For generations of Portlanders, Music Millennium hasn’t just been a place to buy records. It has been a classroom, a sanctuary, a launchpad, and a second home for anyone whose life tilted toward music the moment the needle hit vinyl.
This week, longtime owner Terry Currier shared news on the Music Millennium Facebook page that feels both heavy and hopeful: Music Millennium is looking toward its next chapter. Not an ending. Not a goodbye. A careful passing of the torch. As Currier wrote, “First, thank you all for supporting Music Millennium over the years. You are why we are still here after 57 years along with all the great people that have worked at Music Millennium over the years.”
The store first opened its doors on March 15th, 1969, founded by Don and Laureen MacLeod alongside Danny and Patti Lissey. Terry noted that legacy directly, writing, “It would have never happened without Don and Laureen MacLeod, along with Danny and Patti Lissey, opening the doors on March 15th, 1969. We are looking forward to celebrating the official anniversary this March.” From the beginning, Music Millennium was built for people who didn’t just listen to music, but lived inside it.
Terry’s own story reads like a love letter to how music used to find you. Not through playlists or algorithms, but by accident, curiosity, and late-night radio. “I did not grow up listening to the radio or records. I played music and was looking to go to college on music scholarships,” he shared. That changed after his family moved from Seattle to Ridgefield, Washington, and a beat-up Mustang introduced him to the airwaves. KVAN, with its sunrise-to-sunset broadcasts, underground DJs, and nightly sign-off featuring the Beatles’ The End, cracked something open.
“KVAN played what was known as underground music… Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Spirit and anything any of the on-air DJs wanted. This opened my musical senses,” Currier wrote. That awakening led him to his first concert, Leon Russell & the Shelter People, an experience he described simply and powerfully: “That show was a religious experience to me.”
Two weeks later, he applied for a job at a record store. He didn’t know much about recorded music yet, but that didn’t matter. “They hired me knowing I had little knowledge about recorded music. The record store became my university, and I never went to college,” he said. Soon after, a friend brought him to Music Millennium for the first time. “Millennium had all these import records we did not have. I found myself going to Music Millennium 2 or 3 nights a week after I got off work.”…