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.

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