Tower Records Files for Bankruptcy

Yeah, good fucking riddance, miserly bastards

Tower Rap
Tower Indie
Tower Jazz
...etc.

Put thems on streetcorners like 7-Elevens.

If you live in New York City, and you go to Tower and spend close to $20 on a catalog item like Dark Side of the Moon, you are LAZY. (If you're shopping for classical music CDs, though, this may not hold. I'm not a champeen classical shopper by any means, but based on my limited experience, they usually have the best selection anywhere in NYC.)

im sure competition has something to do with it, but it seems like enough people shop there and that if you were gouging all of them you should be able to keep afloat.

R.I.A.A. to thread??

Kurt Heasley and D@ve Gr0hl used to work at the one near Union Square in NYC in the late 80s.

Ha, you're kidding me! I remember James and Smear in the SST store...

The same central London store - the only remaining Tower in the UK, as far as I'm aware - is now owned by Virgin (or is it Branson?)

The Union Square Virgin is also notable for being one of those stores that used to keep its classical music section in its own seperate meat locker of a room, far away from the teener rabble, only later to evict all of it for a expanded DVD section.

This is true but is more of an indictment of the other stores - actually their jazz/avant garde sections are much better too and suspect a lot of their specialist sections are. However they are over-priced and they are nowhere near as good as they once were. Plus their sales are always rubbish - they dredge up the same 5000 CDs they had in their last sale (and the sale before that and the sale before that and the sale before that etc) and stick them out EVEN THOUGH NOBODY WANTS TO BUY THEM!

yer right Dada. I checked the january 'sale' and there was fuck all there.

This is true of Tower Records Shinjuku in Tokyo which is one of the best CD stores I've ever seen.

in chicago too, classical and jazz selection was great

not really that expensive all told

unfortunately i was often the only one shopping in the classical section, often they wouldnt even have anyone staffing it

this is sad

I'm not a huge fan of spending long hours in record stores but that Tower is completely amazing. I mean, just comparing their "AVANT" section (experimental, modern classical, noise) section, it's bigger than Aquarius' total inventory in entirety. They have more new CDs than any of the Ameoba's and they have lots of American stuff that's hard to find here.

PS: I was meaning to ask, are you in San Diego and have a incredibly massive cult video collection?

every article on the decline of the record store in the wake of bestbuy/walmart/amazon/downloading should be require to devote at least a hundred words to what amoeba is doing right.

Amongst a million other things.

Meanwhile, the Act 1/2 theater closed, and the other small theaters are increasingly showing mainstream fare and struggling nonetheless. The rock clubs are usually pretty sparsely attended. It's a rough time across the board.

They did this in SF with all but the Rock section. I haven't decided if I like it or not actually. It's a bit more one stop, but it increases your flip time if you don't care about the new stuff (which often I don't.)

They moved; the rent on University is a killer, especially so close to campus.

Wait the Amoeba in Berkeley is having problems?

They're by far the least profitable of the three, and still have a lot of staff to feed. I wouldn't say that they're struggling, but traffic is down quite a bit.

Well that makes sense. It's got the least profitable location, the least space and the least parking. But that doesn't mean it is in a bad way does it?

I'm assuming so, but mostly based on the fact that the three times I've been there, I was the only customer for the entirety of my stay. That was never true for me on University.

I doubt the rent is 1/4th. El Cerrito Plaza has Albany-esque rents.

I don't know for sure, but the rock section is the store's bread and butter, so the fact that they would cut it basically in half doesn't bode well, or at least signals that they're shifting even more toward DVD sales, which is not something I'm looking for in a record shop. Since all three are owned by the same people and the other two are so damned profitable, I doubt they'd ever sell the store, but I believe that particular store is going to grow increasingly irrelevant.... which sucks, because I hate going to that goddamned bowling alley in the haight.

Quoting their MySpace profile:
TOWER RECORDS is a LEADING specialist in MUSIC, DVD, BOOKS and GAMES Retailer based in DUBLIN and is wholly IRISH owned by RECORDS and DISCS Ltd since JULY 2003

Folks you can go leave comments on the Tower Records MySpace Profile for your town! Inc Tower Records Dublin, Calafornia. Wish them all well seeking new jobs!

Is the version of Shine A Light on there better than the Albert Hall one?

Rockaway was better when it occupied the entire building instead of the one-quarter or one-third that they have now. Rockaway is great because they are so completely myopic over '67-'71 era "Rolling Stone Magazine Rock" that they don't know/realize the other things that churn through the used bin.

That's how I got most of Flying Nun for a $1 each, etc.

Absolutely yes.

Second question: Is the FUI Medication better than the album version on Pure Phase?

Yes. However there are two even better versions... In order:

1. The live Glastonbury '93 one on the _Let It Flow_ CD EPs. Recorded when Darkside guitarist Kevin Cowen was in Spz. for a brief time, and it really shows.
2. The studio one on the _Medication_ EP.
3. _Fucked Up Inside_
4. _Pure Phase_

Elvis otm tho

(Or Amazon, or whatever.)

xpost

Let It Flow and Medication are my favourite two songs on PP (These Blues arguably up there also), so their respective EPs are probably worthwhile purchases going by that...

actually, both of the above songs hit me real hard, real deep. The moment 7:01 into WGTH(TSII) is one of my all-time favourites.

will fuck with you

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3a/Toptop.jpg

oh well

this is true, the Pasadena Tower has a killer huge jazz room, which is in turn dwarfed by Amoeba's jazz wing. Sorry I brought it up.

