The 'beat goes on

CAMBRIDGE — From the exterior, the pretty green triple-decker looks like any other house you might pass en route to dinner and a movie in Kendall Square. The living room, where two young boys are glued to the television as they half-heartedly pick at some Lego pieces, is almost as unassuming.

Just past the kitchen, though, things start to get interesting. With a bed taking up most of the space, a small guest room and connecting office house hundreds of colorful and carefully cataloged CDs and vinyl records that document a niche musical scene dating to the mid-1980s.

As modest as it is overstuffed, this is where Mark Robinson runs Teenbeat Records, an early and influential independent label he founded with high school friends in Arlington, Va., before uprooting to Cambridge in 1999.

This year marks Teenbeat’s 26th anniversary, a milestone that coincides with the reunion of the label’s marquee act. Unrest, a proto-experimental-pop band Robinson started in the early ’80s, is on its first tour since disbanding in 1994, with a stop at T.T. the Bear’s on Thursday. The trio’s last performance was a one-off show in 2005.

“It seems like a fun thing to do because people still seem to like the music,’’ Robinson says of Unrest’s limited string of East Coast dates. “We weren’t popular back then, but we were getting more and more popular and I think we were still on the upswing when we broke up.’’

Unrest never had broad mainstream success, but its influence rippled well beyond record sales. The same goes for Teenbeat, whose deep roster is full of bands beloved by their fans and largely unknown outside of them. Just as Dischord Records chronicled the punk and hardcore scenes of Washington, D.C., Teenbeat showcased rising indie-pop bands such as Velocity Girl, Tuscadero, Versus, Bratmobile, and even Stereolab.

Robinson would be the last person to overstate Teenbeat’s reach; if anything, he tends to err on the side of modesty, describing the label’s initial goals as not particularly ambitious: “It was just like, oh, wouldn’t it be cool if this stuff were available in a record store?’’

He estimates 1993 was a high point for profits, with Teenbeat releasing 20 titles that year, but he has never exactly had the bottom line in mind. “I’ve never made any money off of the label,’’ Robinson says. “The label has probably made some money, but I’ve never taken money out as a salary. The money just sits in the same bank account and gets reused for making new records.’’

As the brainchild of childhood friends, Teenbeat was initially fashioned as a lending library where people could borrow a cassette of music from three or four bands, one of those being Unrest. Robinson took the reins soon after his cofounders graduated from high school, and he’s been Teenbeat’s visionary ever since. From his home, he literally does it all — the mail orders, album artwork and design, sometimes even the recordings themselves — and from the beginning, Robinson has kept Teenbeat fiercely independent. His only attempt to court a major label was an early trip to England with his mother. While in Manchester, they stopped at Factory Records and Robinson dropped a cassette of Unrest’s third album in the label’s mail slot. He never heard back.

But it turned out Unrest didn’t need a big label behind it. “I don’t think any of us wanted to become giant rock stars,’’ he says. “It’s never been about the money. Even when we were living off of [the band], I think we were paying ourselves $12,000 a year as salaries. It felt pretty luxurious, actually, that I lived off of $12,000 a year.’’

Unrest went through several different lineup changes, but Robinson says the last incarnation, with bassist Bridget Cross and drummer Phil Krauth, is the one most people probably know best, which makes the reunion that much more anticipated. Up until earlier this week, each band member had been rehearsing separately (Cross lives in Alaska and Krauth is in Virginia); for Robinson, that meant relearning the songs by playing along with the recordings. He doesn’t know if the tour will spawn a new album, but he’s open to the idea.

In addition to Cotton Candy — an indie-pop band that specializes in the re-creation of vintage advertising jingles that he fronts with his wife, Evelyn Hurley — Robinson also keeps busy as a designer for Houghton Mifflin. Upon moving to Cambridge, he briefly toyed with the idea of shutting down Teenbeat to focus on his design career, even considering other labels for some of Teenbeat’s roster. He didn’t have the heart to go through with it. “I stick with it because I love doing it. It’s a lot of fun,’’ he says. “I just can’t stop doing it.’’

Reminded that it’s a feat to keep a label afloat for as long as he has, Robinson doesn’t seem that surprised.

“I think I could have imagined myself doing this 26 years later,’’ Robinson says. “I don’t think I would have ever dreamed that we would have sold as many records as we did or that some people actually bought those records in stores. It’s surpassed my wildest expectations.’’

James Reed can be reached at jreed@globe.com.