The image accompanying this post should be a giant, frowning emoticon, but instead it’s nothing — an emptiness similar to what many music lovers are feelin’ inside. Beloved retailer Tower Records sold liquidation rights Friday to an evil-sounding firm called the Great American Group. Each of the bankrupt chain’s 89 stores will shut down.
You know what that means. Put your illegal downloads on hold (better yet, leave them going and delete any possible duplicates later!) and run on out to your local Tower to commiserate with other people who just ”got” the store and everything it stood for. Not to mention: cheap tunes!
Everyone must have a fun Tower memory to share. I’m a loser, so mine involves falling asleep in a crouch position after becoming engrossed (but apparently not too much) in one of the hundreds of cool indie magazines they carry and missing my ride home because it takes way more than the thumping bass of ”Rhythm is a Dancer” to wake me back up.
Yours must be better. What is it? And with Virgin Megastore emerging as the most prominent deep-catalog chain, what does this mean for the music industry?
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I’ll miss Tower. in 1984 I blew my entire first real paycheck in Tower on Mercer Street in Seattle. It took me four hours to pick out exactly what I wanted, but I loved every minute of it. (And for the record, I bought Styx, The Cars, Quiet Riot, Tina Turner, and yes – Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Hey, it was 1984!)
My Tower memory is from about 1986, when I was 16 years old. Emo Philips was signing copies at their store around the Broadway/Lafayette area of his comedy album (yes, album, not CD!)I went with my best friend, Merrill. She bought his album, I bought a Sid Vicous/Eddie Cochran album and had him sign that for me (yes, very classy of me, I know!) Anyway, he was a sport and signed it “Dear Rose, I want to pluck you.” (Just an aside, I pulled a similar stunt with John Waters at a Borders about 5 years ago, he signed it too, but unlike Emo who was actually kind of impressed with my moxy, Mr. Waters was tres un-amused, judging from the very dirty look he was giving me as he signed my magazine!)
I still have my Emo signed album cover and I’m still best friends with Merrill, but otherwise a lot has changed. Alas poor Tower, we knew ye well!
O MY GOD….l-l-love this blog!
The nearest Tower Records from where I lived was about 30 miles away; I loved going there with my other teenage cousins because it was the only place I could find 12 inch record. For those of you too young to know the lovely 12 inch (now that I’m out, 12 inches means something completely different, but still as exciting)was 1 record of several different versions of one song. The Cover Girls, Expose, Trinere, Seduction, and Sweet Sensation were the best 12 inch records to buy.
Also, Tower was the only place I could go sneek a dirty mag and peek through.
Not gonna miss it though, haven’t been in one for years; especially with iTunes available and illegal downloads ; )
My fave Tower memory was a Cyndi Lauper in-store appearance about five years ago at the Dallas store. She only did about four songs. But the timid crowd singalong to “She Bop” was priceless. It started out weak, probably because everybody knew the song was about masturbation, but it finally grew into a rousing crowd singalong.
You’ll be missed Tower. I may have to get a life now.
I feel like a grade-A loser… my “best” Tower experience was finding a great price on the 1776 DVD a few years back.
Uh, no. No regrets about Tower Records closing. This arrogant chain was consistently WAY overpriced and behind the curve. Over the years, its bin selections became less impressive, and customer service was atrocious. The Intenet provides endless, cheaper alternatives to every product and service Tower offered. This franchise became an irrelevant relic at least a decade ago, even before the file-sharing revolution. Glad it’s out of its misery. Good riddance.
That is sad news. Mostly because the only record store I ever go into to buy music these days (Target and Best Buy don’t count) is the Tower on Market Street in San Francisco, in the Castro. Though I mostly go there because of the large import selection they have (since Virgin in SF now has so little). But, the store can’t be sustained on imports and found memories alone and, in the end, the records stores, along with the record companies, only have themselves to blame.
what, Tower Records, Gone? I remember losing my virginity in one of those… oh, wait, that was a Virgin Megastore… the book section… how ironic….
This is really sad. One of the reasons why I take a commuter train to downtown Chicago is to visit Tower Records on Wabash, and another one on N. Clark..(I think that is the location).
Anyways, I am nowhere near 40, but I am old enough to remember buying 45’s and 33’s with my allowance growing up. I also remember playing my father’s records on the record player and stacking them. Then I remember listening to my grandmother’s phonograph (listening to Tommy Dorsey, I think his name is with them big bands). Wow! People tell me that I should not always save money because I can’t take it with me when I die, but I would sure love to take that phonegraph along.
Anyways, going to Tower records was fun because I would always look for imports, and look through the $10.00 cd bin of my favorite artists and songs. It reminded a lot of the “33″, “45″ era.
I feel bad for the young generation missing out on the great experiencek, and joys of waiting and searching for their favorite songs and artists.
One more thing, please ignore my typing errors. The fond memories caused me to mess up
.
My best friend dated this guy who worked at Tower Records, and although they’d only been dating for a couple of months, he gave me the Toy Story “Toy Box” set for Christmas. I’m guessing he was one of the reasons Tower went out of business?
no towers records around here but closest thing was camalot music at the mall i used to sit in there & play atari
It’s so sad…all the record stores are closing. I miss hunting for records, bargains.