I wish Jason would release the full Glastonbury 1993 live set. They also played a terrific version of "Good Times" (one of the only times they ever played it live).

Rockaway was better when it occupied the entire building instead of the one-quarter or one-third that they have now.

Elvis stole my Rockaway comment, and I'll miss the Pasadena Tower. I drive by it on the way home (always easy parking) and their DVDs are well-priced when they're released. Lately they've been having 20-25% off sales on CDs, which would make the prices good if I bothered to look around hard enough. It's probably been a year since I went to PooBah's, also a shadow of their former selves.

OTMFM

Bankrupt yet still in business! Whatta country! I guess the idea is to just keep going farther into debt and tack that onto the purchase price for whoever buys them up?

It's a bit like downloading porn, mate.

Seriously, that's sad. I really loved Tower Records.

thank you Hank (and Ned, and everyone else with good words)

yes, a huge promo display for esp-disk reissues.

Tower's brand is used by 144 international stores, but those licensees will not be affected by the bankruptcy process.

"The industry wants it to survive," he said. It got a standing ovation from the crowd when it recently won retailer of the year from the major recording merchandisers' trade group, he said.

Then again, I'm guilty (like a lot of Angelenos) of choosing Amoeba first...

Sunday nights often bum me out. After 6:00, nearly everything is closed, and the work week is looming ahead. There's been many a late night Sunday run, walk or bike ride, when I'd end up at Tower, dependably open when no one else is. Even when I don't have the cash for an impulse buy to boost my mood, it's just soothing to be surrounded by a hundred thousand albums. Sometimes I'll just check for good deals on albums I want for later, or just randomly browse and soak it all in, or skim reviews in their well-stocked magazine section.

Many blame Tower's second bankruptcy on the decline in CD sales and downloading, but that's all bullshit. Businesses close all the time, even when conditions don't seem adverse. The truth is that Tower has been obviously mismanaged since at least the 80s, from what I've heard from former employees. It's a miracle it made it this long. Even though it's had an online store for about a decade, and started doing MP3 sales recently, the execution was half-assed. Not to mention the wildly inconsistent pricing. By employing a smarter online strategy and learning from successful independents like Amoeba, Tower could have lasted longer. As it is, I'm guessing one of the two interested buyers is Virgin. It'll be interesting to see what happens, but I doubt the changes will be effective. Corporate chains have simply lost touch with what music consumers want.

But dang, I'll miss those late hours. This excludes the downtown Chicago location, which was good for a few years after buying out Rose Records' inventory. The Lincoln Park Tower had a vastly underrated Imports section. For the last couple years, Paul Kennedy, the Imports Coordinator, has written blurbs about great bands like The Associates, Section 25, Dome, Scriti Politti, Mark Stewart, Gang of Four and punk poet John Cooper Clarke. They get some of the UK releases about a week or so after their release. Some of the albums seem to be permantly on sale for five dollars under the normal price (then again, some are inexplicably $35). They even imported and displayed Simon Reynolds' Rip It Up And Start Again, nearly a year before it was issued in the U.S.

I went to Tower last night, possibly for the last time, depending on how long they keep their doors open. The current sale was typical of their odd sales -- in addition to the usual discount bins, all albums priced $12.99 were on sale for $9.99. For that price, I found these, all in the import aisle:

Soft Machine - Fourth and Fifth
Sparks - Indiscreet
Strawbs - Ghosts [Remastered]
Ultravox! [New remastered version]
Ultravox! - Ha! Ha! Ha!

Farewell Tower, R.I.P.

I still sometimes catch myself dreaming about taking a time machine back to then, and buying up every single one.

as for the store itself, kinda sad. the music mags seemed to be a month or two behind. about 10 people in the store. counter help picking their finger nails...

September 23, 2006
RETAIL TRACK: OPENING ROUND
Bids After Deadline Could Prevent Brutal Tower Liquidation
BY ED CHRISTMAN

Just because a liquidator appears to be the only bid so far in the Chapter 11 auction of Tower Records doesn't mean the chain will be liquidated. Good thing, because for many in the industry, a Tower liquidation could be devastating. But to be sure, the fact that only a liquidator put in a bid can't be painted as good news either.

At press time (Sept. 12), one of the liquidators-like Gordon Brothers in Boston, Great American in Los Angeles or Hilco Organization in Northbrook, Ill.-was expected to be the only suitor in the opening round of bids for the West Sacramento, Calif.-based chain. This comes after months of Tower Records assuring the vendor community that a private-equity firm is on the verge of signing a letter of intent.

As one bidder pointed out to Retail Track, it's too early for them to show their hand and what they're willing to pay for the chain. Even though the formalized process has opening bids due by Sept. 12, and final offers with a signed asset purchase agreement due Sept. 26, the reality is that if a qualified bidder decides to forgo those two dates and shows up in court on the Oct. 5 auction date, he will be welcomed with open arms. Yeah, other qualified bidders would squawk, but there's no getting around that cash is king.

While it seemed like there was no potential shortage of bidders when Tower Records filed Chapter 11 on Aug. 20, at least three have indicated to Retail Track that they won't step up to the plate until Sept. 26, if then. That's because things have changed somewhat since Aug. 20 and their non-action is also intended to send a message to the major vendors.

