Welcome to The Sharp Notes Podcast. I’m Evan Toth, and this episode was recorded live in front of an audience at The Sharp Notes record store inside the Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey.

My guest is author, journalist, and vinyl-world lifer Larry Jaffee, a guy whose career has basically been one long field recording of the music business, from punk chaos to pressing plant logistics. Larry wrote Record Store Day: The Most Improbable Comeback of the 21st Century, the inside story of how a scrappy idea turned into the biggest annual holiday on the record collector calendar, and why independent shops went from “endangered species” to cultural town squares again.

But Larry’s not just chronicling the vinyl revival. He’s trying to rewire it. This interview was recorded just days before he moved to Iceland to co-found Thermal Beets Records, a geothermal-powered pressing plant concept aiming at making plant-based records from sugar beets instead of traditional PVC.

So yes, we go from limited edition RSD lore to the question lurking behind every new release: what does it cost, environmentally, and otherwise, to keep this format alive and thriving?

We welcome back a familiar and always thoughtful voice in music criticism and biography, Jude Warne. With the recent paperback release of her acclaimed authorized biography America: The Band, and the arrival of her deep-dive study Lowdown: The Music of Boz Scaggs, Jude joins us at a moment when her work continues to expand its reach and sharpen its focus. We have spoken together a few times now, but the road never seems to double back. Each visit opens a new corridor into the music. She also happens to be the author of one of the most perceptive pieces written about my own record, The Show.

Warne has built a reputation for listening carefully and writing even closer, tracing the emotional and sonic contours of artists with the kind of patience that modern music coverage rarely affords. Whether she is unpacking the layered harmonies of America or the cool, shifting grooves of Boz Scaggs, her work reminds us that great music writing is not just about facts and timelines. It is about translating sound into story and helping us hear familiar records with fresh ears.

This conversation was recorded live in front of an audience at The Sharp Notes record store in the Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey. As you will hear, when thoughtful music writing meets a room full of serious listeners, the result is exactly what you hope for: curiosity, discovery, and a few moments that might send you back to your turntable.

This episode is a little different, because what you’re about to hear was recorded live, in front of an audience, right here inside The Sharp Notes record store at the Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey. You might catch the room in it: few laughs, knowing nods, and shoppers walking past our front window.

My guest is author and music journalist Alan Light. Over the years he’s written as a rock critic for Rolling Stone, served as editor-in-chief at Vibe and Spin and he’s a regular contributor to The New York Times. He’s also the author of books that take pop culture seriously without draining it of feeling, including The Holy or the Broken, his deep dive into the long, strange ascent of Leonard Cohen's, “Hallelujah.”

His newest book is Don’t Stop: a kaleidoscopic look at Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. The tome is not just the well-worn legend of who was breaking up with whom, but how that record became a kind of emotional public square, the way it keeps pulling in young listeners nearly fifty years later, and why it still shows up everywhere, from TV and comedy sketches to the streaming era and TikTok. Alan’s reporting brings in artists and fans across generations, asking a simple question that turns out to be hard to answer: what is it about Rumours that refuses let go?

In this conversation, we dig into the album’s mythology, its musical intelligence, and its afterlife.

So, here's our live chat. Maybe - next time - you'll join us.