This Saturday, Record Raid, New Orleans’ local record fair, is returning to Siberia and the Hi-Ho Lounge and expanding across the street to the All-Ways Lounge.
Siberia during the last Record Raid. Photo by Laura Brunies.
“It’s essentially just a big music flea market,” says organizer Hunter King about the Record Raid. “It’s full of music media: vinyl, CDs, 45s, and cassettes. We’ve got a bunch of vendors from New Orleans and all across the gulf coast.”
The fair happens three times a year, summer, spring and fall, and this time around it’s slated to have the most vendors yet (disclaimer: OffBeat online editor Ben Berman is a vendor). “It’s worth mentioning that a lot of my usual big vendors couldn’t make it because of scheduling issues,” says King. “I usually have Domino Sound Record Shack, Euclid Records, and Skully’z Recordz. I’ve had Jim Russell Records a couple times too. This time, Skully’z is the only one who can make it, but it’s still my biggest vendor list so far. There are a whole lot of new vendors who I’m really looking forward to.”
Aside from browsing musical goods, King has highlights planned for patrons at each venue. “Siberia will have DJs—we tried that for the first time in July and it worked out well. Hi-Ho will have several listening stations set up, and All-Ways will have a swap table where people can bring in a box of records to swap and not have to pay a vendor fee. And of course there will be food too, available from the bars themselves.” The DJs will be playing a variety of music, all on vinyl of course, from punk and garage to soul and disco.
This isn’t just your everyday record fair, either. King runs the Record Raid as a non-profit and sometimes as a community fund-raiser. “The idea is to expose people to mountains of music and allow people to communicate with each other and come together through their music. I don’t think that there are too many places or festivals that celebrate recorded music, and so the fair, in that way, reveals to people new knowledge and New Orleans history. It’s a very local thing to me.”
The Record Raid starts at noon Saturday, November 12 and goes until 6:30 p.m. Entry is free. There is still space for more vendors. For more information on selling, email Hunter King at [email protected].