Since Tower filed for Chapter 11, every newspaper in the land has painted music retail as being completely dead. So if you bid on the chain, you can count on all those papers calling you an idiot for buying a record store in this day and age. Needless to say, that imagery has been reinforced by SpiralFrog and the notion that brick-and-mortar stores will soon have to compete against free.

Even sophisticated institutional investors and private-equity firms would have second thoughts after that initial press onslaught. Meanwhile, the remaining vulture investors-who have thick skins and are seasoned in making money even in a diminishing marketplace-are likely holding back on bidding for Tower because they have to scare the product suppliers into remembering how much they need the deep inventory superstore chain.

When last heard from, the major suppliers-those secured creditors likely to get whatever's left over after the bank gets the $78 million it is projected to be owed on Oct. 8-were touting their trump card: namely, that they could sink any new owner by not supplying credit if they are unhappy with whatever recovery they get from the $82 million they claim to be owed.

With Tower's value declining every day and bidders trying to ensure that the price for the chain remains as low as possible, if the winning bid is only large enough to satisfy the bank's claim, the new owner will still absolutely need vendor support for the chain to become healthy. That's why it's in all the bidders' best interest to put a little fear in the heart of vendors. But not too much. Any new owner has to be one that the major suppliers are comfortable with, and one that will invest in the chain so it becomes financially viable. If that occurs, vendors could be induced to back down from their stance that they have a recovery that makes them happy.

Some vendors are already thinking along those lines. The independent community is collectively owed only about $15 million, and if nothing is recovered for unsecured creditors, some suppliers will likely be forced out of business. But if Tower is liquidated, the hurt will be even bigger, according to the head of one large independent distributor.

While Tower Records is not the largest account and has an estimated market share of only about 4%, it can account for about 30% of sales on rock records from new and developing artists, that executive says.

"For anybody in the indie rock business the possibility of a Tower liquidation has to be brutal," he says. "It would mean a completely different life for companies like us. It would cause us to rethink our staffing and how we market records."

Sure, the majors are more diversified, but even they appreciate the importance of Tower Records in developing rock records and roots music from up-and-coming bands. What's more, a Tower liquidation might put the classical music business on life support until the digital marketplace grows large enough to compensate.

So with stakes that high, count on all kinds of posturing and bluffing along the way until the nail-biting finale of the fate awaiting Tower is determined.

John is referring to the Tower store in downtown Chicago on Wabash. It IS really sad. They must be really feeling the strain, because as recently as six-seven years ago the store would be jampacked on a good day. Now, if there's just "10 people in the store" (scattered amongst the three floors), bro, that is a CROWD.

Interesting note: the building directory in the doorway STILL says "Rose Records" and "M&H(?) Distributors," even though Rose has been gone for over a decade and the distributor has probably been gone longer than that.

That is what shopping at FYE! is like.

http://art.towerrecords.com/stores_new/denver.jpg

we should keep a watch on this thread

First Tower purchases: Big Star, #1 Record/Radio City CD; Aaron Neville, Tell It Like It Is LP; the Nonesuch Javanese Court Gamelan LP.

the pricing in that store is bizarre too. recently i picked up a few of prince's back catalog titles for $10 at the same store and then today i had a dig through the clearance bins and there was little under $10 unless it was complete dreck. there were a few treats though, but nothing i didn't already have. (i saw the last villalobos album, the melchior productions double cd, the glimmers comp that opens with queen's "body language" and the first get physical mix cd all for $10.99. vinyl of the last royksopp for $9 which is a decent deal.)

how they justified selling moderately rare import stuff for $26 and up in the age of the internet is beyond me. virgin does this too and it's just insulting. maybe they're next.

(Of course, it's these section I'll be vigiland about in the next month.)

my list for when it goes out of business: three tangerine dream reissues, two klaus schulze reissues, "cluster ii", "get physical vol 2" and the chelonis r jones album.

tower was PACKED full of people tonight, i was like WTF?!? people lining up to buy $16.99 albums for 10% off, yeah, it's fucking nuts! you can get shit cheaper at borders!

My chat with one of them...

This is like having Border's close nationwide if it ever went through dire straits, and then lamenting that Powell's in Portland somehow owes someone in a bigger city another Powell's.

Greatest Hits: Back To The Start
Megadeth

List: $18.99

$15.99

Save: $3.00 (15%)

-- HUNTA-V (vfoz...), October 9th, 2006.

Borders has drastically reduced its music stock over the past year-and will continue to do so, according to its CEO, only focusing on carrying big new releases.

That's a dumb analogy. I never said anyone owes anyone. My point is simply Chicago is an untapped market. On a side note, while Powell's is associated with Portland, the first Powell's was opened in Chicago in Hyde Park. And the one on Lincoln is just great.

um...i can tell you with some certainty: not gonna happen

Why? I can see why a California based indie chain would not be interested in expanding halfway across the country. But that doesn't mean someone else couldn't do it based on their business model.

Ridiculous -- even the Wherehouse clearances were handled better.

Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Record promotion men Jeff Trager and Bill Perasso used to sit around drinking with pal Russ Solomon at their favorite hangout, the cocktail lounge at Villa Roma at the busy intersection of Columbus and Bay streets. Solomon, who owned record stores in Sacramento, would point to the supermarket across the street. "One day I'm going to open a store there," he told them.

