New York City: As reported here on the Amoeblog today by Billy Gil at the Hollywood Amoeba, Record Store Day 2012 has been hectic with folks lining up outside the Sunset Blvd. store from 2:30am this morning, eight long hours before Amoeba would open its front doors. Up north in the Bay at both the Berkeley Amoeba and the San Francisco Amoeba a similar scenario was playing out with folks showing up long before doors opening for their chance to snag some of the much coveted Record Store Day 2012 exclusive releases. Of that long list of exclusive releases among the top most sought after items was a release by the group Phish which was what the folks first in line outside the San Francisco Amoeba wanted as reported on the Amoebog YouTube posting earlier this afternoon. Back here in NYC shoppers were also hot to track down Phish. "All day we got calls for the Phish and Flaming Lips records," Jonathan Sklute who owns the East Village Good Records store told me this afternoon, adding that. "A friend of mine I was talking to over at [nearby] Other Music said that they got about 700 calls for Phish but they didn't have near that many copies to satisfy that level of demand."

All photos by Kaitlin Layher

With a line forming around the block, through the McDonald's parking lot and down Waller Street, Record Store Day 2012 today (April 21st) at Amoeba San Francisco was the best-attended one yet! As we discussed before, Record Store Day is not taken lightly amongst discerning music collectors and Amoebites alike, and this year we all felt the rosy glow of the True Meaning of Record Store Day as the doors were flung open to the excited crowd at 10:30am. As you'll see in these accompanying photos and the video below, special limited edition releases were what brought these souls together, but the instantly-made friendships between like-minded Amoeba patrons spoke to the higher purpose of RSD.

Also in the spirit of giving (and collecting limited edition stuff!), Free Gold Watch was on the Amoeba stage screen printing the two winning designs from our first-ever design contest! The shirts went FAST, but we still have a few tote bags at the registers. If you are interested, act fast before they are gone! Proceeds of t-shirt sales will go to the kids at SF Rock Project, because children are our future! Donate well and let them show the way.

Official Record Store Day T-Shirts are now being printed until 4 p.m. in Hollywood! Donate $5 to The Silverlake Conservatory of Music to pick one of four RSD designs. The prints come from our friends at Junk Food Clothing, Family Industries, and Anti-/Epitaph Records.

 

Record Store Day 2012 is upon us. The devoted started lining up at Amoeba Hollywood as early as 2:30 in the morning for a chance at picking up a number of exclusive releases, with doors opening at 10:30 a.m. The line outside stretched around the block all morning, with customers cooling themselves off with Amoeba fans and the Coffee Bean providing free coffee and goodies for those in line.  

Amoeba is silk screening the winning designs of its Record Store Day T-Shirt Contest, and at 1 p.m. Broken Social Scene's Brendan Canning will begin DJing (see a full list of the day's events here). Though some releases have already sold out, a number of high-profile releases were still up for grabs as of 11:15 a.m. (including the much-touted new release from The Flaming Lips, The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends, featuring Bon Iver, Ke$ha and a whole lot more folks in between). There's still time to come in and grab any number of Record Store Day releases. Come in, hang out, buy some records, get a gift bag, get an exclusive T-Shirt, and hang out and listen to DJs spin. (Click here for a full list of releases; check out my picks here.) And if you can't make it out, follow Amoeba on Twitter for ticket giveaways, and check Amoeba.com tomorrow when leftover Record Store Releases will be put up for sale — can't guarantee you'll get what you want, since these things are going, going fast today.

Follow @jobobrother