Mike Mettler

How much do I love reissues? Let me count the ways. Well, let me NOT do that, else I'll never get around to the subject at hand…

Anyway, this is the first in a regular series of postings about cool reissues that are coming down the pike - or ones that have already come down the pike and may have passed you by.

Man, do I loooooove Record Store Day.

If there’s one thing to take away from this past Saturday’s RSD, it’s that there’s a strong and rabid group of record buyers willing to wait in line for hours and hours to willingly spend lots and lots of dough on physical product — and that’s incredibly encouraging in light of what many see as an ever-shrinking tactile music marketplace.

Bottom line: Give them a reason, and they will come. And spend.

“We’ve got about 6,000 songs to play for you tonight,” Geddy Lee said to raucous cheers during the first set break at Rush’s return to Madison Square Garden last night. Well, give or take some 5,974 other choices, the Canadian trio powered through 26 tracks at the NYC stop of the Time Machine 2011 tour. The set has remained the same since the two shows I saw last summer (Jones Beach in July, PNC Bank Arts Center in September), but hold your fire—the musicianship and vigor never waned.

When Robbie Robertson met Jimi Hendrix in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1966, Hendrix (then going by the name of Jimmy James) was intent on learning about a subject crucial to his future as an artist. “He only wanted to talk about songwriting,” revealed Robertson. “Because I was playing with Bob Dylan then, he thought I might know something about those secrets.” What was the best advice Robertson shared with Jimi? “If everybody is writing about one particular thing, then I would not go in that particular direction, because it’s crowded over there.