Nursing a hangover at a nearby drive-in one morning, Solomon saw a "For Rent" sign on the lot, walked across the street to a pay phone and made a deal to lease the property. He had a cousin who was a good carpenter, and he put him to work.

"We painted the place, hung some lights and filled it up with records," Solomon says. "It was something else."

He opened the San Francisco Tower Records in April 1968. The sign outside boasted "Largest Record Store in the Known World -- Open Nine to Midnight 365 Days a Year."

It was a good time to enter the retail record business in San Francisco. The Beatles were at the top of the charts. Bill Graham was running concerts every weekend at the Fillmore featuring a never-ending procession of exciting new rock bands -- Fleetwood Mac, Traffic, Ten Years After, the Chambers Brothers. The San Francisco rock scene was flourishing with groups emerging almost daily, such as Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana and It's a Beautiful Day. Over in North Beach, disc jockey Tom Donahue was inventing FM rock radio on KSAN and playing all the great new records by these bands and more.

At the opening party, revelers spilled out the door, plastic drop cloths protected the record racks and the long-forgotten rock band West, which had just released an album on Epic Records, performed.

"The drummer dosed me with something," says Stan Goman, who was working in the Sacramento operation at the time, but would serve for 10 years as the San Francisco store manager, beginning in 1972. "Driving back to Sacramento that night was a trippy drive. What a store."

Solomon would eventually open more than 75 other stores with the soon familiar red and yellow signs. The Greenwich Village store spanned three blocks and was touted as the largest record store in the country. The London store was on Piccadilly Circus. The Sunset Strip store was famed for star sightings; it used to open early in the morning to accommodate Elton John while he abused his charge account. Now the international chain Solomon built is defunct.

Sacramento always remained the corporate headquarters and the heart of the chain. That was where, in 1952, Solomon had begun stocking the record department of his father's shop, Tower Drugs, a landmark retail location with a tower on the building. But the Columbus and Bay store was where the party always was.

"You couldn't have opened a record store at a better time," Solomon says. "You had the Summer of Love, the Fillmore-Avalon action, the Haight-Ashbury just starting to explode. Everybody came into San Francisco, and they were just mad about music. It was a mysterious, wonderful miracle."

"It was a new style," says Dave Haynes, who managed the store for a couple of years in the '60s. "The timing came together. All of a sudden the store showed up and fed all that. I don't know whether it was a stroke of luck or genius."

"He wanted to fill all the racks up and have turnstiles like a supermarket," says Rudy Danzinger, who went to work for Solomon in Sacramento in 1958 for a princely $70 a week. "He had this vision."

Of course, the party is now officially over. Tower was turned over to liquidators just weeks ago. Truth told, the store was never the same after CDs. But neither was the record business. When the store sold those black vinyl discs in 12-inch cardboard sleeves -- some of which opened up on a gatefold -- for around 5 bucks, there was magic in the place. Tower used to have a sign outside the store during the holidays that read "Thousands of Gifts for Under $10."

When the product changed to a small shiny wafer in a crummy plastic box that cost 20 bucks, that was the tectonic shift that led to the ugly, prolonged collapse of a chain store that people at one time actually loved.

"Tower was where music nuts, not a socially adept breed, had to face each other in the flesh," wrote Los Angeles Times pop music critic Ann Powers, who worked as a clerk during her college years at the Columbus and Bay store.

Before Tower Records opened, all record stores were little mom-and-pop shops with limited inventory that kept business hours and charged list price. Tower sold records cheap, all day and night, and stocked everything. "We liked to make sure we had every single record in stock," says Tower's Goman, who has run a printing shop in Sacramento since he lost his job in the Tower corporate hierarchy four years ago. "If you wanted the Amazon tree frog noises, we had it."

"On Friday nights, the place was like an event," says record promotion man Dave Sholin, who back in the '70s ran the city's ruling Top 40 station, KFRC. "Just going in and seeing everybody in the place, the aisles jammed, all the new releases -- it would be hard to describe to someone who wasn't there."

Clerks like Powers were the rule, not the exception. They knew music and they worked at Tower because they liked it. They also recognized musicians and treated them to employee discounts. Michael Carabello, the original conga drummer with Santana, remembers going down to Columbus and Bay with his band's guitarist, Carlos Santana, and raiding the jazz section for Gabor Szabo albums, which miraculously cost nothing when they went to the cash register. That Santana went on to record Szabo's "Gypsy Queen" on the band's breakthrough album, "Abraxas," makes Tower a fairly direct tributary into the cultural mainstream.

It was a place that could be packed for in-store appearances by Joan Jett or Luciano Pavarotti. The opera in-stores were an annual event, in fact, and all the big names in the field made appearances. Tower always had the best selection of classical records at the lowest prices, too. Former manager Haynes remembers knocking down a wall in the store's warehouse to build the first opera room, laying down the tiles after the store closed at midnight. Inventories were also all-night affairs and such a party that employees vied for the assignment.

The store was decorated on the outside by giant airbrushed paintings of album covers of new releases, clearly visible to people driving past the busy intersection. Tower did not charge for those advertisements -- Solomon likes to refer to himself as an "aging hippie" and this is just one of his store's unconventional, non-corporate approaches to marketing -- but let the record labels and the airbrush artists work out the cost between them. It was a custom that started when the local Warner Bros. promo man persuaded the Columbus and Bay store management to allow him to paint over the store's large white wall as an advertisement for the new album by the Grateful Dead. The paintings soon became a trademark of Tower stores everywhere.

