The Northwest 23rd location of venerable, locally owned, independent
record store Music Millennium is shuffling off this commercial
coil—its clerks making their last recommendations, its cash
registers ringing their final sales this Friday night, August 31st, as
local alt-rockers Floater sound the concluding chords of the closing
in-store performance, and summer turns to fall. The day’s tone will not
be altogether autumnal, however, as a cohort of bands and
singer-songwriters—some employed by the store, others simply with
feelings of affection for it—including Portland’s own Jack
McMahon, the Old Believers, Jim Brunberg (of Mississippi Studios), and
Stars of Track and Field, will play a nearly10-hour, wake-like jag of
live music on-site beginning at 1pm, a fitting end (in conjunction with
the 40% off sale and free refreshments!) to Millennium’s western
outpost, which will probably best be remembered for the nearly 300
free, all-ages concerts it regularly hosted.
It’s important to remember that while one location is closing after
30 years, Music Millennium is still alive and kicking out the jams at
its flagship East Burnside location, where the in-store performances
(which began in 1989 for the retailer’s 20th anniversary) and some of
the 23rd Ave. employees and merch will be transferred. Which raises the
question: Why did one store close, while the other survives?
Music Millennium owner Terry Currier, who began his relationship
with the store as a school-aged patron decades ago, put aside arguments
about the NW store’s ever-rising rent and the decline of record stores
in the digital era to examine the differences between Millennia:
“Eastside is the original location. It is sentimental to more people
than the NW store because of that. It has eight more years on it.
Eastside was the first of a new breed of underground recorded music
stores in town. It spurred others to do the same. A recorded music
junkie is more apt to come to the Burnside store. It is
5,000 square feet and NW was 6,000 square feet, but Burnside
actually has twice the inventory. We own the building at Burnside,
though we had to take a $400,000 mortgage against it last year to
catch up our bills from the unprofitable NW store. The clientele
at NW was made up of some regulars, some coming just for in-stores,
some just shopping the street as they might shop a mall. The change of
the funkiness on the street to the street becoming more upscale took
some of our customers away. Also, as other streets like Alberta,
Mississippi, and the Pearl came into their own, it gave people other
options for shopping. Parking is also a problem in NW.”