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2301 West Balboa Boulevard
Newport Beach, Ca 92633
For the past 30 something years, Pier Records has been rockin' in Newport. Want vinyl? We've got it. Killer art you won't find anywhere else? We've got that too. What we don't have is you...so get your ass down here and check us out.
The Art of Survival
By NIYAZ PIRANI
The Orange County Register
There was a time when Tuesday meant something to music fans. It was, and still is, the day new albums become available – and whether you were looking for Tupac Shakur or Celine Dion, it didn't matter. The record wouldn't be available until its scheduled release.
But with the threat of both illegal and legal downloading, Tuesday is quickly becoming just another day of the week and the necessary trip to the record store is nearly obsolete.
Ten years ago, the struggle between digital and physical distribution was non-existent, but Shawn Fanning, a Northeastern University student, changed everything when he released Napster in 1999.
The popularity of illegal file sharing services – including early adopters like Napster, Kazaa and WinMX – quickly spread and the recording industry went scrambling for a solution to plummeting sales brought on by piracy.
Since, many of the illegal services have gone legit, though, most simply shut down. With the rise of iTunes, Rhapsody and a paid Napster service among others, many are finding their music online for a competitive price.
According to the Recording Industry Association of America, 367 million songs and 13.6 million albums were legally downloaded in 2005. While the RIAA claims that more music is downloaded illegally than what is purchased lawfully, data suggests that legal downloading is on the rise when compared to previous years.
It's a step in the right direction toward creating a downloadable world, but online retail is a crushing trend for the record store of the past. Soon, a place where audiophiles can talk music in a sometimes grungy-but-welcoming atmosphere may be history.
The local scene is grim. Many of The Wherehouse locations were gone long ago, and Tower Records announced in October that the chain would liquidate and close all of its locations, presumably by year's end.
Costa Mesa's Goat Hill Records, Noise, Noise, Noise and Moby Disc and The Noise in Newport Beach have all boarded up for good. Pier Records in Newport Beach, a mainstay on the Balboa Pier for the last 33 years, appears to be the sole survivor.
THE ART OF SURVIVAL
Thirteen-years ago, Vincent Munn was a part-time employee paid to fill in when people needed days off. He worked endlessly to become a manager so he could make his own schedule, he said. The 35-year-old bought the store six years ago and has seen the effects of downloading.
"I stopped selling CD's officially in December 2005," he said. "Downloading really took a big toll on everything. It was so noticeable by 2002 that it wasn't even worth carrying them anymore."
Munn said he still sells vinyl though, and a lot of it too. He'll even do special orders, mainly for frequent customers, to find rare or out-of-stock albums. Because of his friendly nature and love of music, Munn has a wealth of friends in the music industry that champion his store.
"(Pier Records) keeps the flame burning for the underdog in our oppressed musical society," said Newport Beach's Casey Royer, 42, founder and former member of Social Distortion and singer for punk outfit D.I.
In the store, faded posters on the ceiling of Bad Brains, NOFX and Pennywise, to name a few, have all turned a faded blue-gray, and the stereo is usually blasting loud, crunchy rock. But it's not the music that's the centerpiece of the store; it's the two-tone rock 'n' roll masterpieces of Newport Beach artist Paul Bryan, Jr. that makes Pier Records unique.
Though art has always been a part of his life, the colorblind Bryan said he was inspired to become an artist on the Hawaiian island of Oahu when he heard "The Strangest Secret," a spoken word track by broadcaster and entrepreneur Earl Nightingale.
NEW PARTNERSHIP
Bryan met Munn when he walked into the store looking for a job.
"He used it as an excuse to talk about his art," Munn quipped.
He filled out an application and convinced the owner to come to his home and look at his paintings. What originally started as five to 10 paintings on display at the store has flourished into a 200-plus gallery.
In his 35 years as an artist, Bryan claims to have done nearly 15,000 paintings – 517 and counting since St. Patrick's Day alone – which he's sold and given away as gifts.
Over the years, Bryan has sent paintings to musicians, celebrities and politicians and shows up at Munn's shop almost daily with something new to display.
While his mood changes with every painting he does, Munn said the affable Bryan typically refers to his latest as "the best painting I've ever done." One of the painter's current favorites is of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen in character as Kazakh reporter Borat Sagdiyev.
Bryan said his hyper-realistic art was inspired by the simplicity of Oriental art paired with his love of Western pop-culture. His gallery ranges from paintings of celebrities in their youth to playing cards, but most are two-tone portraits, all punctuated by his signature red dot.
"I think this kind of art appeals to a whole lot of people, more so than a picture of a ship or something," said Pete Nichols, 66, who was visiting from Camarillo and left with a painting of Jimi Hendrix.
Bryan refers to the dot as a rounded square and said he loves to incorporate it into the paintings in different ways, for example as the lit end of a cigarette. He said he didn't want to use his initials on the art because he wanted his paintings to speak the same language and the dot is universal.
"It's an honest, local display of honest, local art," Marco Almera, 36, of Costa Mesa, said about Pier's makeshift gallery.
Originally, Munn had decided to only sell Bryan's artwork from the store, but as times change, so has his philosophy about branching out, especially into the online realm, to keep his store alive.
"You have to go mainstream at one point or you can't continue on. Idealism goes out the window once the power goes off," he said.
"There's months where nothing happens and I'm here everyday. We've returned cans and sold our used CD's to other stores to keep our dream alive."
paul bryan, jr. and some of his paintings. (photo by ryan hodgson rigsbee)
