Record Shop

Record Shop

The record store. A vault of albums banal and rare. The place where you'll find the most popular of recordings sitting next to a recording or artist few people have ever heard of before.

All waiting to be discovered.

One of my biggest loves is spending time in a record store. I love the discovery of sifting through bins of different recordings locating not only things that I'm actively seeking out but the things that I had no idea existed. I love picking up a random recording, wondering "what the heck is this?", only to discover something new and interesting that I would never have sought out.

This journaling game is about the discovery of a record shop and the connections we have with music. Each card you draw represents a record you might find in a record shop. Think about what the prompt might represent as a record or an artist and a song or album that springs to mind. Don't overthink it! If you can't come up with anything then just riff on what the album might be. Perhaps the recording has an interesting cover or title that matches the prompt. These also don't have to be real albums. Maybe the album is a compilations of unlikely songs, or an imaginary band that released an album. Spend more time writing about the prompts than spending time on Wikipedia looking up whether or not that song or album was recorded by that band.

One area we'd like to break away from conventional record shops is the price of the album. Assume this record shop is willing to part with any album for a fair price. In this game you can afford the album, no matter how expensive the album might be in a conventional record shop. Remember: money is not an obstacle in this record shop.

Above all: there is no one correct way to play this game. If you accidentally attribute an AC/DC song to The Who then that's OK. Perhaps this record shop has a bootleg copy of The Who covering that song that even the most hardcore of fans have yet to hear. This record shop exists completely in your own imagination. If Beethoven making boogie makes you happy then in he's the king of boogie music. Let your mind take you where it wants to go, and let Beethoven roll over to let you play.