Our second year at Kutsher’s was rainier than the first, but that didn’t matter so much to us or, seemingly, the other attendees: If anything, this year felt more celebratory (and debauched) than 2008. You wouldn’t be faulted for noting a certain hippie vibe. Visually, there were the tie-dyed shirts and hoodies (purchased at the amazing lost-in-time gift shop along with cat-shaped thermometers) sported by Sufjan and his band, Animal Collective, and soon enough sprinkled throughout the audiences. Or …. the perpetually smiling guy with the white bag who tried to sell us “special brownies” half a dozen times. Or the crusty, barefoot couple dancing like mad (and like hippies) during Animal Collective. Or folks making out on couches, doing weird things in the swimming pool, etc. Or the ad hoc dance floor that broke out in the lobby on Saturday night (while tellingly, downtown NYC icon Alan Vega, no hippie for sure, played pool by himself twenty feet away). Maybe part of the vibe was built-in by this year’s co-curators the Flaming Lips. Wayne Coyne, in fact, may very well be the most positive vibing frontman you’ll see all year: When the Lips closed the fest with “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” it felt not only fitting, but you almost sort of believed the sentiments for one non-cynical moment.

It took a weekend to get to that point.

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When’s the last time you want to an actual record store? Like where you have to walk through a door and can’t just click “download”? Yes, we live inside a blog, but record stores are pretty great. Brandon worked at one (Cheap Thrills Records, New Brunswick, NJ) for a handful of years before the place went under. It’s where he cut his teeth, put on fun in-stores, and talked to people face-to-face while trying to explain why they might like the new Pavement and/or Harry Pussy album (all depending). We don’t want to get too nostalgic, but it’s those sorts of stores (the overstuffed, carefully curated independents) where so much essential music learning takes place. If you haven’t ever been in a record store, go watch High Fidelity on your laptop, but take it down a few notches.

Nowadays, a lot of record stores are going under. People don’t like to leave their houses anymore. This weekend, though, leave your house to celebrate the first ever Record Store Day. (Mark it on your calendar for next year, too: 4/19, the day before 4/20.) Record Store Day’s the idea of a number of independent store owners, who hoped to remind us about the fact that because most folks download their sounds today, record stores as we know ‘em are fast going the way of Beta and major record labels. If the livelihood of these people doesn’t tug at your heart strings, how are you supposed to have a crush on the cute girl (or boy) working behind the counter when there are no counters to work behind? Maybe more importantly: What happens to the rad folks who know a lot of shit about, say, reggae? Via NY Times:

Some retailers are hoping that the effort is not too late. Jammyland and the Downtown Music Gallery, two East Village institutions — Jammyland, on Third Street, specializes in rare reggae, and Downtown, on the Bowery, in avant-garde jazz and new music — are facing untenable rent increases and are looking for new homes.

Jammyland is “the model of what a great record store can be,” said Vivien Goldman, the author of “The Book of Exodus: The Making and Meaning of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Album of the Century” and other books. “D.J.’s congregate there from all over and exchange ideas. It’s a crucible of music knowledge.”

For a local music shopper with a memory of even just a few years, the East Village and the Lower East Side are quickly becoming a record-store graveyard. Across from Jammyland is the former home of Dance Tracks, a premier dance and electronic outlet, which closed late last year, as did Finyl Vinyl, on Sixth Street. Stooz on Seventh Street, Sonic Groove on Avenue B, Accidental on Avenue A, Wowsville on Second Avenue and Bate, an essential Latin store on Delancey Street — all gone, to say nothing of stores in other neighborhoods, like Midnight Records in Chelsea and NYCD on the Upper West Side.

“Rent is up, and sales are down,” Malcolm Allen of Jammyland said as he sold a few Jamaican-made 45s to a customer last weekend. “Not a good combination.”

Jammyland is great. What the Times doesn’t mention is that Dominck Fernow, aka Prurient, runs an awesome metal and noise store, Hospital Productions, from Jammyland’s basement. So, if Jammyland goes, we lose two great record stores in one lame swoop. Which is immensely depressing. So, in the hopes of supporting record stores of various shapes and sizes, we’ve put together some info of various happenings tomorrow. Get set and go…

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Wandering the woods with Dead Meadow can get trippy. The video for “What Needs Must Be,” from the Lovecraft-loving Los Angeles-via-D.C. trio’s fifth album Old Growth, was shot at a “haunted hunting lodge” and includes all sortsa greenery, a creepy warlock, amniotic water blurs, some forever-chased girl in a white dress, and a masque lunch, culminating in a dusky costume-ball live show.

The song, put to tape in rural Indiana, is a pleasing enough psychedelic stoner jam — the kind we’ve come to expect from the boys (the album has some lute on it, kids). As far as the video? Immortal did it better.

Old Growth is out 2/5 on Matador.