Chris Dargis and Laura Monzo are among the well known locals (and mysterious guests) appearing at Jack’s Music Shoppe during Record Store Day this Saturday.

By TOM CHESEK

April 17 is National Record Store Day — a name that, contrary to what you might have heard, is not designed to remind you of some charitable cause, nor to serve as a solemn remembrance of such fallen giants as Tower and Virgin.

Rather, it’s a joyous occasion — one in which hundreds of indie businesses from coast to coast work to celebrate “the culture, and the unique place that they occupy in their local communities.”

In this particular community, that cultural touchstone is of course Jack’s Music Shoppe — and that unique place is the store’s savvy straddling of Broad Street and the English Plaza municipal parking lot.

But before you blow in one end and out the other like a bag of WOW Chips on a prune-juice chaser, consider that with such attractions as a sought-after instrument room, a choice video department, a locally unique sheet music loft and a renewed commitment to polyvinyl platters, Jack Anderson’s duplex diskerie has continued to hold a kingly hand — even as most other indies have folded ‘em, walked away, or even run.

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