Buckling under the weight of rising rent and a dying industry, the Music Millennium location in NW, a local institution in and of itself, will soon close its doors. It will no doubt be replaced by some combination of the following: a $$$ restaurant, a boutique or a Pottery Barn.

Still, the ogre here isn't just the changing face of Portland so much as the fact that what Music Millennium sells is quickly becoming obsolete. No one seems to buy tangible music these days, if they pay for it at all. How could a local music store ever hope to compete against BitTorrent, iTunes, etc.?

It'll be sad to see it go. Back when I was a wee lad of 20, I remember driving from Eugene to Portland to see the Smashing Pumpkins (cut me a break, it was a different time and era, dammit) play an in-store set. The crowd that turned out drove the organizers to move the show down to Berbati's Pan. In addition to supporting Billy Corgan's ego on that faithful night, the store also hosted plenty of in-store gigs for innumerable smaller acts over the years.

The flagship location on E. Burnside is still alive and hopefully it'll evolve in way that will allow it to keep running for years, if not a millennium, to come.

Labels: music, Portland