Another Tower trademark, the stacks of current hit releases piled on the floor in the front of the store, happened by accident. Solomon almost opened an earlier San Francisco store in 1960. He had a location at Mission and Van Ness streets, but the banks pulled the loans at the last minute. He shipped the store's inventory to the Sacramento store but didn't have the shelf space, so he dumped the lot on the floor and there they sold.

Tower was more than a record store; it was a cultural hub. Tower was one of the main outlets for concert tickets in the days before computerized ticketing, and fans would line up for blocks outside the store when tickets for popular concerts went on sale. The chain also produced a giveaway tabloid called Pulse, full of record reviews, interviews and, of course, record company advertising. Tower was a market leader in innovations, such as in-store video plays or listening posts, which must have reminded Solomon of the old listening booths he used to maintain in his father's store.

Journey manager Herbie Herbert had an office next door to the Columbus and Bay store. "Studying Tower Records, going there and observing how people browsed really taught me a lot about how to proceed with Journey," Herbert says. "Tower really taught me that the most effective means of promotion was actually point-of-purchase advertising. You had a captive target demographic. I went crazy spending money on point-of-purchase materials. It was very, very, very effective. It wasn't long after that success was observed."

Although the Tower chain is on its way out, the 81-year-old patriarch of the stores still keeps his office in the building and goes to work in Sacramento every day planning to open more record stores, a chain he wants to call Resurrection Records. "If I can get the money and the real estate," he says. "It's the only thing I know how to do."

Solomon is philosophical about the sealed fate of Tower. But he's not ready to write off the whole record business.

"Everybody in the world -- except a few people in the record business -- believe that the physical business is dead. How can they still sell 10 million CDs a week if the physical business is dead? There's a vast amount of people. The only issue is the record industry isn't doing anything to get kids in the stores. They believe their future is in downloads, and maybe it is. But who's going to download an opera? The only place to see it properly is a record store."

Solomon obviously had a vision of record retailing that would sweep the globe. His first few stores in Sacramento were the laboratory experiments; San Francisco at Columbus and Bay was the big city. Key to his success was his own love of music. He could be seen on the side of the stage two weekends ago at the B.R. Cohn Winery benefit in Sonoma snapping photographs. "He was always in it for the music," Haynes says.

"That's what I liked about working with him," Trager says. "He talked music."

"I was the only promo man who ever came up to Sacramento and worked the store. I came and said, 'These are my new releases,' " Trager says. "If Russ liked something, he'd go all out for it. He'd play it in the stores. He'd tell his people to play it in the stores. He'd try to break acts."

He also remembered friends. When Trager came out of rehab -- years after he, Perasso and Solomon used to look at the future site of San Francisco's first Tower Records over the rim of a cocktail glass -- he had to start working his way up in the business all over again. He put together a partnership to promote alternative rock on independent labels and was getting airplay on college radio stations, not exactly the big-money wheelhouse of the record biz.

Solomon gave Trager an end rack in all the stores to display whatever he wanted. "Do you know what record companies would pay for that? There were guys coming up to me saying, 'How did you get that? We spend millions.' "

ah right, CDs killed Tower

???? Even if you counted the outlet and the book/video stores, it still wouldn't add up to three blocks.

on another note, i also set foot in one of the last remaining dr. wax stores (i think the only remaining record store (i.e. not borders or b&n) in evanston, though maybe 2nd hand tunes is still around). i was struck by how pitiful it was while flipping through the vinyl. going by the dates on the price tags (y'know the ones on the top that read like "10 06" or "3 28 98"), there were albums in there that hadn't sold in 3, 5, 8 years -- with the same price tag on them. again, i bought nothing.

!!?@?@?!@?!$JKL$%&$*

They might still be around if they kept this policy. They thought they could get by on size alone but with list pricing. I stopped going in the mid 90s mainly because of the price but also discovered Amoeba in Berkeley, the only one at the time.

Sure, most standard rock/pop is still a rip off but now's the time to swipe through all those dance comp imports, those sound effects CDs, the budget classical, the oldies soul, all the gazillion Tower Special Edition DVD's like Napolean Dynamite, or what not. Sadly, I'm now starting to notice that good stuff is getting harder to find now.

i was specifically talking about Amoeba, but it's a great idea for anyone else to try...

one of my priorities in life has been to avoid turning into a vinyl figure dork, but i think that fowler's stuff is irresistibly cute, and this compilation really is the shit, isn't it??

half.com has really turned me into a cheapskate ...

it's really good...not that there's a shortage of psych-pop/exotica comps out there at the moment, but this one is a bit broader than most, as has shouldn't-fit-in-but-does stuff like Clarence "Frogman" Henry and The Rattles that I've never heard before...

I doubt there is a limit on some stuff (magazines, crappy shelfing, 12"s, etc) but I doubt that the discount for pop/rock, etc, will go higher than 70-75% unless all that's left is unsellable crap.

Lots of the box sets at that store and at the DC store are gone, although they have a sign up in the VA store that new stuff is coming in from their warehouse every day. I'm skeptical that there's much left in a warehouse--or at least much left of anything but real popular stuff.

All New Order is sold out already at the Tower in Seattle/Lower QA. (although they may stock more later.)

Tower's liquidators are pulling off a great scheme here, I have to admit.

The only domain left where there can be finds still? African.

