All Things Must Pass-The Rise and Fall of Tower Records

[rickawakeman]

Watched this great but heart-breaking documentary over the weekend since we had a free "Watchathon". I recommend it to anyone who is lamenting the demise of brick-and-mortar record stores and curious about the confluence of events which led to many a store or chain's demise. I'm fortunate to live in a town with several record stores but I still miss the deep-stocking at Tower.

[walt]

Many an hour and many a shekel i spent at Tower in NYC, in the Village and uptown stores(but mostly in the Village).A sad day when it went toes up.

[strawberrybrick]

No trip to NYC was complete without a trip to the Tower Records in the Village. We had a nice one here in Chicago too, on Clark St.

[Jefferson James]

I have some friends who worked at the Tower on Sunset (LA) and, man, the stories these dudes can tell. Like opening the store at 3AM so Prince could shop in peace. Ditto Michael Jackson. Insane. Gotta check the doc out.

[Lopez]

Definitely want to see it. We had a great Tower in Boston. Several floors. Excellent video selection, too. They even had stars in the sidewalk out front for local acts that made it big such as J. Geils and New Kids on the Block.

[dropforge]

Killer docu. Colin didn't blow past the real reason Tower got closed, either (it wasn't due to Tower not selling used media, but that did contribute to its decline).

The ending is an eye-opener. To think there are that many Tower stores in Japan that exist today!

[Jubal]

I only shopped at the stores in Buckhead (uptown Atlanta) and Orlando. To be honest, I was not as impressed with either as much as I was with the Peaches and Turtles SuperStores on Peachtree.
Peaches had a gigantic Import section that was as large as the entire stock in some of the smaller Turtles stores.
There were several major reasons most box media stores closed. Illegal downloads were probably the largest reason, but most stores were already in bad shape for the following reasons:
1) Shrink due to shoplifting by employees as well as patrons.
2) Overbuying by corporate hacks. This was especially true with stores like Media Play and Circuit City.
3) Very poor quality songwriting by major artist who were given huge contracts that did not tie pay to sales.
4) Extreme overpricing on CDs for the first 5 years or so when they became available.
5) Walmart - let's face it- 90% of sales in most media stores were the Top 10-20 current hit albums, which Walmart offered at cutthroat prices.

[rcarlberg]

We've had at least one other thread devoted to All Things Must Pass in the recent past. Agree, it's a great documentary. It does not shy away from the craziness and drugs of the times, nor is it afraid to point fingers.

Tower was not my favorite record store in Seattle, but I supported at least a couple of associates salaries.

[Gruno]

This is an excellent documentary. So much info and great stories.

The same vibe and similar stories are in the doc "Atari: Game Over." Even if you're not a fan of video games, the Atari doc shows how the programmers were kings of the silicone valley. These guys would smoke weed and have crazy parties while at work developing the video games. Then the hammer fell and they were at the bottom. Such a cool doc.

[Facelift]

I liked it a lot. I mentioned it in the movies thread several weeks ago.

[GuitarGeek]

I saw this about six months ago. The thing I found interesting howt hey seemed to suggest a lot of the problesm the industry went through vis-a-vis file sharing and such, was the fault of the industry a. not bringing the prices down on CD's (which they probably could have done), and b. eliminating the single (thus making consumers pay $16.99 for a CD that has, in many cases, exactly one good song on it, and it's the song that would have been on the single, if it had existed).

When I was in the Navy (yes, I know, but it's true), I shopped regularly at the Tower on Sports Arena Blvd in San Diego. I remember being astounded by some of the stuff I saw there on CD, lots of imports, first place I ever saw any actual Magma albums, etc. I remember buyign a couple Djam Karet albums there. And across the street, they had a video store, which is where I bought my copy of the Fish era Marillion video compilation.

I also remember stopping at Tower Records in NYC the first time I went there. It was like a record store that had taken over an entire shopping mall.

It always bugged me that we never got a Tower in Cleveland. Watching the documentary, it looks like there was one in every other major city in America, except Cleveland (or maybe Cleveland isn't a "major city"). Would have been nice to have been able to go there on a regular basis, especially since all of the cool record stores in my area either went out of business or otherwise went down the tubes (Record Exchange on Coventry Road is still there, I forget what they're calling themselves now, but they don't stock anything worth buying).

[Jefferson James]

"Atari: Game Over."

This is great, thanks for the heads-up.

[SteveSly]

I also watched the documentary a while back and agree it was very good. We never had a tower anywhere near where I lived, but there was one in Chicago that I used to visit when I was in the city. Seems like was at one in Orlando too.

[SteveSly]

I
5) Walmart - let's face it- 90% of sales in most media stores were the Top 10-20 current hit albums, which Walmart offered at cutthroat prices.

Around my area I would say it was a combination of Wall-Mart and Best Buy. We did not have any tower (or any of the really big chains) in my area, but I had a friend who owned an independent Brick And Mortar store for years. He survived a lot of competition, but in the end it was when Best Buy moved in that spelled the beginning of the end. They had a huge CD selection and undercut everyone in town on prices. Within about 2 years of the Best Buy opening up, just about every other record store in town was gone. Of course today even Best Buy is a shadow of what it once was from a CD standpoint.

