Each Tuesday, Behind the Counter speaks to an independent record store to ask about its recent favorites, best sellers, and noteworthy trends.
Look them up and you’ll find that Mississippi Records is a favorite in Portland. Since owner Eric Mast’s serendipitous encounter with the space 11 years ago, the shop has expanded into a record label, supplying hard-to-find music to the masses for low prices. A unique selection, rapid turnover, and an employee-curated tape series (various covers featured below) are the hallmarks of Mississippi.
Give me three great albums that you’ve enjoyed lately.
Group Inerane: Guitars from Agadez Vol. 3 (Sublime Frequencies), Hasil Adkins: White Light/White Meat (Norton Records), and the Daniel Johnston box set of his first six albums (Munster).
Which albums has your store sold the most over the past month?
Sibylle Baier‘s LP, Townes Van Zandt‘s first LP, and Grouper‘s Dragging a Dead Deer LP. All pretty sad and delicate records — no idea what that pattern indicates.
What’s the worst album that you’ve had to special order?
We don’t do special orders…but I do have a customer who requests Celine Dion every Wednesday, and he’s a true gentleman about my failure to fill his request, going on four years now.
Why do people choose your store over major or Internet retailers?
We have good atmosphere, unusual stock, and you can listen to any record in the store before buying. People like to help keep the store alive; most of our customers feel a certain sense of ownership over the place, as they should.
How do you manage to sell hard-to-find items at low costs? Where do you get your merchandise?
Most of our used records come over the counter. We buy at 50-60% off retail, so people bring us high-quality records knowing that they’ll get paid well. Our profit margins are very slim, but we have a very fast turnover. Everything that comes in gets priced within two days and sold pretty soon afterward. I’m the fastest pricer in the business — definitely not even close to the best, but the fastest for sure. We put out an average of 130 new records everyday.
Also, me and all the employees get paid pretty poorly, but we manage to live well anyways.
How many artists and/or albums have you released via the store’s label?
I think we’re up to 74 releases. Egads.
I read that the store space came into your hands by chance. Tell me about that.
I was looking in a window of a building because I had been inside it 11 years earlier and was just curious about its current state. The owner happened to see me and began courting me to rent it. I think the dialogue went something like this:
Rachel (owner of the building): “Are you interested in renting this space?”
Me: “No, I was just peering in the window.”
Rachel: “What would you do with the space if you had it?”
Me: “I dunno…open a bookstore or record store or something…but I’m not really interested in owning a business at all, and I have no money, so…”
Rachel (ignoring what I said): “Oooh…you should open one of those here. It would be perfect! You should do it! I just know you’d do great!”
I thought about it for two days and then, being unemployed and directionless in life, I decided that her invitation to rent and her sureness of my success even though we’d never met were the fates throwing me a purpose. I’ve been here for seven-and-a-half years since. Goes to show — if you’re just open to the universe and its weird suggestions, you’ll end up where you need to be.