“You guys gotta get out,” the landlord insisted.

Dave Palumbo stood behind the counter of Spiral Scratch, the record store he owns and operates. He slid into shock as his landlord curtly informed him he had two weeks to pack up and vacate the Bryant Street storefront he’d occupied for nearly five years. Several customers were milling about the store, their heads swiveling toward the counter.

“We’re going in a different direction with the place,” the landlord said, cutting through Palumbo’s confusion. “It’s nothing personal.”

As the landlord hastily went for the door to break off the exchange, Palumbo rushed outside after him, imploring the fleeing landlord for explanation.

“It’s nothing personal,” the landlord kept saying. “It’s nothing personal.”

Only two weeks after earning staple profits on 2015’s Record Store Day, it felt like the rug had been ripped out from under his feet.  

When I caught up with Palumbo in early June, he had moved off Bryant and was no closer to finding a new location. Boxes of old records were stacked in his apartment with nowhere to go. The future of Buffalo’s beloved independent record store was in doubt…again. It was only the latest upset in the store’s tragic history.

IN THE BEGINNING… 
Palumbo is an easygoing, monotone talker who can speak at length on decades of Buffalo music and delve earnestly into topics that range from the merits of obscure Australian rock to his claim that the Clash is only “punk-lite.” But for years he’s worn the nickname “Anchovies”—given by former bandmates who joked he “leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths”—a dig he repeats wryly.

In early 2008, Palumbo was coming off a long stretch playing guitar in different local punk bands like the Trailer Park Tornadoes and Plates. For years, he’d taken scattered work as a substitute teacher—he’d once dreamed of being a teacher—and was clerking at the Record Theatre on Main and Lafayette. Now he was looking to make a change by getting into the record business himself.

“My dad always said to my brother and me, ‘Don’t work for anybody,’” Palumbo recalls. “He really believed in it [the store]. He was the one who got me into music.” 

For his dream of running a record store, Palumbo first found a location in a Delaware Avenue shopping plaza. Naming the enterprise “Spiral Scratch,” after an old Buzzcocks single, he began stockpiling records for the store’s launch. 

But as Palumbo’s excitement mounted, tragedy lurked around the corner. Decades working in an asbestos-infested plant had aged Palumbo’s father beyond his 68 years. When Lenny Palumbo, Sr. died in September 2008, Dave Palumbo plunged into a deep depression.

“I needed to dive into something,” Palumbo confesses, voice hushed by a lingering grief. “If I didn’t do the store then, I don’t know where I’d be right now. I could be dead.”

Around Halloween 2008, Palumbo officially opened Spiral Scratch Records for the first time at 2351 Delaware, beside the Rise Above tattoo parlor. The two businesses had a good relationship, with customers often shopping for records while waiting for tattoos.  To assist in the day-to-day work of the store, Palumbo enlisted his then wife Marisa and a longtime friend, local musician Bill Nehill.

Spiral Scratch opened at a time in the late 2000s when vinyl records, having slid into obscurity during the music industry’s seismic shift towards CDs in the 1990s, looked to be on the verge of a return to popularity as collectors and young music customers increasingly sought them out.

Dave says he always expected the renewal of interest in vinyl records. “You could see it was something that mattered to the artists,” he said. “Bands like Nirvana and the Pixies would insist on having their stuff pressed into vinyl.”

Palumbo established Spiral Scratch as a vinyl specialty shop, dealing more under-the-radar “deep indie-label” material—underground garage and punk rock with a sprinkling of variety. “I wanted to be doing the kind of stuff places like Record Theatre weren’t doing,” he said. “They’re bigger than me, they could stomp me out in a second.” 

Some musicians Spiral Scratch helped circulate at the time included San Francisco band Thee Oh Sees and now famous rocker Ty Segall.

“It’s not to make a buck,” Palumbo insists on the matter of pushing artists. “It’s only if I have a feeling they’ll like this band. You know they’ll come back and say, ‘This is garbage,’ if they don’t like it. So I’ve got to be pretty sure.”

