Buh-bye Tower Records. Times they are a changing......
Time marches on ...
Who wants to go to Tower Records to have your musical sense insulted by a the clerk, who is invariably a surly teen, emo kid, or a liberal who hasn't bathed in months? That's the kind of staff they've had at Tower Records since before I left LA.
I prefer cutting out the abuse and buying stuff from eBay or the iTunes Music Store.
The fact they haven't made records in 20 years is a pretty good clue your in the wrong business with a name like Tower Records. That, and something called an MP3.
Liquidation Sale?
Free markets punish poor businesses and reward good businesses. Tower has already been replaced by other retailers in the marketplace over they past 10 years. The 3000 jobs, and probably more, have shown up elsewhere in the economy. The auction and dissolution of Tower completes the process and allows successful businesses to redeploy what remains of Tower's assets, including its employees, in the form of new jobs.
But time and technology move on and Tower was probably the last big buggy whip company in the brick and mortar space.
I wondered when this would happen, was never able to come up with a viable model for them after technology changed.
One of the big selling albums of the 1970's had it's album cover's location as in front of Tower Records on Sunset. Name it.
Its a damn shame, Tower was the employer of several good musicians. I remember seeing many of the Gin Blossoms working at the University and Mill branch in Tempe, AZ.
Times are changing.
Record stores are going the way of the buggy whip, which used to be one of the main hangouts at the mall are going the way of the buggy whip.
Trivia: There is also a Tower Video store on Sunset where Axl Rose once worked as a night manager in the early 80's. He challenged Vince Neil to a fight in the parking lot in 1990.
Sorry Tower records...I can pick up all the tunes I want on the internet...Bye Bye...
Sad to see them go. I worked in a record store in downtown Buffalo to earn my way through school. Met a lot of famous people who were passing time in the store. Also learned that I knew nothing about music compared to some of our customers. Amazing command of facts, they had.
Mall stores are an expensive venue for any retailer. It's no surprise Tower had difficulty staying alive.
That's too bad. Tower Records is my hometown, Sacto CA, owned.
I can remember spending hours there at the store in Sac near the Tower theater browsing through record after record.
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 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!
I stopped patronizing the local Tower Records when they ditched most of their classical section and replaced it with porn.