Millennium falls short by 970 years

This is somewhat sad news. One of Portland's greatest records stores is closing one of their locations after 30 years. I worked for Music Millennium for several years in the mid-90's, and while it was an absolutely freaking great record store with lots of cool in-store performances (Ben Kweller pictured above), the upper management were really horrible to their employees.

They paid for shit, knowing that there would be a steady stream of applicants wanting those coveted positions at a cool record store, so didn't care when employees quit after a few months when they got sick of their measly paychecks. I never made more than 12k a year there, and I was a "supervisor". The clerks made even less.Then when we tried to unionize, the management came down hard and used some classic union-busting tactics on us. Pretty shameful.

On the other hand, great store. And I met 2 of my closest friends when I worked there. That was actually my first job in Portland. So, it sucks that a cool store is closing, but they did not deal well with the ever-changing market place. As the Sizzler says, they spent way too much time and effort kissing the uber-evil RIAA's ass. But between skyrocketing rents in the super-trendy NW 23rd area and the public's general lack of interest in paying for music anymore (after being massively ripped off by the record industry for years), they were doomed.