REVOLVER:There is a generation out there who have never come into close physical proximity with a piece of music. They've heard of compact discs, but they've never actually held one in their hand. Present them with a vinyl album and they look at you with a mixture of pity and bemusement.

The generation raised on MP3s have a similar “but that’s for old people” reaction to record shops. To them they’re an unwelcome throwback to a civilised age. They have thousands of songs on their mobile phones and thousands more on their “cloud” computer storage system. So the very idea of going into a shop and then (get this) paying for the music they want is regarded as some weird perversion of the natural order.

They are, of course, absolutely right in their mocking contempt of the old ways. The last thing they want to spend some of their attention-deficit time on is hearing about ye olde indie record shop, where you had to use your hands to flick through the laughably small amount of produce and where people would study the pictures on the covers of the albums and even open them up to read what had been written on the sleeve notes. Like, so boring.

Journalists of a certain age can get unnecessarily misty-eyed when talking about the “community” and “camaraderie” of ye olde record shop. A lot of it is nonsense. Some of the people who worked in them didn’t help: riddled with an indier-than-thou snobbery and disdainful of anything that threatened to be commercially successful, these people were pain-in-the-hole martyrs to their lost cause.

But there’s always a but. You’d occasionally happen upon the likes of a Freebird in Dublin or a Minus Zero in London – places where you’d be equally informed and entertained. And they wouldn’t have that dreadful Amazon online shop habit: “If you like this, you’ll probably like these.”

Tomorrow we are being asked to come together to celebrate Record Store Day. All around the world people are politely requested to make a trip to their local indie outlet and reacquaint themselves with the musty delights of a bricks- and-mortar shop that sells music.

If only for the same reason that a previous generation was dragged around museums and galleries, it would be a good thing for “The Young People” to get up close and personal with a part of our culture’s recent history.

They could hold a vinyl copy of The Stones' Sticky Fingersand be gently informed about how the concept of cover art actually used to mean something – and isn't just a PDF file to be downloaded. Perhaps it could be explained to them that the first pressing of the album actually came with a real zip on it, and that the crotch in the photo doesn't belong to Mick Jagger (as was commonly believed), but to Andy Warhol acolyte Joe Dallesandro. It could then be explained to them that the same Dallesandro showed up on the cover of The Smiths' first album.

A brief talk on the importance of sleeve notes back in the day could be illustrated with examples from some Bob Dylan albums, and it could be shown how artists used to write the lyrics to their songs as part of the package – sometimes delivering rambling, drug-addled essays on nothing in particular, but always with an oblique reference to a French symbolist poet, just to cover their artistic base.

They should be shown the vinyl cover of Patti Smith's Horsesand told how remarkable it still is and then led through a selection of 4AD albums that, rightly, should be accompanied by Dead Can Dance music.

And, who knows, if you connect people with the physicality of music, show them the time, energy and love that goes into everything surrounding an album of music (artwork, design, explanatory essay, photographs etc), then just maybe they might realise that’s there more to music than an Mp3 file.

Music has become devalued because there’s just so much of it readily available and little to differentiate it. But if you take a trip to your local independent record shop tomorrow, you’ll see how and why music still matters.

All you need to know (with all Irish participating record shops) at recordstoreday.com. See also Music News, page 2