One day, disc rot will render your CD collection useless and those MP3s will be corrupted. And we all know streaming services will never pay artists what they deserve. The solution? Magnetic tape—in addition to vinyl, of course. So dust off that boombox! International Cassette Store Day is upon us. Fueled in large part by millennial nostalgia, the audiocassette has enjoyed a renaissance of late, as many bands choose to release albums on the medium. Streetlight Records marks this UK-spawned holiday—now its seventh year—by offering 20 percent off all used cassettes.

Cassette Store Day
Sat, 10am, Free
Streetlight Records, San Jose

There are many rewards to being a record collector. In addition to listening to one’s records there is the joy that comes from alphabetizing the collection, geeking out on new and vintage hardware, performing minor repairs on turntables, amplifiers and speakers, and of course, talking about the virtues of vinyl. Every Tuesday, Streetlight Records invites vinyl lovers of all stripes to come to stop by, discuss their favorite albums and play their own music over the store’s speakers. Light snacks and refreshments are provided and all participants get a spin.

Vinyl Meetup
Tue, 7pm, Free
Streetlight Records, San Jose

There are a number of compelling threads to follow in the narrative arc of local singer and songwriter Tess Dunn. There’s her age (she’s just turned 23), the amount of music she’s made (four EPs and counting), and her tenacity (she’s done all this while battling cystic fibrosis). But all that misses the most critical point: She makes great music, and she’s only getting better. On her latest collection of tunes, which she recorded as T3TRA, Dunn takes a sharp left turn from her punky past, dialing down the guitars and live drums and replacing them with moody synths and computerized beats.

Tess Dunn
Sat, 4pm, Free
Streetlight Records, San Jose

Whether you’re looking for a rare pressing by a favorite artist or just hoping to thumb through crates alongside like-minded vinyl lovers, Streetlight Records’ annual Record Swap is the place to be this weekend. Spilling out of the record store and into the parking lot, there is sure to be a healthy selection of rock, jazz, punk, classical, hip-hop and more. The store itself is throwing down by pulling records out of storage and more than a dozen private vendors will also be swapping and selling from their own collections.

Record Swap
Sat, 10am, Free
Streetlight Records, San Jose

It’s been almost 60 years since the lovely weirdos at KFJC began broadcasting from Foothill College. What began in 1959 as a two-hour broadcast, four days a week, has since grown into one of the best college radio stations in the country. With their live session series, an encyclopedic library and some of the most knowledgeable DJs around, KFJC is a cultural jewel perched high in the Los Altos Hills. As part of their annual Penny Pitch, KFJC DJs will be broadcasting live from Streetlight Records, spinning vinyl and collecting your spare change. A little goes a long way. Here’s to another 60 years.

KFJC Penny Pitch
Sat, 1pm, Free
Streetlight Records, San Jose

It sounds incongruous at first, to check out a prog-rock legend at 10 in the morning. That’s the hour of the day when, we’ve come to believe, that most rock stars are just crawling into bed for a few hours of half-sleep before soundcheck.

But for Billy Sherwood’s appearance in San Jose next week, that hour makes sense. Because this is less of a performance and more like school.

Sherwood—who plays bass in the legendary progressive rock band Yes, and is a respected audio engineer and producer—will come to Streetlight Records in San Jose on Wednesday morning June 20 to share a bit about what’s he learned from decades in the music business.

For Yes superfans, the appeal is obvious enough. But for any musician serious about getting better, Sherwood is ready to offer up his brain to be picked.

“The idea is that I’m going to discuss engineering, producing, the music business, what do you do with your songs when you have them finished, how to get things going in your career, all of that,” said Sherwood, 53, by phone from a bus on which he is touring with Yes. “I’ll have my basses and guitars there, and if there is anyone looking for tips or techniques, we’ll do that, too. I’ll just let it flow where it goes, depending on who’s there.

Sherwood first joined Yes back in 1997 after striking up a fruitful partnership with original Yes bass player Chris Squire. Back then, Sherwood played guitars and keyboards. He left the band in 2000 but was asked back in 2015 to replace Squire, who had fallen ill. Before he died later that year, Squire gave Sherwood his blessing to be his permanent replacement. Two years later, Sherwood took on a similar role with Asia, another prog-rock supergroup.

Outside of Yes, Sherwood has recorded a number of solo albums and has worked as a session player and producer for a countless list of projects with, among many others, Quiet Riot, Ratt, Toto, Air Supply and (you can look it up) Star Trek parody-of-himself William Shatner. Sherwood was producer of Shatner’s 2013 album Ponder the Mystery.

Sharing his experience in a clinic setting is a new venture for Sherwood. “I was offered to do a clinic in Italy,” he said, “but I was touring with Yes at the time. But then I thought, maybe I could do it in the States, at the cities that are on the tour. We started asking various venues like record stores and music stores if they’d host. We have nine of them booked so far.” Yes is slated to perform the evening of June 20 at the City National Civic in San Jose.

