Black Friday 2016: 20 Must-Have Classic Rock Records
It's almost Thanksgiving, which means it's almost Black Friday ... which means it's time to spend your morning fighting the crowds at your local independent record store trying to track down this year's exclusive Record Store Day releases.
Luckily, there's a lot of great new records to make the trip worth your time -- including brand new songs by the Rolling Stones and Foreigner, a live reunion from the original Alice Cooper band, the vinyl debut of a classic Iron Maiden album and new or long out-of-print collections by members of the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers Band and many more.
The Monkees, who already thrilled fans this year with their "way better than anybody could have possibly expected" reunion album Good Times!, are back with four more songs from those same sessions. Billy Idol, Extreme, Dickey Betts, the Stooges and Alice in Chains are all offering new or new-to-vinyl live albums and fans of Motley Crue and the Cars both have some fancy-looking new 7" singles to hunt down.
Record Store Day, which takes place every April, was conceived in 2007 at a gathering of independent record store owners and employees as a way to celebrate and spread the word about the unique culture surrounding nearly 1,400 independently owned record stores in the US. In November 2010, the first Record Store Day Black Friday was held. According to the organization's official website, there are now Record Store Day participating stores on every continent except Antarctica.