Actually in Canada here we had Tower Records but they closed years ago.
I liked visiting the Tower Records in New York but the last time I was there, I could tell it was on its last leg.
Record stores will be obsolete in three to five years.
May 28. 1993. 1:14 am. Prom Night. Tower on Sunset. Prom was a bust: hated my private valley school, hated my dress (mom’s pick), hated my date (a gay friend) and therefore, after-prom sucked big time (gay friend/date invited his boyfriend to the party). My limo-mates were too high or too drunk to be entertaining, so I called my real friends south of Pico to rescue me. They did. Tried to crash a club, then to landed in Carneys for burgers, and on to Tower. Why? It was too early to go home, what with the no curfew/prom night free pass, and too late to catch up with the prom idiots. Thumbed thru all the cds, requested songs be played, ran up and down the aisles, talked trash about the celebs in the mags, laughed at the silliest things. The workers pretended to be irritated. Bought the “Slam” maxi single by Onyx. Broke the heel to my $159 prom shoes, sweated out my hair and ran my mascara from laughing so much. But it was all good. That small, cramped, smelly space made an otherwise miserable night fun.
This bites. No particular Tower memory, but they always had the best prices for CD and remix singles and they went through a cycle when they were trying to get rid of their VHS titles where I could pick up movies like “Fanny and Alexander” for five bucks.
Sigh…..
My favorite Tower memory is when they decided to launch a string of multi-media stores, including books. This rocked the book industry where I worked with fears that Tower and other multi-media stores would take over and kill/change all bookstores, etc. As it turned out, Tower had to close most of their multi-media stores several years later. Guess they continued to have problems.
I grew up in Sacramento California, where the first Tower Records was and still is, so it’s always been a part of my life when buying records and books, and as a place of employment for my friends. I have many, many memories of the store…but my overall impression of the place: the employees steal like it’s a god-given-right; they’re incredibly rude–everyone there thinks they’re somehow cool for working there–(maybe because they’ve taken the whole store home with them and now have a killer cd, dvd and book collection?!); and their prices are higher than most everyone else. Yeah, they’re great when you’re looking for something rare and you don’t mind the price, but for a new release, I’d go anywhere but there! It is too bad though, because as an idea–”the cool record store”–it’s becoming a thing of the past. But they did it to themselves.
Growing up in boredom central, Concord, Calif., our local Tower mega-store was an oasis of weird in a sea of conformity. Record store/head shop/book store all-in-one. Before MTV there was the poster section in Tower to teach us how to look cool. The friendly hippie behind the counter sold us our pipe screens and the book section taught us about cult films and serial killers. R.I.P. Tower Records.
I used to work at the Tower Records in Boston on Newbury Street before it became a Virgin Megastore in 2001. I have a lot of great memories from working there. Going around the corner to the Pour House and getting a little liquored up on lunch hour and coming back and starting a karaoke session in the middle of the video floor. Pretending I didn’t work there when someone asked me if I did and I was standing behind the counter. Getting our boss to buy us all 40s on a Friday night because we were too young to buy them ourselves. Creepy men who would return their porn videos 6 months late (gross)! That was an excellent place to work…unfortunately, you can’t tell any future employers you worked there, something about lacking “people skills” and “proper customer service.” Sad…
I friend of mine called me saying that he was passing Tower Records and seeing that they were closing. I can’t say I’m surprised. They’ve filed bankruptcy so many times it was only a matter of when the final curtain would fall.
Just an FYI: An album is a collection of songs, no matter what format it is presented in – vinyl, CD, DVD, whatever.
I used to work at a Mom and Pop record store in MI and when Tower came in, it closed us down. TOWER IS EVIL! All I can say is KARMA!
This is truly the end of an era, not just for record stores, but for the album as well. I would not be into music today at all were it not for tower records. You will be sorely missed. My friends find it amazing that not that long ago, I actually bought vinyl records. Now in a few years, people will be amazed that I went to an actual store to buy a CD with 12 songs on it. What is this world coming to? Tower was an oasis in a sea of impersonal chain stores that only focus on new releases and the hottest artists. Farewell, Tower, thanks for the memories.
I still cannot believe. I mean…This is too much! It was joy of my life hunting for records and bargains, sharing thoughts and info with music lovers at stores, listening to music coming out from much better speakers than I have at home……I will be miss you alot…We should slow down before computer, internet, digital, etc. take up our place…Sometimes, there are things that should not change or disappear. Somethings really wrong…!
Though I grew up with Tower and I like that they carry so many zines, the place is really overpriced. I don’t know why this article wants to pretend otherwise. A little sad, yes. Devastating? Hardly.
meridia
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Reading these blogs, one thing was clear Tower suck big time at customer service. My experience was recently with tower.com I ordered a DVD set which was on promotion, it arrived damaged, I returned it for a replacement 8 weeks and many emails no replacement came, but they refund my credit card, which I did not want. on calling them they refuse to honor there promotion price which is $30 cheaper than the selling price today, had they refunded my credit card when they received the return I would have had time to re-buy the set at the promotional price. They suck!!!!!
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