“It’s not something we had thought about before,” said Streetlight’s store manager Paige Brodsky, who has hosted live musical performances at Streetlight in both San Jose and Santa Cruz. “But this opportunity fell into our laps and it sounded so interesting, we wanted to find a way to make it work. So we’ll call it an experiment.” The Billy Sherwood clinic is Streetlight’s first ticketed event. The fee for the two-hour session is $100. “If it’s successful, we could certainly see doing it again,” said Brodsky.

“Part of the thing about my career,” said Sherwood, “is that I’ve always taken bold steps into new areas that I’ve never been involved in before. This clinic itself is a metaphor for that. You just have to go for it.”

Sherwood was just a toddler when Yes first came together in Britain in 1968. “I was way into Yes from when I was about 12 years old,” he remembered. He first met Squire in the late 1980s and began writing music with him. “The relationship evolved with all the Yes guys after that. Yes has been a centerpiece for all the other things I’ve done in my career.”

Sherwood grew up in a family of entertainers. His father, Bobby Sherwood, was a well-known bandleader and actor; he actually has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His mother was also a singer.

“I don’t want to talk too much about it,” he said, “but I want to explain a bit about my heritage and what I’ve learned from my own experience and my parents’: You have to follow your road, but you can’t just haphazardly go for it. You have to have a target, have a plan.”

Billy Sherwood of Yes
Jun 20, 10am, $100
Streetlight Records, San Jose

How advanced is your vinyl fetish? Whether you just occasionally slide a 7-inch onto a turntable or compulsively finger through crates, Streetlight Records is whipping up something special for music lovers to satisfy their wildest wax desires. The shop’s parking lot will be tied up with a vinyl bazaar for the San Jose Record Swap, where Streetlight and guest vendors will unveil arousing releases and rarities from across the musical spectrum. Admission is free, but bring a wad of bills or some spare 45s to swap if you’re looking to beef up your own collection.

SJ Record Swap
Sat, 10am, Free
Streetlight Records, San Jose

Joaquin Pastor is happy to report that he is able to stomach movies these days. It wasn’t always so easy for the singer, guitarist and lead songwriter for SoCal avant-pop trio James Supercave.

“When you spend a lot of time thinking about something from a critical point of view, you just sort of end up ruining the innocent enjoyment one can have when watching something without that critical framework or backstory or anything,” Pastor says, explaining that, for him, studying to be an actor at UCLA completely ruined the moviegoing experience for a time.

“If there is a dirty word in this band, It’s ‘actor,’” Pastor says with a laugh.

Thankfully, the days of overanalyzing French New Wave films and German Expressionist cinema are behind him. These days he can just sit back and enjoy a romcom or mindless action flick like the rest of us. Then again, unlike most of us, it’s unlikely that Pastor has forgotten all his schooling. It’s likely that a certain base coat of acting and filmmaking fundamentals inform his viewing experience.

It’s an apt metaphor for his band. While the sweetly psychedelic hooks and melodies of James Supercave’s latest album, Better Strange, most certainly have a fun-loving, groovy feel, there is something undeniably studied about the music.

And that makes sense. After all, Pastor, who grew up in Santa Cruz, and band co-founder Patrick Logothetti (keys and synthesizers), who grew up in San Jose, met each other in the UCLA theater department. While studying there, they learned a thing or two about what makes a compelling performance—information that Pastor admits must have some sort of impact on the music of James Supercave, a band with a name that sounds like something an superhuman speleologist might call himself.

“When you’re on stage, in front of people, obviously, the audience is faced in one direction, and that’s a new space,” he says. “That’s not normal life. There’s a character to engage in; there is a presence to take on. My favorite moments in acting are the moments where you lose sight of yourself because you are so absorbed in the moments that are going on.”

Also, while James Supercave is the name of this current project, Pastor, Logothetti and guitarist Andres Viallalobos have been playing together under a variety of monikers for about five years.

“We’re all songwriters,” Pastor says, attempting to deflect all the credit for the excellent Better Strange. Though he will allow that a majority of the record is his writing, he insists that every member of the band brings riffs and concepts to the table and that each potential peice gets considered. “There is kind of an ethos of ‘May the best part win,’” he says.

And that, in essence, is pop songwriting in a nutshell: collect a set of melodies, hooks and beats, sort the wheat from the chaff and then combine the remaining parts in a compelling way. It seems simple enough, and yet it’s not. The pop world’s top stars have an army of producers working at their back, sweating over each minute detail as they scientifically engineer chord progressions and vocal lines, which are often run by focus groups in an effort to determine their potential as the next big summer hit.

If anything makes James Supercave worth a listen, it’s that they manage to concoct those powerful earworms that everyone in the corporate music biz is chasing. And if anything makes James Supercave deserving of respect, it’s that they do this as a trio, on their own terms.

