I NEED THAT RECORD! with filmmaker Brendan Toller
Saturday, December 6 7pm
Suggested donation ($10 / $5 students)
I Need That Record! is a documentary feature examining why over 3,000 independent record stores have closed across the United States in the past decade. 22-year-old Brendan Toller, the film’s director, will be present for a Q&A.
Toller, who researched the film for two years and traveled all over the U.S. talking to record store owners, musicians and music lovers, comments that “[r]ecord stores serve as important community spaces providing foundations for new musical and artistic scenes and movements,” noting also the role of record stores as seedbeds for independent thought and meeting places for people of all kinds. I Need That Record! is a compelling tribute to this endangered phenomenon.
I Need That Record! features interviews with Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Ian Mackaye (Dischord Records Fugazi/Minor Threat). activist/author Noam Chomsky, Mike Watt (The Minutemen), Lenny Kaye (the Patti Smith Group), Chris Frantz (Talking Heads/Tom Tom Club), guitar composer Glenn Branca, Patterson Hood (Drive-By Truckers), Pat Carney (Black Keys), punk author Legs McNeil, rock photographer Bob Gruen, BP Helium (Of Montreal), and the owners and employees of record stores in NYC, Boston, DC, Cleveland, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Minneapolis, Memphis, Nashville, and Los Angeles.
Greedy record labels, media consolidation, homogenized radio, big box stores, e-commerce, shoddy “stars” pushed by big money, and the digital revolution are all real challenges to independent record stores. I Need That Record! asks: Will these stores die? Will they survive?
The film has attracted buzz on Pitchfork, The Onion A/V Club, PunkNews, Wiretap Magazine, Brooklyn Vegan, The Stranger and more