(ohseattlepaws, etc.)

papa m, "papa m sings" (seanote) cd
rose tattoo, "scarred for life" (repertoire) cd
cristina, "sleep it off" (ze) cd
caspar brotzmann, "mute massaker" (thirsty ear) cd
bodeco, "callin' all dogs" (safe house) cd
windy and carl, "the dream house/dedications to flea" (kranky) 2cd
rufus thomas, "stax profiles" (stax) cd

$67 at 40% discount

also found roky erikson 2cd, lizzy mercier descloux cd, scott walker "the drift" cd various other good things that i already have.

wtf morbs you put back the roky 2cd?!?!? you're insane!!!!

I almost took the Rufus T tho.

and I didn't even get to the DVD store!

Strangely enough, they had at least 20 copies of the Melvins out of print 10 Songs CD (not the 26 Songs version)

Does anyone know the close date of this store by chance?

Sigh, I know. At this point, the only reason I want it is just for anthological reasons i.e. hey, kid, here is where the gang totally misfired, etc. I still don't have it because I refuse to pay more than a buck for it, although I see it used all the time but for $8 or something and never any less.

don't rub it in, brian!

no word on close date yet.

hacienda classics 3xCD $20
fierce freestyle 3xCD $13
melchior productions 2xCD $5
villalobos - au harem blahblah $5
the glimmers eskimo mix $4
2manydjs #9 $4
the fall - slates $3
alter ego - transphormer $4
shitmat - english breakfast $4
mark one - one way $4
grime 2 comp on rephlex $4

i looked at that today. ended up getting Scott 3 and Scott 4 for less than $20, though. there's still much to be had, but i'm waiting for the 50-60% off daze.

isn't thanksgiving uh thursday?

i saw that sacchrine trust cd there, brian!

anyway, somehow the schulze + tangerine dream reissues i wanted to grab are gone now, but i did get a copy of "zeit" and a copy of "alpha centauri" for 7 bucks each. not great, but whatever ...

they still have like 5 copies each of all of the soul jazz comps i don't own and the get physical releases. and a bunch of other dance import stuff that looks vaguely buyable. and a cluster disc i don't have. and they're all single discs marked at tower's default import price of $28.99. hey, at 50% off, they're down now to what i would be willing to pay for them if i was rich!

are they not serious about liquidating, or what?

isn't thanksgiving uh thursday?

I can't figure out your post, stencil. But yes, Thanksgiving is happening on Thursday this year. I might go before Thanksgiving, like maybe Wednesday, to avoid the Friday-Saturday retail frenzy.

Man, they have a LOTTA War of the Worlds DVDs.

I've been through 4 different Tower locations during this sale.

I'm confident that they will have tons of this particular CD left at the end. It may be all that is left, actually.

Sly and the Family Stone - Back on the Right Track
Phyllis Hyman - The Essence of Phyllis Hyman
Leonard Cohen - Death of a Ladies Man
Rob Base & DJ E.Z. Rock - It Takes Two
Jack Dangers - Loudness Clarifies
Superlongevity Four
Isolée - Western Store
Pharoah Sanders - Karma
Yello - Solid Pleasure
Mouse on Mars - Varcharz
Chick Corea/Return to Forever - No Mystery
John Coltrane - Live at the Village Vanguard Again!
The Ornette Coleman Trio - At the Golden Circle Stockholm

Hehe, I snagged this as well (V. 2)

Not much left in classical music but rude people with backpacks.

Mark my words, it will be the deluxe boxed edition of the new RHCP cd.

Harry Taussig - Fate is Only Once
Henry Flynt - Raga Electric (they had a few other Flynt titles including both volumes of Hillbilly Music)
Michael Hurley - Blueberry Wine (have needed this since selling my "First Blues" on the Bay)
Jerry Yester and Judy Henske - Farewell Aldebaran

also from Blues I picked up

Otis Rush - All Your Love I Miss Loving: Live at Wise Fools Pub

(all 40% off)

Paul Westerberg - Open Season (soundtrack)
Johnny Cash -- Personal File
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band -- s/t
Billy Joe Shaver -- Restless Wind (1973-1987)
The Mountain Goats -- Get Lonely
Dead Kennedys -- Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (re-issue)
Charlie Patton -- Primeval Blues, Rags, and Gospel Songs
Destroyer's Rubies
The DFA Remixes Chapter One
Billy Joe Shaver -- Billy and the Kid
The Firesign Theatre -- Shoes for Industry!
June Carter Cash -- The Best of June Carter Cash
Willie Nelson -- The Complete Atlantic Sessions
Mississippi Fred McDowell -- I Do Not Play No Rock 'n' Roll (Complete Session Recordings)
The Golding Institute -- Final Relaxation
The Undertones -- True Confessions (Filed under: Blues)
Steve Martin -- The Steve Martin Brothers

Blues and Country sections >>>>>> everything else

also both patty waters cd's, which i JUUUUUST couldnt pull the trigger on.

-- hstencil (hstenc!...), November 21st, 2006. (hstencil)

yeah youve been big-uppin that - ill let you know what i think

-- Smegma Pi (plsmit...), November 22nd, 2006 3:06 AM. (plsmith) (later)

d'oh, YOU LOSE.

BTW THIS EM-BRO-YO CD IS SWEET

That's why I was super-psyched to find stuff by Taussig, Flynt, Henske/Yester, etc. And all without having to set foot on the north side thank god.

my vote for last record standing is the Bronson Arroyo CD...

