People are buying vinyl records again. It's a surprising comeback for a medium of recorded music many had written off as dead — at least commercially — and the independent record store is reaping the benefits.

"The vinyl thing has been crazy," says Mark Hillstrom of the Exclusive Company in Appleton, Wis. "And it's still rising. This Christmas was big. We came pretty close to tripling our vinyl sales for December [from December 2007]."

On April 18, the Exclusive Company celebrated National Record Store Day in grand style. Goldmine was on hand to lend a helping hand as shoppers inundated the place, buying up the limited-edition vinyl selections that went on sale that day along with other goodies.

From his perspective, Hillstrom witnessed the beginning of vinyl's resurgence about a year ago, and he cites a couple reasons for the unexpected recovery.

"Fidelity is one thing," explains Hillstrom. "People are interested in hearing a good recording. They're getting exhausted with MP3s and all that. I think to some extent it's a retro thing, too — I'm not saying it's a fad [though]."

Trendy or not, when taken together, these two explanations account for the burgeoning consumer interest in vinyl records, and the beleagured music industry has taken notice. As evidence, Hillstrom points to the exponential increase of limited-edition vinyl releases labels provided to record stores for this year's Record Store Day event. This year, labels provided 30 to 40 limited-edition vinyl releases for the day, as opposed to about five in 2008, according to Hillstrom.

"Vinyl is a big deal this year," Hillstrom said prior to Record Store Day. "And that just shows how popular vinyl is these days."

It goes without saying then that people are also buying the equipment needed to play vinyl records. Needles, cleaning kits and cartridges are selling at a higher rate as listeners try to revive their old turntables. And there are new turntables for sale, ones that come with USB cables that allow buyers to convert their LPs into digital recordings — and they aren't that expensive, with some going for around $100. It should be noted that the Exclusive Company never stopped selling equipment for playing vinyl.

And the vinyl itself has undergone improvements, with many releases now coming out on high-quality 180-gram or 200-gram vinyl. "People are picky about it," says Hillstrom. "They want it to sound good."

While sales of vinyl have been on the rise recently, it wasn't so long ago that vinyl sections in record stores were pretty small. There was, however, a segment of the music-buying public that kept vinyl sales stabilized through some pretty dark days: the indie crowd, the 20-somethings looking for the new Bright Eyes or Vampire Weekend records. And they're still buying vinyl.

"That's who's been buying it for the last 10 years, and that's what's been released," says Hillstrom, who added that Exclusive still sells a lot of indie releases.

What helps is that labels have gotten hip to the idea of including download cards with the LPs, which allow buyers to get the digital download of the album along with the wonderful album packaging and that unmistakably great tone of the record itself.

Today, as Hillstrom sees it, it's not just the indie stalwarts that are propping up vinyl sales.

"It's all over the map," says Hillstrom. "I had a guy from Chicago come in, and he bought four or five albums — Kreator, Mercyful Fate, Obituary (the metal-ist of heavy metal albums). Then we had some reissued Guns & Roses albums that people bought, and later on in the day, somebody bought Led Zeppelin's Mothership."

As is the case with the music industry, brick-and-mortar record stores have had a bit of a rough go of it in recent years, with the rise of the iPod and digital downloading. The vinyl resurgence has been a boon for them.

"It keeps bringing them in," says Hillstrom.

Just giving you a heads up again that Goldmine magazine is going to be at the Exclusive Company in Appleton, Wis., on Saturday for National Record Store Day. All sorts of sales, giveaways and in-store performances are on tap, including the very gifted Cory Chisel. We'll be there from about 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., give or take an hour either way.

Anyway, the event is growing by leaps and bounds nationally. For example, the Rhino label has announced that it is releasing limited-edition 7-inch vinyl singles from The Smiths and New Order, plus a 7-inch vinyl single and 180-gram vinyl albums of Nothing's Shocking and Ritual De Lo Habitual from Jane's Addiction. Both records are available for a suggested list price of $5.98.

The Smiths' single features "Headmaster Ritual" on Side A and "Oscillate Wildly" on Side B. Originally released on Megadisc in Holland, this single — purported to be the rarest commercially issued single ever from the band — was never available in the U.S. It comes with the original Dutch package, featuring the black & white "cowboy" sleeve. And then there's the fact that it's been mastered from the original tapes.

If that's not enough to get thee to a record store on April 18, what about some 7-inch New Order  rarities? New Order's single includes "Tempation," a live favorite having been played in concert more than any other song by New Order, on Side A and "Hurt" on Side B. This also has never been available in the U.S, and it pieces together separate recordings and features different mixes from the original 12-inch single.

And then there's this from Jane's Addiction: An exclusive 7-inch vinyl single of "Mountain Song," just for Record Store Day. With the original lineup of Jane's Addiction gearing up for its first tour in 18 years, this replica single will include reprinted artwork from the original 1987 release — the rarest non-limited edition single in Jane's Addiction's catalog. As it's B-side, it has "Standing In The Shower ... Thinking." The single will go for a suggested list price of $5.98.

The 180-gram vinyl versions of Nothing's Shocking and Ritual De Lo Habitual will be going for suggested list prices of $17.98 and $24.98, respectively.

In just a matter of days — five to be exact — Rhino will also pour out the limited-edition, deluxe-version of the Jane's Addiction collection of rarities, live recordings and demos called A Cabinet Of Curiosities. Lavishly packaged, with a whopping 30 previously unreleased tracks, this colllection should be fascinating to pick through. A slipcase version of the set, without all the fancy packaging [i.e. — a wooden curio cabinet], will be released May 5.

It's safe to say that Metallica would never have risen to the heights the thrash-metal kingpins have hit if it wasn't for Cliff Burton.

