Driving Our Economy Forward: Yellow Racket Records
At Yellow Racket Records, they say music is more than just a background noise…it’s an experience. You will find new records, and some old classics. We’re learning what makes this business so special and why it continues to Drive Our Economy Forward.
Ben Vanderhart, Owner, Yellow Racket Records says, “Welcome to Yellow Racket Records. The name just came to me sort of like an epiphany. I was starting a record label, and I had a collie at the time, and I drew his portrait on a Post-it note and I wrote yellow racket records, and it just stuck. I just liked it. He was my racket. He was really loud. He had a big bar. We wanted to start a record store, and we signed a lease in February 2020. I got the keys the first week of March and then the next week the whole world shut down. When you look at sort of the evolution of formats overtime going from vinyl to 8 tracks to cassette to CD. It was all about portability and convenience. And now the most portable in the most convenient way of listening to music is on your phone or smart device and using the Internet. But I think a lot of people have found it that sort of leaves a gap.
It’s just the whole experience. It’s uh… having more artwork on it, it’s actually… instead of having like an MP3 that you but you just click on a skip for the whole album just for one song. Like, listen to the whole thing the way the artist intended for it to be listened to.
This is the Beatles 1964 US albums in mono this is a recent reissue a full box with seven actually eight LP seven different albums of all the first US comps.
Something we talk about a lot is like your first memory of your favorite record or the first record that you bought. And when I find is that people who grew up with analog formats have real salient memories about it because it’s they remember the smell they remember that the sound of the crack all they remember all these sorts of peripheral aspects of listening to that record and who they were with and what room they were in. And then the feel of it and all that kind of stuff.
You know we’ve got the retail space we’ve got CDs and records and tapes, and all that. We got a tattoo shop over on the far side where we got two tattoo artists who are sort of doing there doing their thing Monday through Friday. And then I’m on my left over here is our listening room and we host listening to parties over there sometimes we get sneak peaks from you know labels who are sending us records in advance, but we’ve also got a stage and live performance space in there. So, we have local artists who are doing shows here typically album release shows, and we’ve got an artist by the name of Sunny War who’s playing here Thursday the 20th at 6 PM and she is celebrating the release of her new album Armageddon in a sundress which is out on new West Records this weekend. So that’ll be a great time. It’s a free show and people will come out and hear the music and hopefully buy a record and get it signed by the artist. And yeah, it’s just a lot of fun. Hey, we’d love to have you stop in buying records is a whole lot of fun. You won’t regret it.
