“By the time my high school economics class assigned us the task of taking a job shadow, my long-standing love affair with vinyl was already in full swing. It’s a little hazy as to when I started frequenting record stores, probably about the same time I asked my grandfather to give me all his wax of Pink Floyd, Alan Parsons, ELO, Beatles, Stones, Elton John etc. from his collection. By 15 or 16 I was fully seduced by the warm sounds and large format artwork of records, that CDs simply lacked.”
“So when it was time to choose who to shadow in their career I elected Nick at Ranch Records, much to my parents’ not-so-subtle chagrin. Ranch Records was, and still is, one of maybe two music shops that weren’t a Best Buy, Hot Topic, or Sam Ash in my hometown of Salem, OR, and of course they sold vinyl. Ranch was link to the world of cool that otherwise existed an hour drive north in Portland, so close yet so far.
Nick, the guitarist for my favorite local band at the time, The Widgets, was the hip-priest in the gospel of records to my impressionable ears. While I followed him around the shop, decorated with framed Mudhoney and Nirvana concert posters, I was shown all sorts of records—stuff by the Stooges, Wire, Modest Mouse, The Zombies, and Built to Spill. He turned me onto deeper cuts from artists I already liked, like the Kinks’ The Village Green Preservation Society and Neil Young’s On The Beach. I think we ate pizza at some point. I remember thinking, “You just get to listen to and talk about records all day, every day? AND make (insert Oregon minimum wage of 2004)! This is clearly the life.”
After graduating college in Portland in the middle of the recession, places like Mississippi Records, Exiled Records, Little Axe, and more were integral to my 20s. Jobs were hard to come by, but records were still affordable, whether a release from the record store itself or a secondhand sale.
One such compilation, Music From Saharan Cell Phones, led to me collaborating with one of the artists from Niger, Mdou Moctar. We made a split 7” together. There’s nothing like etching a friendship into the grooves of hot wax. With every piece of music I make, I’ll always think about what it will eventually sound like spinning at 33 1/3 or 45 rpm, and what it might sound like to some kid who chooses a record store for a job shadow.”
—Patrick Phillips
Water Slice’s current single “This Way” is in stores now in advance of a debut EP arriving Summer 2018.
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PHOTO: MICHAEL TYRONE DELANEY
