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Hello from the front lines! I rallied to take part in Record Store Day here on November 28, 2025. I say “rallied” because I’m still recovering from a nasty cold, and I wanted to protect my fellow vinyl fanatics, er, RSD 2025 customers at the same time — hence, the mask you see me wearing in the photo above (and later on, in another one below).

I’m long past the days of venturing out crack-of-dawn early to line up before the official 8 a.m. opening time for RSD — but more power to all of y’all who do so! Mad respect for every single one of you vinyl troopers, truly. Me, I had a short RSD 2025 list in my pocket this year, as I was privileged enough to get a number of key releases in hand for review/coverage here on AP, and we’ll be getting to as many of them as we can as soon as we can.

Speaking of RSD titles in general, if you want to see all of the 170-plus RSD Exclusive and RSD First LP and 45 offerings this year, go here, scroll down to the “Web” and “PDF” options to see what they are — and also feel free to click around to see where you might still be able to obtain any of them that are still available out there at participating indie-record stores the world over.

As for me, my first RSD 2025 stop at 10:23 a.m. today was at Hi-Fi Hits, a favorite haunt of mine in Williamsville, New York, where I found three of my main RSD wants. Those were: a) Bob Dylan’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (Columbia/Legacy 19802967121; RSD Exclusive [13,000 copies]), a monaural release billed on its hype sticker “as it was originally conceived / includes four tracks that were withdrawn before the album came out”; b) Robbie Robertson’s Filmworks: Insomnia (Omnivore OVLP-613; RSD First [1,800 copies]), which features 13 tracks from the late Bandleader’s soundtrack work and includes the unreleased cut “Carnival Ride,” from 1980’s Carny; and c) Spin̈al Tap’s The End Continues (Interscope 00602478848858; RSD Exclusive [2,000 copies]), worth having if only because it comes on, quote, “181 gram ‘none more black’ vinyl” — plus, it was recorded in (of course) “Dobly,” and, on the lower-left portion of its back cover, sports “00011” as its alleged limited-edition number. Spoiler alert: All copies boast that same number — but how could they not, really? (I should further note that I previewed Dylan, Tap, and a number of other RSD 2025 highlights here on AP back on October 8, 2025.)

I also nabbed one bonus, just because — the expanded May 2025 3LP edition of Gentle Giant’s January 1977 live prog masterpiece Playing the Fool, which is now subtitled The Complete Live Experience (Alucard ALUGG089), was pressed at GZ, includes an OBI strip, and also occupies a larger, 13in-wide footprint in order to properly accommodate a triple gatefold that enables each LP to have ample removal room — whatta concept! Oh yeah, the music on all six Fool sides is well worth it too.

Since Hi-Fi Hits’ officially allotted copies of Led Zeppelin’s “Trampled Under Foot” 45 (Swan Song 603497815326, RSD Exclusive [6,100 copies]) didn’t arrive in time, they allowed us to prepay for one of them, which was an a-ok solution by me. You had to pull the scannable placeholder card from the racks in order to do so — equitable and fair, imo, since once they ran out of those, that was it.

After I got back home from a second stop at the Revolver Records locale in nearby Amherst — where I only bought some non-RSD LPs (three used, one new) since their RSD spoils were well-depleted by the time I got there at 11:14 a.m. — I went online and duly ordered a) the Bob Dylan Masters of War (Live in Alan Lomax’s Apartment) RSD 45 (Columbia/Legacy LMX1001, RSD Exclusive [3,900 copies]) and b) Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ The Live Anthology – From The Vaults Vol. 1 2LP set (Warner Records, RSD First [7,500 copies]), before their prices got too ridiculous. A few other RSD items on my handwritten short list are currently being offered anywhere from three to four times more than I’m willing to pay for them, so I’ll wait those out.

And that’s how I did it today — all in a day’s work for one who lives and breathes, masked but not anonymous, on an analog planet (lowercase in this case because, well, we all live here/there, do we not?). Hope your own RSD 2025 adventures were just as fruitful, if not more so, than mine!