Record Day in the Square

“Newbury Comics was the store, I think, for me, that was almost like a rite of passage when I was younger, you know, and first able to come down to the city on my own and go exploring.” Alternating between giddy dancing fits and hugs or autographs with fans, Brian Viglione was the vision of a populist indie icon. Viglione is one half of the Boston burlesque-rock duo, The Dresden Dolls—and with cabaret stockings and hints of stage makeup, he looks the part. He and Dolls lead singer Amanda M. Palmer were the main attraction during the festivities at Harvard Square’s Newbury Comics—a place Viglione described as “The Mecca of all things cool”—for the first annual Record Store Day last Saturday.

Organized by an alliance of music stores, including greater Boston area chain Newbury Comics, Record Store Day was celebrated nationwide with in-store appearances from independent music artists as well as special vinyl-only releases from artists like R.E.M., Death Cab For Cutie, Built To Spill, and Stephen Malkmus. It was a day of tribute to the local establishments that have become symbolic in the American underground’s lexicon for their defiance of the cultural status quo. For stores like Newbury Comics, where independence has come first for so long, this collaboration is an ominous indication of their endangered state.

Viglione waxed nostalgic about his musical awakening at Newbury Comics, saying, “All the punk records that I bought when I was in my teen years all came from here or stores like this, so it’s important.”

Viglione is intimately aware of the store’s impact. “It’s a very important channel to get that side of society out, a side that doesn’t normally get a voice or a forum very much on mainstream radio or TV or anything like that. You’ve got to find places like that where you can buy it and then spread it.”

The aisles were packed with music fans of all genres. Pierced, grimy punks stood next to snarky, slack-eyed hipsters with proletariat caps and t-shirts with ironic slogans. One of these half-boasted, “I <3’d Ben Folds Before He Sucked.”

While Viglione bobbed, jester-like, amidst shoppers and fans, Palmer sat in silence behind the counter amid a crowd of quiet onlookers. A flower nestled in her red-corseted bosom, she concentrated on creating an acrylic rendering of the album cover for indie-legends Neutral Milk Hotel’s 1998 magnum opus, “In The Aeroplane Over the Sea,” to be given away to a fan in the store’s raffle.

For Palmer, the day brings the Dresden Dolls full-circle. Set to release a compilation album entitled, “No, Virginia…” on May 20, the band owes something important to this particular record store. “We have a hardcore connection with Newbury Comics, particularly since this was the first record store to carry our record. Before we signed with a record label we consigned our live record to this store, and they would buy 50 of them and sell them,” she says.

Contributing to the carnival atmosphere, two twenty-something women dressed in little more than sheets stood on footstools waiting to be painted by Newbury Comics patrons. Sarah E. Paterson and Amandacera Hannon are just two of the Dolls’ cult of street-performer fans known as The Dirty Business Brigade who follow the band on tour and provide extra vaudevillian touches to already chaotically theatrical shows.

“I first had the idea back in, oh God, 2004-ish to be living painted statues, because [Palmer] had always been a living statue and I had done that too, so we thought, how could we make it interesting?” Paterson says. The pair feel that the painting echoes the experimental sentiments of the Flower Generation; it’s the kind of quirky devotion a mainstream act couldn’t buy.

But for all the carefree energy, Record Store Day feels like a day of defiance, too. In the last decade, independent music stores have borne the brunt of illegal downloading as well as the rise in popularity of online music providers like Amazon.com and iTunes.

The drop in music sales is what catalyzed Newbury’s shift toward novelty and niche culture. This, according to Harvard Square Assistant Manager Thom J. Flanagan, is what has allowed the chain to survive. “When I started going to record stores it was, you went in and you bought records, CDs, it was all music and none of the frills and the extra stuff. Now, people that come in...they want the toys, the fun stuff, the weird pins and buttons,” he said. “Where before it used to be more just music influence and people who are into music, now everyone comes in from the 70-year-old guy looking at the weird political stuff all the way down to the five-year-old kid wanting Pokemon cards.”

Flanagan also spoke to the uncertain future of music stores in the Square and elsewhere. “In Harvard Square alone, there used to be six record stores,” he said. “Now there are three.”

For all the damage the digital deluge wreaks on the music industry, however, some audiophiles still devote themselves to traditional vinyl, and Newbury Comics’ LP aisle is even more packed than the DVD or the CD sections. Flanagan said that purists have initiated a small backlash against the search-and-rip attitude of online music purchasing. “The downside of downloading music is that it gets compressed and it doesn’t sound how it should, so people are kind of falling in love again with the analog feel, throwing up the vinyl.”

Palmer was less optimistic. “That is happening, but that’s not the majority of people,” he says. “That’s the minority.”

More than anything, she is nostalgic for the spirit of the local independent music scene in which record shops acted as tastemakers and employees acted as a conduit between fans and artists. “I think it’s really depressing that record stores are disappearing, just because I love being in them. It’s not like sitting at your computer and surfing on the net for something that someone recommended—it’s not the same as shuffling through a pile of discs and finding something you think is cool and asking the clerk,” she said.

Flanagan is equally frustrated, but feels a sense of hope. He feels that the record store has earned its right to exist in the music market, and deserves to live on: “You can’t get this online. You can only get this if you come to a record store and check it out and see what’s happening.”

—Staff writer Ryan J. Meehan can be reached at rmeehan@fas.harvard.edu.