Kinda sad, considering I spent quality time in the Tower Records in La Jolla. Reading magazines, picking up WaxPo, and buying cheap new releases. It happened to coincide with some of the best years of my college life....
So what other big retail chains are left? Virgin? Best Buy?
sad? i haven't bought a cd in tower unless it was a box set gift for someone else. fuck them for overcharging/fixing/gouging for all of those years. they were the first to charge full srp [18.99] for a new release -ripped folks off for years on end,until the fed steped in. their business model was outdated and they didn't change with the times they should have embraced file sharing and converted /upgraded/modified each store but dinosaurs have slept into distinction good fucking riddence and no i ain't mad doggie i have copped freebees from tower forever since all my pals worked their back on the day at the downtown bdway spot can you say free shoppping trips? we used to grab anything we wanted ....arms full and our man who worked on the ordering/buying side always got us thru the front door with a receipt that was not in the system it was "promo" stock hahahaha
seriously... FUCK Tower Records... they haven't even sold "records" in about 15 years like their name implies. and i used to work there back in the late 90's... they pay minimum wage, treat employees like shit, and give no benefits whatsoever.
they also re-seal all returned [mind you USED at this point] open CDs brought back by customers and sell them as NEW [at full price]... this is a very weak practice if you ask me. especially since their prices are so outrageous to begin with.. even their employee discounts suck ass.
only good thing i can say about them is that they usually had a really good CD singles section... but that's about it.
When I started to learn about music (extraordinarily late in life; after HS) the local Tower Records was a haven for me. Wheaton isn't exactly a town that welcomes artistic development, and the store, which was stuffed with a plethora of stock, odd imports, and gregarious, handmade Fome-Core cover art, allowed for Options in a town known internationally as the city with the Most Churches Per Capita (check your Trivial Pursuit cards, folls). The fact that the store didn't close its doors until 11:00 (literally the only store open in Wheaton at that time) also added to the "I'm a grownup" feeling that a Good Christian Boy of 21 needs when he's waking up and struggling out from the suffocating clutches of Jesus, Paxil, and Evangelical Parishoners. I am aware of the fact that this revelation speaks more about me than the financial efficacy of the Tower Records business model.
Granted, I almost never bought anything at Tower that wasn't drastically reduced, and that was exactly the problem. Ultimately, I'd seen this news coming (as did the rest of you folks) for about 8 years now - you can't continue to sell music at full price and expect to stay in business in the age of Wal-Mart and mp3s and P2P. File this under Lessons Learned From Sam Goody. Honestly, the sole reason why Tower was not SG, laid in the impressive breadth of their selection. Revenant box sets, Bearbricks, and Bulgarian tattoo mags were bedfellows only in Tower, the store that made up for its prices in the early days with Things You'd Only Heard About And Couldn't Possibly Buy Elsewhere. But the mark of business failure is becoming the store cats and kitties go to to sample the goods before copping them for real on Amazon or WeirdFuckingShit.com. All the discounted McFarlane toys in the world only underscore this fact.
The death of Tower Records is yet another harbinger of the death of the brick-and-mortar mainstream music store. Mark your timelines and flowcharts. Really, how many harbingers will equate to alternate music industry business models? No matter: Tower is dead; long live The Comsumer.
seriously... FUCK Tower Records... they haven't even sold "records" in about 15 years like their name implies. and i used to work there back in the late 90's... they pay minimum wage, treat employees like shit, and give no benefits whatsoever.
they also re-seal all returned [mind you USED at this point] open CDs brought back by customers and sell them as NEW [at full price]... this is a very weak practice if you ask me. especially since their prices are so outrageous to begin with.. even their employee discounts suck ass.
only good thing i can say about them is that they usually had a really good CD singles section... but that's about it.
Seriously fuck you....The only reason SOME Tower's stopped selling vinyl was because nobody was buying it. Not Tower's fault. Also once something is recorded, there is then a "record" of that incident. Therefor the name still applies and this is why they never bothered to change it. I also worked there in the mid-late 90's and found everything you said to be false. In fact our store was THE spot for hip-hop vinyl from about 1994-1999. Employees were treated fairly and YES we had medical coverage. The employee discount was the the same (or better) as most retail jobs. We had a reseal machine but our returns went back to the distributor every month. I still have some of my old sales chrats back then. If I posted a pic/scan, believe me peoples minds will be blown. AND YES I GOT MY ORIGINAL SKULLSNAPS RECORD FROM TOWER IN 1997.
