In Photos: Record Store Day & The Castle Rd Easter Fete

Last Friday and Saturday saw the closure of Castle Rd and the return of its’ now familiar Fete, bringing over twenty of the cities’ finest independent traders together in celebration of the much loved road. Coinciding with Pie & Vinyl’s Record Store Day celebrations, the two days featured live music performances from both national and local level musicians namely Young Knives, Emily Barker, The Boy I Used To Be, Matt Jarvis, Common Tongues, Fugitive Orchestra and Billy Vincent spread across two stages.

Sweetie Pie & Ooh la Lapin joint stall.

Young Knives on the Clocktower stage.

Rolling off the success of the Christmas Fair, shop fronts and restaurants spilled out onto the street providing everything from food and drinks to handmade items and vintage clothes – even the Bike Doctor was on hand for free cycle maintenance and advice. Recent additions to the road SHOP and 101 Reykjavik showed out in force with SHOP almost doubling its footprint out into the street and Reykjavik putting on a stage at the Common end of the road, alongside supplying a plentiful flow of their Icelandic white ale. If you’re a trader or maker looking to sell at the next fete, keep an eye on the Castle Rd website and register your interest soon as space is most definitely limited.

Thomas Dartnell of Young Knives keeping it weird.

Queue as of 8am on Record Store Day.

Pie & Vinyl saw more than 800 people through their door on Record Store Day with a handful of dedicated fans going as far as camping out from 5pm the previous evening to secure a spot at the front of the line. Free tea and coffee was kindly on hand for the first 100 attendees, although this number had been already far exceeded by the time we joined the queue at 7:30am. The hour and a half we spent in line passed quickly, albeit slightly chilly, helped along by the constant friendly conversations invariably started with, “So what are you hoping to get?”. Over 200 carefully curated records awaited the throngs of music lovers ranging from brand new releases to re-pressings of classic albums, many being limited Record Store Day editions. Pies weren’t saved from the celebrations either with pastry-based homages to Sub Pop and Pias served up with merch from their respective labels. Congratulations to the team at Pie & Vinyl for such a successful RSD event and thank you to everyone who turned out for supporting your local record store!