Posted on 10/07/2006 1:08:21 AM PDT by Proud_USA_Republican
WILMINGTON, Del. — After a lengthy auction stretching over two days, a federal bankruptcy judge on Friday approved the sale of California-based Tower Records to Great American Group, which plans to liquidate the music retailer.
After almost 30 hours of what attorneys described as "robust" and "vigorous" bidding, Great American won with an offer of $134.3 million, beating Trans World Entertainment, which had hoped to continue operating at least some Tower stores.
Peter Gurfein, an attorney representing Tower Records, said the company will be sold for an aggregate of $150 million, including the sale of various leases and properties.
Gurfein said Great American plans to begin the liquidation process and going out of business sales today, which eventually will result in the elimination of the jobs of some 3,000 Tower employees.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
I remember that big roliong paper on "Big Bambu", and on "Los Cochinos", you pull the cover out and see all that weed stashed inside the car door.
When I was hired at Tower (San Diego) in 1979, I never thought I'd see this day come. Regardless how or why it did, this is the passing of an icon of the retail music business. Tower was by far the best chain record store in the business.
I have those stored somewhere.
I remember buying records on Oahu pressed by "The 49th-State Record Company"—I've kept one as a curio.
Too bad Hawaii became the 50th state! LOL!
But then my memory from the sixties might be, uh, fuzzy.
You're entitled to your opinion.
Yeah, very late 60's/very early 70's...
Yeah. It was the only time of my life I lived outside the United States.
I stopped patronizing the local Tower Records when they ditched most of their classical section and replaced it with porn.
I have to agree. Long before mp3 players and filesharing networks became popular, I could see the writting on the wall.
Stores like circuit city and best buy were able sell their cd's and dvd's for atleast a few dollars less than Tower Records. The last couple times I was in a tower records, the prices were just ridiculous.
Tower's decline happened just as Best Buy and Wal-Mart began their very rapid expansion from the middle 1990's on. Given the number of Best Buy and Wal-Mart stores in the USA now, these two chains could buy CD's and DVD's in HUGE quantities that made them eligible for major discounts from the record company or movie studios' home video division.
My daughter worked at a large Tower Store in Paramus NJ for about a YEAR. She was the only one without piercings , shocking pink or green hair or tattoos. One of the reasons Tower hired those types is because few big stores would, given their clientele: the clerks , knowing it was Tower or nothing, agreed to work for peanuts, basically minimum wage. A true dead-end job, even for the committed and knowledgable among them. This talk about Tower liquidating has been going around for at least two years. One of my best friends did the monthly cartoon "Musical Legends" for their excellent music mag PULSE, which was one of the first things to get cut, seems like more than five years ago at least. I knew then that they were in trouble.
They were on the Channel 11 morning news in New York a few days ago.
Video file available in 'Celebrity Interview' box:
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