They did however have, for any chain store, by far the best collection of magazines. anything you could want, get that import shit, graffiti magazines, it was the best. they even had punk zines. and its not like I was paying for them so for me it was a goldmine. I'm actually wearing shoes right now that I got for trading a Graphotism mag I got from Tower this summer.
seriously... FUCK Tower Records... they haven't even sold "records" in about 15 years like their name implies. and i used to work there back in the late 90's... they pay minimum wage, treat employees like shit, and give no benefits whatsoever.
they also re-seal all returned [mind you USED at this point] open CDs brought back by customers and sell them as NEW [at full price]... this is a very weak practice if you ask me. especially since their prices are so outrageous to begin with.. even their employee discounts suck ass.
only good thing i can say about them is that they usually had a really good CD singles section... but that's about it.
Seriously fuck you....The only reason SOME Tower's stopped selling vinyl was because nobody was buying it. Not Tower's fault. Also once something is recorded, there is then a "record" of that incident. Therefor the name still applies and this is why they never bothered to change it. I also worked there in the mid-late 90's and found everything you said to be false. In fact our store was THE spot for hip-hop vinyl from about 1994-1999. Employees were treated fairly and YES we had medical coverage. The employee discount was the the same (or better) as most retail jobs. We had a reseal machine but our returns went back to the distributor every month. I still have some of my old sales chrats back then. If I posted a pic/scan, believe me peoples minds will be blown. AND YES I GOT MY ORIGINAL SKULLSNAPS RECORD FROM TOWER IN 1997.
Damn dude - you act like Tower Records is your personal Dianetics or something.
Just a fairly lame retail chain, no need to get so worked up over the shit.
Well, look, Tower is ok for CD's & magazines, but I don't find stores like that all that hard to find. And in my local experience, the 2 Tower Records were both within a block of Newbury Comics, a local chain that had as good or better selection of CD's & magazines, and also sold new vinyl, which Tower stopped doing for the most part years ago, and at the same or cheaper prices.
In the here and now, my only complaint about Tower is that for a chain that is liquidating, having everything on "sale" at 10% off the already inflated prices is not motivating me to buy shit.
On the other hand, I am making the trek to the one near my job almost daily to try and catch the 50/60/70% markdowns that will become inevitable soon.
In the here and now, my only complaint about Tower is that for a chain that is liquidating, having everything on "sale" at 10% off the already inflated prices is not motivating me to buy shit.
On the other hand, I am making the trek to the one near my job almost daily to try and catch the 50/60/70% markdowns that will become inevitable soon.
exactly. I'm just waiting to stock up... 10% off is a joke, thats pretty much just tax exempt here in WA.
AND YES I GOT MY ORIGINAL SKULLSNAPS RECORD FROM TOWER IN 1997.
you must mean 1977 right? or am i missing something?
peace, stein. . .
Nope! 1997. At the Tower clearance center in San Diego. Along with many Black Jazz titles, Groove merchant titles, raers, etc... I still wonder what I left behind now that I am more educated about stuff and have resources like the internet etc..
In Dallas, Tower was just about the only place to score indie label titles plus you could listen to just about anything in the store if you liked. I'm sure in other music-rich cities Tower was just another record store but here in Dallas it was one or two notches above Virgin, the only other outlet around.
seriously... FUCK Tower Records... they haven't even sold "records" in about 15 years like their name implies. and i used to work there back in the late 90's... they pay minimum wage, treat employees like shit, and give no benefits whatsoever.
they also re-seal all returned [mind you USED at this point] open CDs brought back by customers and sell them as NEW [at full price]... this is a very weak practice if you ask me. especially since their prices are so outrageous to begin with.. even their employee discounts suck ass.
only good thing i can say about them is that they usually had a really good CD singles section... but that's about it.