For Pastor, pop isn’t like acting. “Pop is not a dirty word in this band,” he says. “Not in the least.” And yet, he adds, “We’re not trying to do anything too bubblegummy, either. Our personal relationship with pop is we like stuff that makes us dance and feel good.”

James Supercave plays on Feb 25, 6pm, Free at Streetlight Records, San Jose.

At 20 years old, Tess Dunn has already got three alt-rock albums under her belt, is taking a full class load, and continues to fight a lifelong battle with cystic fibrosis (CF), diabetes, and epilepsy. She’s so damn admirable that I found myself hoping she had some deep, dark secret to unearth.

No dice. Calling me from the parking lot of the Stanford Medical Center, Dunn quickly broke down all conventional interview barriers and showed that she is, indeed, the inspiring, no-nonsense go-getter so many past articles about her have glowingly heralded. But what isn’t often explored are the many layers of the person who has become a champion for her diseases. Guess what, she also gets lazy and doesn’t get out of her car when it’s too cold outside (hurrah!). And despite her incredibly positive attitude, of course the illnesses do weigh on her sometimes.

“Sometimes it does get tiring,” says Dunn, who recently released her latest EP and is slated to play an in-store performance at Streetlight Records in San Jose this Saturday. “It is a lot to handle, having these three illnesses, but my only options are to either sit around and wonder ‘why me?’ and throw pity-parties—or I can use this to empower me and push me to do great things.”

Dunn is so full of fight that it’s impossible to not get swept up in her energy. It takes tenacity to take a small boat-load of pills at every meal, wear a respiratory therapy vest for a few hours a day, breathe in three nebulizers, and then add some other fun IVs and hospital visits every so often—all before driving over Hwy. 17 from San Jose to band practice and heading back the same night to make it to class at Ex’Pression College.

“Go-getter” is a good description for Dunn, but she has enough sarcasm and mirth to jab back at anyone who mistakes her for the giddy cheerleader type.

This past June, Dunn released her third album, the Daydreamers EP. She began writing songs at age 1, has played at six Vans Warped Tour shows, recorded with award-winning artists and producers, and performed all over California. Making music for almost half her life, Dunn says her song-writing and artistry has developed greatly in a short time.

“I look back through the albums, and my perspective on things has changed so much. I feel like I’ve grown up a bit,” she says. “I’m really proud of where I am, and Daydreamers is a perfect representation of that.”

Tess Dunn will play three Saturdays at Streetlight Records in San Jose: Jan. 31, Feb. 7 and Feb. 21. More info.

He’s been playing music for 25 years, recorded three full-length records at the world-famous Sun Studios in Memphis, and he has more than 130,000 views on YouTube. Still, David Brookings is far from a household name. But he’s cool with that.

“I’m not famous, but that doesn’t mean people haven’t bought the albums, and it doesn’t mean people don’t go, ‘Hey man, that’s a great song,’” Brookings says. “I don’t think anybody should be doing this to be famous, and I’m certainly not.”

Brookings, who will play a semi-unplugged set with his pop-rock band The Average Lookings at Streetlight Records in San Jose this Saturday, says he didn’t set out to be a superstar. Growing up in Richmond, Va., he began writing songs when he was 10 years old. Back then, he says, he never thought about whether his music would make him a star: “I always said I would do this whether I was famous or not.”

He moved to Memphis in his 20s to pursue music and ultimately landed a job working as a tour guide at Sun Studios. Brookings was allowed to record there after hours and he cut three of his six albums in the same room where Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley recorded some of the greatest pop music of the 20th century. He moved to the South Bay in 2009.

For the 35-year-old San Jose transplant, music is a passion. He made that quite clear with the series of YouTube postings he made from July of 2010 to February of 2011, in which Brookings posted cover versions of all 209 Beatles songs in 209 consecutive days.

He says he did it in part to draw people to his original material. But Brookings is also a huge Beatles fan and watching him perform the entirety of the Fab Four’s catalog it is plain that he just enjoys singing a good pop song.

In fact, perhaps the only thing he enjoys more than playing a catchy tune is writing one. It’s fitting then that Brookings would be so proud of his latest release, 2013’s The Maze. Comprising 11 compact and jangling gems, The Maze, is a veritable clinic in pop songwriting.

Shimmering guitars crisscross over a bouncing bass line and straight-to-the-point drumming on album opener “If I Don’t Make It Back,” a Strokes-ish number about the ever-present specter of mortality that looms over day-to-day life. At first blush, this sounds like a dark topic, but in reality it’s a meditation on the triumph of life. “If I don’t make it back/it’s gonna be all right,” Brookings sings along with a sweet vocal harmony. “It’s gonna take some time/but you’ll make it through the night.”

David Brookings and The Average Lookings will play an in-store performance at Streetlight Records in San Jose on Dec 13 at 2pm. More info.