From Comic Book to custom vinyl records: Newbury Comics!

When we talk about vinyl records, we can’t NOT talk about Newbury Comics!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Newbury Comics, you might, you might go “WAIT WHUT?!” because there’s nothing VINYL about Newbury Comics at all.

Newbury Comics was originally a comic store that only sells…well, comics. Their first store opened in Boston, New England’s largest city in 1978. The founders, John Brusger and Mike Dreese, both MIT students, started selling Brusger’s preloved comic book collections on Batman, Superman and Spider-Man and later expanded to many other comics with different styles and origins– from American comic books, graphic novels, manga…you name any comic title, they probably have it.

But what really elevated their success aren’t the comic books, it’s music! They should probably rename the store to Newbury Music but I guess they don’t need to.

Somewhere in the early 1980’s, the comic store shifted into selling CDs and vinyl records. This was all thanks to a box of records Dreese brought back from England and Boston’s booming local music scene. He just put it in their store and BAM, they’re gone. The albums sold fast.

At the time of Newbury Comics’ booming sales, Dreese spearheaded the release of a tabloid magazine called the “Boston Rock”, where it covers fashion, style, and entertainment. The magazine helped boost the popularity of already existing local bands like The Neighborhood and Mission of Burma and helped set the stage for experimental bands like The Clash and U2.

After such a rapid success, the list of Newbury Comics physical stores rapidly increased too, which were mainly built in New England’s five states. They have also made it to the list of Inc. Magazine’s 500 fastest-growing companies in the country. As of now, the company sells and ships music and pop culture goods through thirty physical stores in total, twenty eight in New England: twenty in Massachusetts, four in New Hampshire, two in Rhode Island, one in Maine and one in Connecticut. The other two stores are situated inside malls of New York counties, Nassau and Westchester counties.

Here are some of the prettiest vinyl records that Newbury Comics are selling:

Explosive Splattered Vinyl Records

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s fifteenth studio album, “Infest the Rat’s Nest”. It’s quite a cool but also gory kind of a splatter vinyl record, huh. The vinyl somehow depicts a volcano explosion in action. The orange color at the center looks like lava spreading and the black splatters look like rocks and ashes shooting out before the overflow of lava eats the whole vinyl record. The vinyl record’s design is already a very on point message from the band as the album’s theme talks about the destruction of the environment and things related to it.

Half Clear / Half Opaque Colored Vinyl Records with Splatter

The vinyl record on top of the record player is a hybrid between clear vinyl and solid colored vinyl with a splatter on the center. It’s somewhat unique since what we see from past vinyl record pressing releases are the usual clear vinyl with splatters, opaque colored vinyl records with splatters, and halves of one side of the vinyl with different colors. We’ve never seen something like this before and it’s quite an ensemble, don’t you think?

The Internet has also made it easier for the store to sell vinyl records to anyone all over the world. Logistics and production isn’t such a problem anymore since there are now lots of US manufacturers of custom vinyl records that offer to do vinyl pressing with no minimum order. The vinyl records being released by musicians nowadays are too pretty; you’d want to collect them all.

The example above is Julien Baker’s exclusive vinyl album, “Sprained Ankle”, released in 2015. The vinyl record packaging consists of vinyl inserts, a printed vinyl packaging sleeve, and one vinyl record that has two vinyl record designs you can choose from. One is called “Sky” with the usual splatter and the other called “Horizon” which has the hybrid one.

Flower-designed Vinyl Record

Instead of buying vinyl records pressed with flower petals, why not buy something like this? It’s a rare design when you think of all the releases of vinyl record pressings with real flowers. In addition, it may even be cheaper than those. Flowers may not be what Turnover members are aiming for but art is subjective so there’s no harm buying this exclusive vinyl record pressing of “Magnolia”.

Velvety Vinyl Records

We all know that there are people that go by the saying “simplicity is beauty” and I bet those people would love these velvety looking vinyl records sold at Newbury Comics. If you’re wondering, the sample album is an exclusive one of “U.F.O.F.” by Big Thief.

If you happen to be living somewhere close or near Newbury Comics stores and haven’t really tried going there, then do try. It will surely be a roller coaster ride of pop culture complete with accommodating and energy-filled staff in merchandise shirts and background music from vinyl record albums of, maybe, your beloved anime’s OST or all-time favorite artist. Newbury Comics is surely a good store to shop in for unique, never-seen-before items you can gift yourself or your vinyl-loving folks. They have it all, from anime and comics to the latest vinyl record album releases, from figurines like funko pops to event-related patches. Newbury Comics will not disappoint, I assure you.