… a blog post from Chairman’s Corner.

Hey hey hey everybody. A while back I had the honor (along with my band Nasalrod) of being interviewed for a short documentary entitled “Vinyl Presses On”. Although vinyl was more or less dead (at least within mainstream society) throughout the 90’s, it has been “back” (with a vengeance!) for some time now. We had a blast being involved with this doc, which features some other awesome local folks from right here in Portland OR, such as Mark Rainey of Cascade Record Pressing (check out the beautiful records that they’ve produced in the picture above) and Terry Currier of Music Millennium (pictured with yours truly in the pic below).

Speaking of Music Millennium…what an amazing place! Their catalog of of vinyl and CDs is quite stunning. The store thoroughly covers just about any genre of music that you can think of – carrying tons of vinyl and CDs for each one. They stock various types of Blu-rays & DVDs from boutique labels such as The Criterion Collection and Vinegar Syndrome, and they even host some killer in-store performances and interviews. I had the pleasure of seeing an in-store interview with the legendary John Doe of the seminal LA punk rock band X, who appeared there to promote one of his excellent books on the LA punk scene (he has already authored a couple of great books on that subject).

Despite the music industry’s past attempts to “force vinyl out” (as Terry Currier mentions in the aforementioned “Vinyl Presses On” doc), Music Millennium has endured through thick and thin forever now – carrying physical media and delighting music lovers & collectors around the world. However, MM is most definitely not the only game in town when it comes to selling physical. Portland is a unique town, in that we have quite a few more record stores (and art-house movie theaters or coffee shops for that matter) than the average city. Landfill Rescue Unit is another magical place. This little shop also contains a rather impressive variety of vinyl (and cassettes!), and they even carry numerous amazing action figures of rocknroll (and punk rocknroll) heroes. Their movie soundtrack section alone is mind blowing. Feel free to check them out if you haven’t already!

With all of the fantastic record stores (there are so many others here in PDX that I’ll save for another time) and the record pressing plant that I mentioned above, Portland is proof that Vinyl Presses On. I encourage everyone to get out there, check out the stores in your community, and feed your souls.

Cheers,

Jeffrey “Chairman” Couch

Music lover, creator & collector

chairman@spinneymedia.com

Chairman currently enjoys freaking out & creating panic with his spastic rock band Nasalrod, which is based in Portland, Oregon. He created this blog to share his serious love of music, the arts, and physical media.