A shitty mess of a Saturday weather-wise and a badly sprained ankle didn’t deter us from participating in Record Store Day. And as usual, we didn’t find everything we wanted but we did land a few surprises.

At the end of the day, we came home with 6 pieces of vinyl and 4 CDs, and we only paid $93 combined. Not a bad day, all said, and this was spread out over two stores that took some effort to even get to. It was raining and really windy, so naturally people were terrified of driving. The Bloomfield section of Pittsburgh, our first stop, was bumper-to-bumper the entire way through town. We had to take a back road to find a parking lot, and it was just ridiculous.

Paul’s was pretty damn busy when we got there, and they had all the exclusive stuff on the counter so it was easy to access. They still had a lot of good stuff left when we got there (an admittedly later-than-we-wanted 12:30 p.m.), but the only thing I picked up there was Esben & the Witch’s “Chorea” EP. I wanted to wait for our Eide’s stop since I had a lot of metal on my wish list, and Paul’s has a fairly limited metal selection. My wife did pretty well, as she landed a Death Cab for Cutie 7-inch (that we later found out was released in error), Dharohar Project, Laura Marling, Mumford & Sons 10-inch, The Head and the Heart album on vinyl (Pitchfork stupidly ripped that album today; must not have been Deerhunter enough for them), and Fleet Foxes “Helplessness Blues/Grown Ocean” 12-inch single. Pretty good haul for the lovely lady.

After a way-longer-than-usual drive to Eide’s in the Strip District, I sandwiched my car into a spot along Penn and went inside. Along with RSD stuff, Eide’s also was running a 39^th anniversary sale, where all new CDs were 30 percent off, and all used CDs were 40 percent off. They had way different stuff than did Paul’s, though some of the pricing wasn’t so good. The Opeth “The Throat of Winter” 7-inch single was $10! Yikes! So even though that was high on my wish list, I passed. Some other things they had were weirdly priced, though some things seemed like a major bargain. One of them, YOB’s “The Great Cessation” double-clear vinyl, was only $13.99, so I scooped that up quickly. They had some other strong vinyl such as new Earth and the awesome BXI EP. Also, I grabbed Winter’s “Into Darkness” reissue, that just came out on Southern Lord. All of this cost me a mere $23. My wife grabbed a used copy of Depeche Mode’s “Violator”, a Harry Nilsson collection, and RSD exclusive of The Decemberists “Live at Bull Moose Records.” By the way, we’re seeing the Decemberists this week. Not very metal, you say? OK, maybe not sonically, but read some of their lyrics. Plus their guitarist Chris Funk is a huge metalhead.

Once we got home, we were pretty psyched it was raining because we could sit inside and enjoy our new music. We’re dorks, but awesome dorks. If anyone reading got some cool stuff on Record Store Day, by all means, share that with us. Hopefully you didn’t get rained on in the process.