“Chance visits to record stores have changed the trajectory of my. An episodic tour of Rosenthal’s stacks-how he came to own this music and why he likes it-the book is one every collector (however casual) would love to write, and thus it engenders competing emotions of envy and enthusiasm, boredom and validation, sometimes disbelief. The Oxford American has a well-established curiosity about these sorts of folks, and so it follows that we enjoyed The Record Store of the Mindby Josh Rosenthal, the founder of another exceptional independent label, Tompkins Square. Observing the Ledbetters’ archive, Williams writes: “Just looking at the neat stacks, the careful preservation, you could see the efforts of a hand trying to keep something very big under control.” Therein lies the essential challenge facing any historian, curator, or collector, and Williams’s piece offers a fascinating glimpse at the interior of this idiosyncratic breed: the obsessed. In our latest issue, Wyatt Williams writes about Lance and April Ledbetter, the husband and wife behind the incredible Atlanta record label Dust-to-Digital, and their stalled project to encapsulate the early history of Georgia music in one box set. End-of-week recommendations from the editors of the Oxford American

Beneath your beautiful guitar chords