“What you got back home, little sister, to play your fuzzy warbles on? I bet you’ve got little save pitiful portable picnic players…”
Core77 posts some examples of portable music players from the 1920s and 1930s just in time for Record Store Day today. The Mikiphone above is a Swiss “pocket phonograph” from 1924. There’s a follow-up post with examples from later decades including a rather dubious (and not very successful) “Highway hi-fi phonograph” from Chrysler. For more recent novelties, try Kelli Anderson’s paper record player.
Back at Record Store Day, The Guardian sent two men in search of British record shops and included Manchester on their list of stops. Kudos for finding Beatin’ Rhythm, a great place for psychedelic albums, but I’d have headed to King Bee instead of Sifters. Some more links:
• Independent record stores increase for the first time in a generation
• The Wire‘s Record Store Day Roundup
• Win Mute’s Record Store Day vinyl