Some prime cuts from the Butcher’s table to tempt you – Kevin Buckle

Kevin Buckle’s plans for Record Store Day were scuppered by the lockdown, but artist’s T-shirts and prints are popular no matter what

News this week that the revised date of 20 June for Record Store Day that was originally planned for April had itself been revised to new dates and a new format came as no great surprise but only confirmed the uncertainty of making any plans for the near future.

Record Store Day will now be spread over three different days that will fall at the end of August, September and October. This was not the preferred choice of UK shops who leaned more towards one August date but Record Store Day is a worldwide celebration and the Americans who lead the way preferred the format that was chosen. The limited releases will be spread over the three days and online sales will be allowed almost immediately.

There was never going to be a good solution and the decision, while favouring the larger shops with a big online presence, will at least give all the shops something to work with.

None of the things associated with Record Store Day will be able to go ahead from the queues to the packed in-store gigs but once the releases are announced for each month at the beginning of June shops will be able to think about how they promote the days.

Of course it is not certain shops will even be open by the first date but currently a best guess will be that they will be open but with some obvious restrictions.

Avalanche meanwhile had lots of plans to run in tandem with Record Store Day and they will still go ahead. Selling music online these days is a very crowded marketplace as you would imagine so we are incredibly lucky to have been given permission by the Brazilian graphic designer and artist Butcher Billy to produce a limited run of prints for many of his most popular images as well as a range of cards.

Billy’s images combine musicians with superheroes and the first batch of prints include five from Robert Smith of The Cure as well as five more from David Bowie. Other artists include Thom Yorke of Radiohead, Freddie Mercury, Siouxsie, Lou Reed. Johnny Cash and Ian Curtis of Joy Division as Batman.

We have already been very successful with the BB t-shirts and bags as well as selling some of his prints that we imported from the States, most of which have now sold out. It will be a massive cash boost to have these limited Giclée art prints for sale and other artists, illustrators, cartoonists and photographers have offered us their work too.

I had the pleasure of meeting Butcher Billy when he was flown over to Scotland by a client so expect to see more of his work here in the future.

I came across Billy on Twitter and last week’s column on accounts folk should look out for proved very popular. There wasn’t space to mention everybody and there are a few more to add this week. Ian Rankin @Beathhigh of course is famous not only for his books but also his interest in music. Lost Edinburgh @lostedinburgh is the go to account for old pictures of Edinburgh along with interesting related facts and for a wider selection of pictures covering Scotland and sometimes further afield as well as an interesting thread on album covers @YourWullie comes highly recommended.

You can find Butcher Billy prints and T-shirts at the shop’s website, www.avalancherecords.co.uk