It’s been 15 years since Record Store Day placed its dusty mark on the national shopper’s holiday the day after Thanksgiving we call Black Friday.
And though more demure in its volume of releases than its big sibling in April, RSD Black Friday really has evolved since its genesis in 2010, especially as market interest in physical media remains on solid footing.
“There are about 175 RSD titles total this year, so it’s about half the number of releases we normally do for Record Store Day in April,” RSD cofounder Michael Kurtz explains to Billboard. “Our goal is to try and provide a list of records that would enable a music fan to find two or three that they would love to either give or get as a gift during the holidays. I think we’ve accomplished that.”
Indeed they have, especially this year, where many participating record labels go deep into their vaults to give the informed music-buying public incentive to venture out of their house and outside the doorway of their nearest participating record shop, including exclusives from Benson Boone, Cage the Elephant, Curren$y, Dr. Dre, Billie Eilish, Fred again.., Briston Maroney, Bruno Mars, Role Model and Talking Heads.
“I think it demonstrates how much music fans support and love record stores,” adds Kurtz. “They like shopping in them and that means the fans want to own and collect records, especially during the holiday season.”
In looking over this year’s list, Billboard has selected 12 titles of interest that readers should be on the lookout for this Black Friday.
Icona Pop feat. Charli xcx, “I Love It”
EP, 4,400 copies (Rhino)
Whether you first heard it up in the club or on TV as the theme to Snooki & JWOWW, this hit single from Swedish synth-pop duo featuring a young Charli xcx that still radiates with modern panache well over a decade later. This special EP, pressed on glow-in-the-dark wax, gathers together nine remixes of the single from Tiësto, Cobra Starship, Steven Redant and others.
OTTTO, Sweaty Pool
EP, 500 copies (ORG MUSIC)
Los Angeles’ OTTTO continues to gain attention as one of the country’s most promising young rock acts, with this new EP coming out a week before its proper street date (Dec. 5) as an extremely limited vinyl pressing. Here, the trio of bassist Tye Trujillo, drummer Patrick “Triko” Chavez and guitarist-vocalist Bryan Noah Ferretti are joined by longtime pal Nick Oliveri of Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age fame on the impassioned title track, punctuating a feral four-song set that signifies a bold new direction for the band as it continues to grow and evolve.
Van Halen, Live at Wembley 1995
LP, 6,000 copies (Rhino)
1995’s Balance is nobody’s favorite Van Halen album. Yet the tour behind the band’s tepid final full-length with Sammy Hagar was an unsung revelation in terms of this lineup, as this eight-song document from London’s Wembley Stadium confirms. Here, the band tears into such Roth-era gems as “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love,” The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” and “Jump” along with Van Hagar essentials such as “When It’s Love” and “Right Now” to create a unique live recording longtime fans of both versions of the band can appreciate.
Billy Joel, Live From Long Island
3LP, 1,500 copies (Legacy Recordings)
Recorded at New York’s Nassau Coliseum on Dec. 29, 1982, and broadcast on HBO the following summer (with a subsequent release on CBS Home Video), a standalone vinyl edition of Live From Long Island has been on the wish list for Billy Joel fans for, um, “The Longest Time.” Now freed from the confines of the 2023 box set The Vinyl Collection, Vol. 2, this famed show is now its own essential entity in the Joel discography with this newly remixed edition from the musician’s longtime sound engineer Brian Ruggles, containing electrifying versions of all the hits plus deeper cuts such as “Until the Night” and “Scandinavian Skies.”
Alan Silvestri: The Back to the Future Trilogy
LP, 1,900 copies (Varese Sarabande)
You don’t need to capture lightning from the Hill Valley Clocktower to revisit Alan Silvestri’s exhilarating score to the Back to the Future film trilogy with this first-of-its-kind collection that contains music from all three films. Pressed on “Doc Brown” vinyl, this RSD exclusive celebrates the 40th anniversary of the original blockbuster by providing fans the means to revisit the adventures of Marty McFly through the space-time continuum that took him across three centuries from the comfort of their hi-fi system at home. Where this soundtrack goes, you don’t need roads.
Bob Dylan: The Original Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
LP, 13,000 copies (Legacy Recordings)
Bob Dylan’s iconic second album, originally released on May 27, 1963, underwent a number of tracklist changes before it hit record shops on account of the sheer volume by which the bard was writing songs at the time, a period expertly chronicled in the 18th and possibly final volume of his storied Bootleg Series. This RSD exclusive, however, brings The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan back to its initial conception that removes the likes of “Girl from the North Country,” “Masters of War” and “Talkin’ World War III Blues” to incorporate four tracks they replaced, including “Rocks and Gravel,” “Let Me Die in My Footsteps,” “Rambling, Gambling Willie” and “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues.” This is an interesting alternate look at a most iconic Bob LP.
