By By Cameron Brown, News Correspondent

Having worked in record stores for the past 15 years, Angela Sawyer, owner of Weirdo Records in Central Square in Cambridge, is a self-proclaimed music nerd.’
It started in her spare time with just 10 titles and a few hundred dollars for a website, now Weirdo Records is a success, Sawyer said. When Sawyer’s living room in Porter Square, where her operation began, got too crammed to house her personal collection and sales inventory while leaving room for costumers, she moved the shop to a Cambridge storefront. Weirdo opened Feb. 6 in Central Square,’ 844 Massachusetts Ave. Sawyer’s personal collection exceeds 10,000 records, which she called ‘pretty modest’ compared with other stores.
Despite the growth, Sawyer said she runs the store like she did from her living room.
‘This is a place where you can not only buy records, but it’s a place where you can go and work on the part of your head that’s related to aesthetics,’ she said. ‘To me it’s important to have places where you can hang around and talk to people and loiter and waste your day.’
Weirdo is home to an expansive and eclectic collection of LPs, cassette tapes and CDs.’ A quick look through the shelves at Weirdo and shoppers might find Jimmy Nelson’s ‘Instant Ventriloquism’ or a $150 CD box set of some ’70s experimental music from the Los Angeles Free Music Society. But rare and expensive oddities are all part of what makes Weirdo so special, Sawyer said.
‘Everyone’s favorite record to buy is the one they didn’t know they needed until they saw it,’ Sawyer said.
As for the downturn in the economy, or an Internet-ambivalent music industry, Sawyer said she isn’t worried.
‘If the general economy is like the size of Central Square, and the general size of the music industry is like the size of this block, then I’m like the size of a speck on my fingernail,’ she said. ‘And if those are sinking like a stone, or going to collide head on, there is a ton of room for me to move around.’
David Hirsh, a concert promoter and Weirdo patron, also said Weirdo Records has collector’s appeal.
‘This is a place that has a really dedicated fan base of people who come here who aren’t going to be buying music online as much,’ Hirsh said. ‘You can’t find a lot of this stuff online and [people] want to buy the real thing and hold actual records in their hands.’
Sawyer said she is not only interested in the record itself, but the history behind it.
‘I love the context that goes with records,’ Sawyer said. ‘I love it when there are insane stories that go with them, when they have ridiculous cover art, when they have ridiculous fold out insides where you can build a house, or play a game of monopoly on the back, and all that stuff. I love it. But I think it’s all driven by music, and the love for it, and when it’s good it turns on the world and it’s amazing when that happens. All the other stuff is just ephemeral, and the ephemeral is the fun part, but it’s not the core.’