Toots & the Maytals Funky Kingston/In The Dark
Downbeat The Ruler: Studio One Instrumentals
Dream Babes 5: Folk, etc
Thomas Mapfumo Spirits To Bite Our Ears: THe Singles Collection
Funkadelic Let's Take It To The Stage

$45 including tax and all.

This was posted on former industry bizzer Bob Lefsetz's e-mail thing:

A related recent circumstance involved many now former Tower Records employees.

Several hoarded the prime CDs and hid them in stores nationwide.

During the liquidation the best CDs were likely above anyone shopping the stores
hidden in the ceiling panels. Employees stayed on past Tower's handing over to
the liquidation companies at lower wages until the store closed, and then bought
that product at over 90% off on closing day. Odds are they all ended up on Ebay,
Amazon, or in used bins where those employees made a decent profit...

Wouldn't be in the least surprised.

wouldn't be in the least offended by this either.

makes me wanna sneak into the still-vacant Harvard Square location to see if any of those stashes remain...

wouldn't be in the least offended by this either.

Not in the least!

In memory of the one year anniversary of the final sales date. Or something like that.

Tower Records in Shibuya, Tokyo (and Shinjuku) still standing tall!

Tower sold their rights to the name and business in Japan years ago. It's not the 'same' Tower.

That would be why then. They don't seem to have deviated much from the original Tower template over here. Can't say I buy much from them but they can make for a nice browsing environment when I've had my fill of the (excellent) Disc Union shops.

WHY CAN'T THEY BE GOING OUT OF BUSINESS FOREVER?!?!

Never forget. (Someone good with photoshop please post crying bald eagle with Tower Records graphics.)

When did the Tower store at Piccadilly close? It was replaced by Virgin when I was there in October 2000.

http://towerrecordsproject.org/

Create kick-off event to announce the project, website, and fundraising efforts.

Subsequent year plans look ambitious

As a former Tower employee who stayed on until the very end, can I say that that "project" is a little nauseating?

The whole philosophy of the company in at least the last ten years of its existence was to cater towards the serious music fan, but they paid their employees minimum wage (or as close to it as they could get away with). So that's how you ended up with the scenario of people behind the counter that hated their jobs and knew very little about the products they were selling. They weren't paid to be the manifesto of the "No Music, No Life / Know Music, Know Life" philosophy. They were paid to be bodies that took your money.

Going back through this thread and reading through (yes, the whole thing) the events as they unfolded was bittersweet. When the second bankruptcy was announced in the Summer of 2006, we were all told that there was nothing to worry about, the company would not be sold to a liquidator.

All of the distributors finally cut Tower's credit line in June. For years (at least the entire time I was there from summer 2004 onwards), the company's philosophy was to order a massive amount of catalogue releases, price them for cheap and hope to turn a bit of profit. In the meantime, when the next month rolled around, every store would take all of its unsold catalogue stuff from the previous month's sale and send it back to the distributors for credit. As you can imagine, this got extremely out of hand. As an example, in the store where I worked, we were basically changing out one-third to one-half of the store's entire stock every month. Little money was made or lost. It was basically breaking even because it was a plan that was seemingly designed to do that, and nothing else.

As far as employees hoarding the good stuff. . . yeah, it happened. A lot. Unauthorized extra discounts, clerks ringing up their buddies for one CD and then letting them take ten, hiding secret stashes in unknown portions of the store to buy on the last day at 95% off or whatever. . . yes, all of that. I never stole or assisted anyone in stealing — I did stash stuff, but I technically paid for it. There was no extra benefit for me sticking around until the end, so that was my parting gift to myself.

But yeah, this new "Tower Project". . . forgive me if I roll my eyes aggressively at that whole idea. It stopped being that "No Music, No Life / Know Music, Know Life" kind of store long before they were in any sort of financial trouble.

I miss the free monthly Pulse magazine they published every month (until their last few years, which is part of why I went there less frequently thereafter). They really should have had tiered pricing, discounting the big hits and catalog items to compete with the discounters that used them as loss leaders. I went to Tower only for obscure stuff that Best Buy or the strip-mall record store didn't sell.

I have some fairly good memories of making a day out of The Strand, Tower Records on Broadway and Other Music. At the same time, I can't say I have intense nostalgia for Tower. It was probably the best of the chains, by far. It had a lot of listening stations and a good selection. But the employees usually didn't know much and the store didn't have the greatest vibe -- very institutional and impersonal. I miss the days of spending hours in record shops in general, and Tower was a place I often did that, so to that extent I miss it, but I don't really care about this project tbh.

I always liked HMV more

Not sure if this was posted on another thread--amazing footage of Tower Records from 1971.

http://archive.org/details/casacsh_000018

I was never in there. But it looks to be pretty close to how I remember Sam the Record Man from the '70s.

There's a certain sameness to the testimonials in All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records, but it was actually better than I expected, mostly because of Russ Solomon. Glad I got a chance to work in a downtown record store for a couple of years just as vinyl was beginning to disappear ('86-88). For the decade before that, I spent half my waking hours in record stores; like Keaton in Sherlock Jr., I wanted to climb into the old footage of the store in the '70s and spend a few years browsing those $1.77 and $2.77 bins. I wish there had been even more time spent on the '70s--the film kind of blurs the years between the advent of the LP and the launch of MTV--but very good on the forces that brought everything to a close. Solomon visiting one of the still-thriving Japanese stores (with George Harrison's title song playing overtop) made for a nice ending.