UP IN FLAMES
At first, the evening of May 19, 2010, Palumbo closed up shop, went home, put on the TV. Around 9:30pm, his phone rang. On the other end was news from Rise Above tattoos that jolted Palumbo into action: His store was on fire. He rushed outside, leapt into his 1993 Dodge Ram band-van, and roared to the plaza where his life’s work was burning away.

In the parking lot watching the flames, Palumbo was standing in a bad dream. The lot had filled with other cars, too—Nehill, a few other employees, and friends—but their comforting words didn’t penetrate the haze of shock clouding Palumbos brain. All he could get out: “Well, it’s over. That’s it.”

When firefighters finished with the electrical blaze hours into the night, Palumbo and a few others picked through the ruin. The fire had first ripped into Palumbo’s personal collection behind the counter—that was cooked to a crisp. Sets of new orders had roasted in their boxes. Smoke had corrupted much of the rest, warping the vinyl like furnace slag. 

No doubt in his mind: “We’re done for.”

Despite the local community pitching in to raise money and collect records to help him recoup, expensive repairs and no help from the insurance company meant Palumbo had to seek a new location. 

A few months later, Spiral Scratch was reborn at 291 Bryant Street in the Elmwood Village, signaling a new era.

The original store on Delaware Avenue, after the fire. 

ON BRYANT AND THE UNDERGROUND PUNK SHOWS 
From the beginning, Palumbo had used his store as an underground rock venue, showcasing local bands and bringing in occasional out-of-towners. In the basement of the storefront on Bryant, these shows attracted new customers for whom the location was closer and easier to reach than the old Delaware place, establishing Spiral Scratch as a fixture of Buffalo’s punk culture.

“I wasn’t doing it for money,” Palumbo says. “If I collected anything at all during a show, I’d give it to the artists. It was about exposure for them, getting people into the store, and having a good time.” 

At the time, a wide variety of artists—and the occasional underground celebrity—were moving through Spiral Scratch’s basement shows. Palumbo’s connections to promoters across the region helped draw bands from as far away as Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Seattle.

“I only remember the band from Seattle because after they played they forgot a thousand bucks they’d made on tour in the shop,” Palumbo chuckled dryly. “Of course we called and I wired it to them, but damn. I really could’ve used that grand.”

The days on Bryant Street weren’t always so glamorous for Spiral Scratch, at times the only open business on that stretch of block. The area could be rough, with vagrants sleeping at the foot of the vacant storefront to the left while an illicit drug trade thrived on the right. The shop always received a steady trickle of characters looking to hawk and barter any item imaginable. 

“I’ve been offered everything from broken toasters to handguns to cocaine,” Palumbo says. “I think some people thought it was a junk store. They’re like, ‘What do you sell here?’ Some just can’t believe people still listen to records.”

Dave Palumbo and Bill Nehill at Sprial Scratch Records.

ADRIFT NO MORE
On a sweltering day in late July, Palumbo and I sat on the porch of Spiral Scratch’s current home at 1109 Elmwood Avenue, waiting for National Grid to turn the power on. After months in limbo, Palumbo told me the store would be up and running in no time. 

Fittingly, this location has a past in the record business, having hosted the Home of the Hits music emporium and Allentown Music’s record venture. It’s perfectly suited for the job—there’s even a raised stage inside for live shows. “It really is about having a community,” Palumbo says. “I like seeing people around the shop, even if they don’t always buy anything.”

Palumbo was dying to get back to running the shop. He likes to consider his work in the record store a vocation, connecting people with music they’ll love. He proudly recounts to me a story of one particular match he made a while back.

A young man had come in looking for a Black Keys record. Gauging his taste, Palumbo persuaded him to take home an LP by Memphis garage-punks Reigning Sound, whose frontman Greg “Oblivion” Cartwright has performed at the store. Less than a month later, the same guy came in to thank Palumbo—apparently the album had inspired him to form a group and start making music again.

 “Anyone who works in a record store will tell you that’s what it’s all about,” Palumbo says. “Turning someone onto something they really love…it makes me feel like I’m still teaching, in a way.”

Spiral Scratch Records / 1109 Elmwood Ave, Buffalo