We asked fan-favorite and psychedelic stooge Ben Blackwell to recap Third Man’s previous Record Store Days… and boy did he deliver! Read on for the inside scoop from the guy who has been around since day one.
2009 - The Beginning
Swank and I had absolutely no idea what we were doing. We’d grabbed whatever “excess” we could find in Jack’s literal “White Stripes’ Closet” and sold some pretty tasty titles…some “Get Behind Me Satan” LPs, some “Let’s Shake Hands” singles, leftover tour-only “Icky Thump” t-shirts. I thought the Stripes Sub Pop single was too choice to include, so I held those back. We had no shelves, just a folding table set up in the original one-room footprint of the shop. We kept an ice bucket of beer behind the counter and just gave away free beer. Weirdly, I don’t think we really sold that many copies of the Dead Weather’s “Hang You From the Heavens.” Notable attendees included the legendary Reno Bo and future Turbo Fruits drummer Matt Hearn, who after two beers, decided to leave and hit a car in the parking lot. Probably shouldn’t have been giving away beers! We opened the shop at 10am because Grimey’s was opening at 9am and I wanted to get the Sonic Youth singles and Swank wanted to get the Jesus Lizard 7-inch set. Cash-only, no taxes, no receipts…our business office had a fit when we told them what we did. Given our history, Swank and I just ran the place like a glorified merch table.
2010 - For Real
We gave away a go-kart! We auctioned off a go-kart! We had an approximation of the Raconteurs (the Racontwoeurs!) play! We let WAY too many people into the Blue Room for a free show. We sold a solid amount of “copper” colored copies of the Raconteurs “Broken Boy Soldiers” LP. Brendan Benson’s wife was ready to give birth at any minute, making us scared he may not be able to play the show. But everything worked out just fine.
SUPER RARE UNAUTHORIZED CELL PHONE FOOTAGE FROM INSIDE THE BLUE ROOM RSD 2010…
2010 Ben Swank raffling the Go-Kart…
2011 - Rain Delay
Jerry Lee Lewis playing in the Rescue Mission parking lot…delayed because it was cold and rainy and none of us wanted to be responsible for giving a 75-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer pneumonia. We did a private, indoors Blue Room show with Jerry Lee on RSD with friends and family and Kris Kristofferson in attendance and then the public show was the following day, all sunshine and smiles and Jim Keltner, Steve Cropper and Jack Lawrence backing band beauty. White Stripes first two singles back in print for the first time in almost ten years! A Karen Elson record with actual (fake) flower petals pressed inside of it. ROME! The Mayor of Nashville gave Jack a special Music City Ambassador award…legit!
RSD 2011 announce…
RSD 2011 recap…
2011 the Mayor giving Jack his Award (at 0:43 seconds)
2012 - I Can’t Remember That Much
Shit was rainy, Aziz Ansari showed up. Liquid-filled records are only guaranteed as long as you’re in the store. Once you go to the parking lot, all bets are off. Karen Elson’s “Milk and Honey” pressed on yellow and gold split-color “milk and honey” colored vinyl, with a laser cut sleeve approximating lace. Damn. Frankensteining the White Stripes “Hand Springs” and “Red Death at 6:14” together was such a perfect pairing I couldn’t believe it hadn’t been done earlier. Both records originally came free with magazines!
RSD 2012 announce…
2013 - Noice-o-Graph Record Booth
Jack White is Record Store Day ambassador and the video announcing such is still one of my favorite/funniest things we’ve ever done. It’s also the ten year anniversary of Elephant and that LP in our Nashville store is still our best selling single day title in history. Fans were praising our “Credit Card Only” line as a great way to combat homeless flippers buying multiples for shady eBay resellers. We hadn’t even anticipated that…just fell backwards into that good idea. We debut the Voice-o-Graph recording booth and Neil Young just happens to show up unannounced and wants to record. Of equal excitement, our good neighbors at Hot Diggity Dog make super-legit Coney Dogs on our back patio!
RSD 2013 ambassador vid…
2014 - THE WORLD’S FASTEST RECORD
The more I objected to wearing a California Highway Patrol uniform the more everyone else really wanted me to wear it. So with all the moving parts and other things that could’ve absolutely blown up in our faces, I relented and just wore the damn thing and chose to focus on the task at hand. I’d never driven a scooter before. When we delivered the acetate masters to URP, we found there was a tiny loose washer knocking around in the box with the discs. This minuscule piece of plastic could’ve absolutely destroyed the whole damn day, but we were fortunate and everything went smoothly. Something we never divulged to folks…to get as many copies of the record pressed as quickly as possible, we had the singles pressing on THREE different machines at URP. And to make that happen, we had to cut a second set of lacquers (which would’ve had an ever-so-slightly different run-out etching). We then made a second set of pressing plates from the FIRST set of lacquers which at the moment I cannot recall if there was any discernible difference. I know I grabbed one copy off of each press, but since I don’t have ‘em here in my office, I’m not entirely sure. Once we’d successfully delivered the first batch of records to be sold, I walked into my office, laid down on my couch and felt a level of unparalleled completion and exhaustion and relief. Oh yeah…Whirlwind Heat killed it! We celebrated our five year anniversary!
RSD 2014 recap…
2015 - Get Behind Me Question
Since day one, the most constantly asked question I’d been confronted with at TMR was “Are you going to release Get Behind Me Satan on vinyl?” So finally, eliminated having to answer THAT question once and for all. As a side note…we released the earliest known recordings of Elvis Presley and put the original copy of the acetate AND the lathe it was cut on as a remarkable “no big deal” instance of museum-quality shenanigans. Oh yeah, let’s record a bunch of folks direct-to-acetate in the Blue Room in the exact same way that Elvis recorded. The ukulele version of “Danke Schoen” done that day still brings tears to my eyes.
RSD 2015 recap…
2016 - FLAMES!
I don’t know if I will ever accomplish something more beautiful than falling off a velcro wall. When the Sub Pop instagram responds to a video of said beauty with “This is everything” I feel like I can die a happy man. Man…or Astroman? absolutely kill it with their set, ending by using a floor tom as a Tesla tower to shoot electromagnetic beams through the room and ultimately have the lugs catch on fire. Side note: we’d initially hoped to have the ICARUS record in space launch on this day, but alas, it was not in the clouds, but that’s the reasoning behind a lot of the NASA imagery and space ideas in the merch and promotional ideas for this one.
RSD 2016 recap…
