Mod squad

Maybe it’s a Lebowski-worthy bowling bag or a sun-faded lawn ornament. Or it could be a T-shirt souvenir from that 5k run you only showed up for because someone somewhere promised there would be donuts. Everyone has stuff around the house, in a closet, in a shed, that they could sell, knowing those few things could mean much more to someone else. Artist Kerry Beary and her husband Jeff just happened to have a lot more than a few things. They had collected and saved an entire store’s worth, it turns out.

Before opening her own boutique, though, Beary wanted to make sure she was not inadvertently regurgitating the popularized and satirized dimly-lit dens of male music snobbery that often pass for quality music stores. “I’m from New York, and loved record stores growing up, but I’m like most girls and don’t want to be in there for four hours looking at every single record,” she says. “I wanted our place to have something for the boys and something for the girls, too.”

Kerry Beary’s Atomic Pop Shop, located on Government Street near Baton Rouge Magnet High School, is a bright, fizzy blend of classic vinyl records and fresh local artwork with 1960s finds from furniture and jewelry to housewares and kitschy collections of vintage magazines, board games and pulpy romance novels.

“It feels like home,” she says. “It’s a glorified way of recycling, really. And I needed a place to sell my work as well.”

Beary’s paintings relish in their winking mod style and a swanky playfulness. The smooth sounds of Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz practically drip off the canvas. Her images have been featured on checks, stationery and fabrics of all kinds for years. “Basically anything you can put an image on,” she says. “But I found I wasn’t getting any satisfaction out of it. I didn’t like sitting at the computer all day manipulating images. I wanted to paint.”

After a few years of selling vintage vinyl out of nearby Honeymoon Bungalow and Time Warp Boutique, Beary found an affordable space of their own and opened the Atomic Pop Shop in May.

Jeff Beary works for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana, but in his spare time rehabs console televisions and radios from the 1950s and 1960s. A sleek “radio tower” stands guard near the door of the shop where buyers can select the vintage receiver of their choice, and Jeff Beary will restore the radio to working order. The husband and wife, who met in New York City before relocating to Baton Rouge after 9/11, spend several weekends each year driving to estate sales looking for Eames-era furniture and vintage records.

Though she only sells vintage vinyl now, Beary hopes to offer shoppers select new records soon. Using Facebook, she encourages fans to let her know which new releases they want so she can make special orders for albums that are becoming increasingly popular on vinyl.

After Conan O’Brien’s rebellious and ironically heartwarming media frenzied send-off from The Tonight Show, late night talk may be surprisingly irrelevant once again, and yet there is one barometer by which the fading medium still measures the culture of cool with pinpoint precision. Next time a musical act appears on The Late Show with David Letterman or Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, look to see if the host holds up a CD or an LP when announcing the artist. Yep. It’s all vinyl, all the time.

Though the Bearys cherish certain covers for their larger-scale artwork or the rich hand-me-down patina cultivated from years of use, ultimately their love for the vinyl format rests on the issue of sound quality. Popular modern mastering techniques—even of older recordings—often compress the music so that the extreme low and high ends of a song are essentially squashed, leaving what were the faintest and loudest sounds when originally played now sounding oddly equal in volume so that the overall decibels can be ramped up for maximum, ear-crunching competitiveness on modern radio.

“You’re missing so much high and low with CDs,” Beary says. “I’ve converted many people to listening to vinyl, and now they are addicted to it—just like us.”

Kerry Beary’s Atomic Pop Shop is located at 2963 Government St. For more information on the store and Beary’s artwork, visit kerrybeary.com.