Ronnie D’Addario: Written by Ronnie D’Addario
LP, 1,400 copies (Omnivore Recordings)
Music composition runs deep in the D’Addario family as Brian and Michael from The Lemon Twigs pay homage to the songwriting process of their father, Ronnie, on this collection of the elder D’Addario’s best material from his 1970s heyday on the Long Island music scene alongside such fellow local acts as Barnaby Bye and Billy Joel. Brian and Michael play on every track, while Dad sits in on the majority as a parade of guests roll through — including Todd Rundgren, Mac DeMarco, Sean Ono Lennon, Darian and Probyn from The Wondermints, and second generation Beach Boy Matt Jardine — to pay their respects. Pressed on opaque red vinyl, Written By Ronnie D’Addario is a beautiful testament to the love these boys have for their dad.
Fleetwood Mac: Live 1975
2LP, 5,000 copies (Rhino)
For all the Gen Zers discovering Rumours for the first time, allow yourself time to also dig into the self-titled Fleetwood Mac album, which turned 50 this year and marked the debut of the Buckingham-Nicks era. And to mark this golden anniversary, Rhino has liberated the live portion of Fleetwood Mac’s 2022 deluxe edition as its own standalone title.
Culled from a pair of October ‘75 dates at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, N.J., and the Jorgensen Auditorium at the University of Connecticut, this double LP — making its vinyl debut — finds the band in peak form as it runs though its hits of the day — “Rhiannon” and “Landslide” — along with new lineup versions of such early Mac classics as “Oh Well,” “Station Man” and “The Green Manalishi (with the Two Pronged Crown).”
Post Malone: Long Bed
LP, 5,000 copies (Mercury/Republic Records)
Posty’s first foray into country music in F-1 Trillion is a noble if overtly busy affair jam-packed with a star-studded guest list that included everyone from Dolly Parton to Morgan Wallen to Jelly Roll to Chris Stapleton to Billy Strings and then some. What makes Long Bed — initially released as the second disc of the digital deluxe edition of F-1 — such a treat is that it’s just Malone on his own, flexing his strengths as a versatile, shapeshifting songwriter without the distractions of A-list pals that in many ways is better than its counterpart. Long Bed makes its vinyl debut on Neon Orange vinyl.
Chappell Roan: “The Subway”/”The Giver”
7″ vinyl, 30,000 copies (Island)
We might not get another new Chappell Roan album for another five years, according to the woman herself, which makes the physical release of this pair of popular singles one of the highlights of this year’s RSD Black Friday. “The Subway” takes its dream-pop cues from groups such as The Sundays and The Cranberries to extol the painful reminders of a breakup, while “The Giver” was allegedly inspired by Big & Rich’s “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy),” albeit from the perspective of a lesbian.
Linda Perry: In Flight
1,100 copies (Kill Rock Stars)
Interscope Records might have been the place where Linda Perry achieved success as a member of 4 Non Blondes, but it wasn’t the right vessel for her solo debut In Flight, which was an emphatic statement on the importance of freedom and creative expression in the face of a major label haranguing her to regurgitate another “What’s Up.” Instead, this songwriter to the stars looked inward to craft a work bursting with heart, soul and intelligence, whose time to shine has finally arrived. And after 29 years, In Flight somehow feels right at home on Pacific Northwest indie Kill Rock Stars, which is releasing the album back on vinyl for RSD Black Friday for the first time since its original pressing.
Bad Brains: Live at the Bayou
2LP, 2,500 copies (Time Traveler Recordings)
Zev Feldman — the man The New Yorker calls the “Jazz Detective” — continues to venture beyond his primary genre with the release of this ferocious set of early live recordings from Bad Brains. Captured during two different dates in 1980 and 1981 at the famed Washington, D.C., rock club The Bayou, these shows find the band before it left the nation’s capital for New York City, where the group would record its iconic eponymous debut.
Yet across the span of these two gigs, beautifully transferred from the original tapes and mastered by Don Zientara, fans will find feral versions of such “Yellow Tape” anthems as “Attitude,” “Right Brigade,” “The Big Takeover” and “Banned in D.C.” It’s the first non-jazz work on Feldman’s new label Time Traveler Recordings.