From the moment he was hired, the bassist brought a new level of musical sophistication to a band that was always loud and aggressive, but not as skilled as it would later become. Metallica wasn't much more than a garage band when Burton arrived. With Burton, who was hired away from the band Trauma in the early '80s, Metallica became an unstoppable force in the world of heavy metal, leaving the garage behind for good.

Author Joel McIver (visit www.joelmciver.co.uk/ for more on the writer) explores Burton's impact on Metallica in an upcoming book titled "To Live Is To Die: The Life And Death Of Metallica's Cliff Burton," to be put out by Jawbone Press. Burton played in Metallica from 1983 to 1986, when he died in a tragic tour bus accident on a mountain road in Sweden. Fueled by Burton's songwriting acumen and a playing style influenced as much by classical music as it was by punk, Metallica plowed through the early classic LPs Kill 'Em All (1983), Ride The Lightning (1985) and the seminal 1986 masterpiece Master Of Puppets.

Questions still remain about what actually happened to cause the accident that cut short Burton's life. What isn't up for debate is how important he was to Metallica's growth and its most fertile period of creativity — though the band would go on to unleash massive-selling records. Burton was a bassist who viewed the instrument as a lead instrument, not as merely rhythmic support for the pummeling riffs and soaring solos of the guitar. But he was more than that. He helped raise awareness among critics and the public of metal's sonic possibilities, and for that — and his contributions to some of the finest metal albums ever — he'll forever be adored.

McIver, who also writes for Total Guitar, Metal Hammer and other publications and is probably best known for the 2004 book "Justice For All: The Truth About Metallica," took time out to talk to Goldmine about Metallica and Burton. A portion of the interview ran in the May 8 print edition of the magazine. The rest of the interview is included below:

What did the guys say about that first show with Burton at The Stone in 1983?
Joel McIver: Obviously, they loved it and realised that they had stepped up to a new and exciting level of professionalism. Ron McGovney was a good guy and a perfectly adequate bass player, as anyone who has heard the No Life Til Leather demo will know, but Cliff had a certain swagger and dexterity that made him practically one of a kind. He forced the other guys to improve their songwriting and performance skills, just by doing what he did best.

Dave Mustaine’s departure from the band was a pretty bitter split. Can you pinpoint the moment when the rest of the band figured it was time to let him go?
JM: It was either during the band’s journey from San Francisco to New York City in April 1983 or immediately after they arrived. He’d been drinking a lot and acting like a moron, and they’d had enough. Yes, it was bitter, and perhaps a little merciless in retrospect — but they couldn’t have done as well as they have since if he’d remained with them. Metallica has had a turbulent history with two dominant personalities in the band; can you imagine what it would have been like with three?

Talk about how the band developed from Kill ‘Em All through Ride The Lightning. How did the band see the difference between the two?
JM: Like night and day. Kill is raw, poorly-produced and lyrically juvenile; Ride is professional, musicianly and thematically serious (if not quite what we’d call "mature"). The differences between the two albums are a mirror to the evolution of the band. James [Hetfield], Dave [Mustaine] and Lars [Ulrich] wrote the songs for Kill when they were between 17 and 19 — still kids, in effect. The couple of years which passed before the Ride sessions were crucial ones, as they are for all of us. By the time Ride was recorded, they were all much more advanced musicians and much more serious about their careers.

What do some of the members remember about being signed to Elektra?
JM: My impression is that Metallica’s relationship with Elektra has been insignificant compared to the relationship which they have with their managers at Q-Prime. Ask Lars about Elektra now and he’ll tell you how the band sued the company in 1994 for ownership of their master recordings — a move which no major recording act has made before or since.

Master of Puppets was such a monumental album for Metallica. Was the feeling among the guys that this was going to be the one that broke them?
JM: I don’t think so. They’ve been quite clear in interviews ever since that they simply made the best album they could at the time, not knowing that it would be regarded as a genre classic in later years. I think they appreciated the bigger recording budget which Elektra gave them and had a more focused sense of songwriting and better musicianship, but (quite understandably) they didn’t know how enduring the results would be.

It’s been over 20 years since Cliff Burton died. Do you get the sense that it still haunts James, Kirk and Lars?
JM: It haunts Kirk to an extent, because he was Cliff’s closest friend in the band (as he explains in his foreword to my book). I think the three of them have spent many years processing their loss, though, and I think they still feel a sense of sadness but are able to look back at the good times, too.

How close were they to ending Metallica after his death?
JM: Not really that close — it was obvious, and correct, for them to assume that Cliff wouldn’t have wanted them to quit after all the work they’d put into the band. They were much closer to splitting up in 2002, as documented in "Some Kind Of Monster."

In what way was Metallica a different band after Burton died?
JM: This is one of the central themes of my book. What most people fail to realise is that Metallica was not solely Lars’ and James’ band in the early days. Because Cliff was so musically literate and a strong personality in the band, they assigned a degree of power to him, perhaps involuntarily. Important decisions weren’t taken without his say-so, and not just musical ones — matters of Metallica’s career strategy, too. When he died, Lars and James took over the running of the band, aided by the fact that they were the primary songwriters. This is not meant as a slight to the other musicians, but the degree of influence that Kirk has had over the band has always been lesser than that of Cliff, James and Lars — and in the case of Jason [Newstead] and Robert [Trujillo], lesser still.

What kind of guy was Cliff and how did he relate to the other guys? He seems like he was so beloved by the rest of the band.
JM: I interviewed dozens of people who were close to the band for this book, and the consensus is that they loved him like a brother – which is to say they had ups and downs, like any family which goes through difficult times. They respected him for his musicianship and also for his refusal to do anything that he didn’t want to do (which, if you really think about it, is a rare quality), and occasionally argued with him when he overplayed his bass parts. They understood that he was a great, great musician and composer and gave him the space he needed to express himself.