[rcarlberg]

5) Walmart - let's face it- 90% of sales in most media stores were the Top 10-20 current hit albums, which Walmart offered at cutthroat prices.

I read once that Walmart offers CDs at a loss to get people in the store.

Huh.

Remember when people used to pay to buy music???

[SteveSly]

I read once that Walmart offers CDs at a loss to get people in the store.

Huh.

Remember when people used to pay to buy music???

Yup, Walmart has used CD's as loss leaders in the past, although they also do it with other products. It is a pretty standard practice in retail.

Years ago when I worked in the restaurant biz, we used to have specials that were actually sold at a loss, but most people also purchased drinks / pop, sides and deserts which is where we made most of our profit.

[rcarlberg]

Glass of wine for $9, yeah there's profit in it.

[Mister Triscuits]

When I was in the Navy (yes, I know, but it's true), I shopped regularly at the Tower on Sports Arena Blvd in San Diego.

Boy, did I spend many an hour at that location (as well as the other two San Diego stores). For a couple of years in the early 80s, I even worked at a medical facility on the same block, so I popped into Tower on an almost daily basis.

[JKL2000]

I spent a load of time and money at the Tower on West 4th Street in NYC, but when I found out about mail order places like Laser's Edge, SYN-PHONIC, New Sonic Architecture, etc. I was no longer buying vinyl so I moved most of my purchases to those vendors. Ironically if Tower carried more "obscure" prog they'd have kept a lot of my business. Reading and re-reading Laser's Edge catalogs took over from browsing in stores.

[arturs]

In the mid-90s when I was a grad student, the Tower in Ann Arbor MI was such a great place to be for music. There was a great indie store in town (Schoolkid's) but I liked Tower more. Such a huge selection, tons of listening stations, good prices. The staff were hugely knowledgeable back then, too. You had to take a serious music test to be hired. A friend of mine who was a big jazz fan barely passed the jazz test IIRC.

I subsequently moved to CA and the Marina Del Rey Tower was a lot of fun, too, though you could kind of tell that the end was near. The place slowly got dirtier, more unsorted cds were laying around, eventually a much smaller selection and the staff became morons (musically speaking...). I did get to meet a browsing Warren Zevon there once.

[TheLoony]

When I was in the Navy (yes, I know, but it's true), I shopped regularly at the Tower on Sports Arena Blvd in San Diego.

I'm guessing this is the one near the San Diego Sports Arena. Mildly interesting story that ties in with the Rush - Double Agent thread.

That was the first of three shows I saw on that tour and me and my buddy, both from Las Vegas, were following the other car to the arena. We only had a vague idea of where we were going when they decided to blow a stop light and leave us behind. When we got there, we couldn't figure out where we were supposed to meet them - mind you, they had the tickets so it was kind of a imperative to meet them and there were no cell phones at the time to reach them - so we parked at the Tower Records.

Thing is, that's for paying customers only. So while I went searching to find the tickets my friend went in and bought the VHS of Dream Theater's Images and Words - Live in Tokyo. I eventually found them at a rather weird bar with odd stuff pasted on the walls and model airplanes hanging from the ceiling.

Now that I've typed all that out I find it's not even mildly interesting but since I made the effort, what the hell. Post it.

[arturs]

^^^ No, it was a good story. I'm glad you posted it. I bet everyone here on PE has had one of those "so-and-so has the tickets... where the f#$^ is so-and-so?" experiences on the day of a big concert.

[Garden Dreamer]

Spent a lot of time at the two Towers on Long Island - Westbury and Huntington. Picked up so many CDs just from the Listening Stations.

[TheLoony]

^^^ No, it was a good story. I'm glad you posted it. I bet everyone here on PE has had one of those "so-and-so has the tickets... where the f#$^ is so-and-so?" experiences on the day of a big concert.

Funny thing is, the rest of the tour we followed was more interesting. Earthquake damage to freeways the month before hampered us getting to Fresno the next night and we barely made the show then the show two nights later in Sacramento, with me flying a Brazilian flag in front of the audience are pretty wild memories.

And, to boot, the reason I got those tickets is one of those chance meetings. I met the right guy at the right time. He was very weird and made me drive to California, right over the border of Nevada, to get his pot so we could smoke out(he left it in Cali so he wouldn't get busted) and on the way, he recited the whole NASA sequence of Countdown, word for word while the song was playing. Who takes the time to learn that?

I thought I was a Rush geek, this guy had me floored with his geekiness.

I remember the kid from Brazil asking me what the term cheesy meant as he didn't get that word.

[battema]

Really dug this documentary.

And yeah...when I worked at Circuit City we sold MMG (Music/Movies/Games) at a loss to try and drive traffic into stores and then upsell the customers ("hey, I bet that movie would look AMAZING on this new 72" flatscreen TV!"). Worked great for Circuit City too, don't you know...

Funny thing is, at least in Richmond the appeal of Tower wore off quickly. It was cool, but their selection rarely exceeded what I could find in a Best Buy or Borders at the same time, and usually at a better price. And Tower definitely had that "we're a big deal, so we don't have to treat you like we need to earn your business" vibe going. Plan 9 was always better for helpful advice (and a far more interesting selection IMHO).