always hunting for choice music outlets, but if you're curious about a specific one, please send useful information to iportmusic@gmail.com.

Name: Recycled Records

Location: 1377 Haight St.

Tagline: "Buying and selling collectibles since 1977."

Owner: Bruce Lyalls

Famous customers: Michael Jackson, Fred Schneider, Graham Nash, Billy Corgan, and members of the Wu-Tang Clan.

Michael Jackson!?: One Sunday night after closing time about nine years ago, a small group of people knocked on the door and asked if they could come in. One of them was David Gest -- who had been in the store before -- and another was dressed kinda like a sheikh, according to the employees who were there. The sheikh-looking guy was MJ. "He bought some Diana Ross records," Lyalls said. "He couldn't imagine why he didn't have them."

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Feel: Classic record store: A long, boxy space thick with records from the floor to chest level, with huge shelves up some walls. Dimly lit. Customers bustling in and out even at noontime on a weekday. Precious discs at the front behind the register. Vintage and random posters on the walls. A few racks of CDs in the back.

Watch out for: Crazies who come in off Haight St. During the interview, a guy wearing sunglasses suddenly burst in shouting some tune in a hoarse voice, drowning out the record playing and pretty much every other sound in the store. Lyalls ignored it for a bit, then yelled at him to be quiet like it's a routine thing. "Kenny's 'special,' as they say," Lyalls explained later. "He just comes in and brags about what he got down at Amoeba cheap."

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Creation story: "I was unemployed, unemployable [and] got a job at Rasputin's on Telegraph Ave. back in the 70s," Lyalls recalls. "A young guy whom I got hired with me called me up one night and said, 'You want to start a store?' I said, 'Yeah sure, only one problem: I'm broke." And he said, 'Don't worry, my old man's loaded." Lyalls and his partner Jeff Graham (son of then-KSAN Director Jerry Graham) launched Recycled Records on upper Grant Ave in North Beach. Within a year, they opened the Haight St. store that's now home base. Graham went on to be a reporter for USA Today about a year or two after they started, and Lyalls has been running it since.

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