FAREWELL, TOWER RECORDS
By George Petersen
A little part of us all is going away, never to return. As the candle burns down on the once-powerful Tower Records chain and the ongoing bankruptcy sales continue to clear the shelves, the music world is going to be a sadder place. But it’s nothing new: record store chains have come and gone over the years, but Tower was different—and with more than 200 locations worldwide, still managed to maintain a modicum of soul.
Tower was certainly not the same as other record chains. I hardly felt any swelling of emotion when Wherehouse Records disappeared some years back. And even in a day of cookie-cutter retailing, most Tower stores had a vibe—the Hollywood store was nothing like the Greenwich Village location or San Francisco’s North Beach store, which were nothing like Tower’s stores in London, Tokyo or Buenos Aires. And unlike the megachains where aisle after aisle would be filled up the same new mainstream release, Tower had stores with a real diversity where variety and selection actually meant something. You could actually spend hours shopping and discover a wealth of interesting releases, rather than a spoonfed list of 20 of this week’s chart toppers.
Don’t worry about the loss of Tower—you can still get yer fill of music at Wal-Mart or Target or Starbucks—but I doubt any of these suppliers will have a section devoted to Soca music or pre-bop or serious classical or soundtracks that weren’t penned by Andrew Lloyd Weber. And good luck finding something that carries anything with a PMRC “explicit lyrics” label there, either—everything will be white-picket fence clean in the new frontier…
No, I’m not implying that Tower was somehow the great savior of the industry, and there are at least some areas with cool indie stores that have good stuff, but even those are becoming closer to being part of an endangered species. Sure, there’s no shortage of music download sites (even some legal ones) and you can still buy physical product over the ‘net, but I’d hate to have to be the one to describe to future generations, anthropologists and historians what it was like actually visit a record store.
When not working on Mix stuff, George Petersen records and performs with the SF Bay Area-based rock band ARIEL. Check ‘em out at www.jenpet.com.
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What do YOU think?
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October 16th, 2006 @ 10:49 pm
There were times I would walk into a Tower Records and be a little dis-heartened that an album I wanted was considerably more expensive there then in several other stores. Part of me always had difficulty walking in there and buying the album I wanted, without thinking I might be able to get a better deal. I think, in part, this was Tower Records un-doing.
Despite those facts, there were still my favorite store to shop at. I almost never bought something that wasn’t on-sale, but I always looked at everything anyway. They carried everything I could have wanted, and albums I never knew existed. This is an unfortunate blow to the Indie music community.
October 17th, 2006 @ 5:20 pm
I remember the first time visiting Tower in NYC back in the 1980’s. The A&R guy I was working with at CBS brought me in to give me a gift for a job well done after some album work. It was quite a treat; I felt like the entire universe of music recordings existed in a single place and I was a kid again looking at the amazing amount of recordings that existed on earth.
The demise of Tower tells us those times have passed and we have arrived in a place where the carrier media of the music (vinyl and plastic) is truly on its way to becoming transparent.
Like most of the people I talk to about this, I hold this as a historical marker; an event that was inevitable and is now set as part of our recording industry heritage.