By advent of the LP, I mean the moment in the mid-'60s when it starts to overtake 45s as a consumer object.

And RIP to the man. There are worse ways to bow out:

http://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article203542104.html

oh wow, RIP

Indeed.

So many great memories of Tower Records in Boston and New York... Late night runs in desperate hope they have that album I just read about, in-store signing with Andy Partridge, many many "I can't believe they have this" CDs that still mean a great deal to me, most of my original Flying Nun discs from their incredibly well-stocked import section.

I love the modern convenience of Amazon, Discogs, etc but the tactile browsing experience was critical to my musical development.

92 years old.

Many fond memories of the DC store

We didn't get one in Toronto until the mid-'90s. Vinyl was finished by then, and I only occasionally bought used CDs. So I think I set foot in it--a pretty big space on Yonge St.--no more than once or twice. It closed down after around five years.

Crossposted from the US politics thread...

An anecdote from the 1990s that illustrates how Donald Trump thinks about money and his almost comical obsession with being cut in on profits he thinks he's entitled to. (Provided by someone who witnessed it)

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) May 9, 2018

It’s back (I guess) – selling difficult-to-browse vinyl, CDs, etc. via mail order: https://towerrecords.com/

I love everything about this, including the late 90s site design

they have an entire category just for colored vinyl.

Surprised this popped up as "news" this week, did they have an official launch or something? This has definitely been up and going for at least six months, but I found it so clunky that I never did more than a quick peek at it in the past.

It's hella clunky... try searching for an artist w/a large discography, and enjoy an endless scroll of big, duplicative cover-art squares, with no info except price (until you click into each one).

also - Dylan's first album is credited to The Band: https://towerrecords.com/products/bob-dylan-bob-dylan-6

their database is probably full of errors like that (unless I really "got lucky" with my random pick).

Artist + album search seems to work fine

dece prices

*squints*

https://variety.com/2023/music/news/tower-records-brooklyn-pulse-magazine-1235546808/

Also, for history: the sandbox thread where we ran down the final days of the actual chain is here:

https://sandbox.ilxor.com/sandbox/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?action=showall&boardid=142&threadid=84

it seems weird that they’d *start* the relaunch on the East coast since (to me) it’s such a west coast name? idk

(Cross posting myself from the podcasts thread)

I have been mainlining 2500 DelMonte Street - The Oral History of Tower Records. Capital-R Rockist and heavy on inside baseball talk and can often stray into a a therapeutic debriefs - especially when the guests talk about the end of the company. You could skip much of that, unless you want to know more about how 21st Century predatory capitalism works.

OTOH, the stories are totally insane. For starters, look for any episodes about the Sunset Blvd. store if you want to know more about situations like: Prince showing up and wanting to play a midnight show, Brian Wilson opening his bathrobe and peeing all over someone's Mustang convertible, Keith Moon really really wanting to drive the double-decker bus that's parked at the back of the lot. Don Rickles shows up to buy albums. So does Sinatra. So does the Shah of Iran. Iggy Pop is trying to make a collect call but the operator doesn't believe the name so Iggy is shouting "P-O-P POP"

Tower was the only record store I ever wanted to work at - all through the 1980s the El Toro store was my main hangout. An unimaginable number of times when is seemed that the best decision in life was to grab a carne asada burrito at Carmels at the other side of the parking lot and then walk it off inside Tower. I can detail, at length, my bike there from Laguna to get a copy of Scary Monsters when it went on sale. The hilarious pileup of fans when Pink Floyd's A Delicate Sound Of Thunder and Rush's Hold Your Fire were released on the same day. I saw the Dream Syndicate there in 1982. I wish I had video of the T.S.O.L. gig that was shut down by the cops. The 10pm to midnight crew played the best albums: The Dreaming, Avalon, Head Over Heels, A Kiss In The Dreamhouse, Big Science onandonandonandon. All of them I first heard on that monster 300W stereo system on demo from Pacific Stereo who conveniently just happened to be next door.

That line that folks use: we didn't know just how great it was? Good fucking grief...

My boss was in Tokyo and got me a bright yellow Tower Records Shubiya t-shirt (I guess the only remaining stores are in Japan?). Fun thing to wear...

I worked at the Tower at 4th and Broadway in Manhattan for a few months in the early 90s. As jobs go, it was easy, but paid almost nothing, especially for NYC. On the plus side, it was a great place for celebrity sightings, as well as in-store appearances. The highlight had to be an in-store performance by Nirvana just as Nevermind came out. They played for about 45 minutes, and the lasting impression I have of them was that they were really fucking loud.

Slash worked/shoplifted at tower

My boss was in Tokyo and got me a bright yellow Tower Records Shubiya t-shirt (I guess the only remaining stores are in Japan?).

I'm not very nostalgic about record stores but walking through Tower Records in Shibuya was awesome. Where I got my copy of Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana

On my first visit to Tokyo, I was delighted to have to walk past a mini Tower Records in the concourse leading to Shiodome Metro station every day for a week, it was very well stocked and I bought a bunch of Shiina Ringo there too!

I do have to say, I met Russ Solomon, and he was quite creepy.

Yeah, after listening to enough of these episodes I'm content to have been a happy customer