Seriously fuck you....The only reason SOME Tower's stopped selling vinyl was because nobody was buying it. Not Tower's fault. Also once something is recorded, there is then a "record" of that incident. Therefor the name still applies and this is why they never bothered to change it. I also worked there in the mid-late 90's and found everything you said to be false. In fact our store was THE spot for hip-hop vinyl from about 1994-1999. Employees were treated fairly and YES we had medical coverage. The employee discount was the the same (or better) as most retail jobs. We had a reseal machine but our returns went back to the distributor every month. I still have some of my old sales chrats back then. If I posted a pic/scan, believe me peoples minds will be blown. AND YES I GOT MY ORIGINAL SKULLSNAPS RECORD FROM TOWER IN 1997.
Damn dude - you act like Tower Records is your personal Dianetics or something.
Just a fairly lame retail chain, no need to get so worked up over the shit.
I am not exactly gung ho Tower but that ish did piss me off. I wasn't really trying to attack dude personally. Perhaps I should have said "f*ck your temporarily lame attitude" or something a bit mellower. I had many good years there and I still have plenty of friends who still work there who will soon be unemployed and broke just in time for the holidays. Tower was a HUGE focre in the 70's for record sales. I bet most record collectors have at least one or two (if not more) records that were originally purchased from a Tower store in the 70's or 80's. Russ Solomon seemed like an alright dude the once or twice that I met him and I think it's cool how he started everything from selling records out of his dad's garden basket grocery store. Although I haven't bought anything there for quite a quile, I will indeed miss that place.
Damn dude - you act like Tower Records is your personal Dianetics or something.
Just a fairly lame retail chain, no need to get so worked up over the shit.
dude what other retailer carries the variety of zines, international magazines, and quality dvd, cd, etc.? Borders and Barnes and noble barely scratch the surface.
And don't tet AlGarth's Tower findz, truly unfadeable and amazing
Thanks to super poor management. The guy who was initially in charge of European affairs was Ken Sokolov, and his poor placements of stores (accept for the Piccadiily branch - though the rent on the space was astronomical) and shoddy business acumen was bad from the off.
Tower UK was good whilst it lasted, but I don't think it ever made money - and it should have done.
Good Riddance. I mean is it really a shocker? I will say that they did have a decent selection of things but you paid for it with the huge price tags. Someone did got rich off those prices though.
I mean with wake of the internet, you would have to be an idiot to keep shopping there.
i don't know about the states but over here in toronto, tower was the shit. they shut down years ago, but they always had the best selection, best prices, vinyl.. way better than hmv. they even had some cool instore appearances, i remember dj shadow spinning records and signing autographs in there around 1996. and i got to meet nas there when "it was written" came out. i wish i'd have gotten him to sign illmatic instead. sounds disconnected but i was 13 at that time. that's the only autograph i ever got.
That sucks. I used to go to Tower Records out in Seattle (the one right by U-Dub) when I was out in Wa. State. Copped many ill magazines and records there. I don't know of any other major retail record store that's on there level. (Barnes and Nobles gets the gas face. Well the one in Columbus, at least).
This really sucks.. Tower Records was the shit. Seriously we no longer will have any cool magazine spots in town. The records there were always shite, and overpriced. They always had the best music related toys, and books. Seriously now we don't have Tower or Virgin. Now we're stuck with barnes n noble and borders.
I think it's funny that some people are/were this passionate about Tower.
I suppose that for some of you living in smaller towns without a lot of record stores, Tower may have been like some kind of heaven-sent location for you to get your hiphop albums with parental advisory stickers on them that your local k-mart refused to sell... but when you live in a city like los angeles, you see Tower for what it is: an overpriced CD store with less than 200 records in the entire location. they may as well be a Camelot Music store in a mall. the one i worked at in 1998 had a tinyass section of two crates of 12" singles and nothing else as far as vinyl. the pay was MINIMUM WAGE with no benefits and the employee discount made things about as cheap as they cost in regular stores. the re-seals went BACK ON THE RACKS, not back to the distributors... one of my jobs there was putting CDs in their sections, you know the deal... ever wonder why a couple of the CDs in a section DONT have the white label sticker on top of the CD case??? must i specify that this was the location in west hollywood?... that alone is a retail nightmare. and yes i had to quit that job because they treated employees like shit. there was a virgin megastore down the road, and i always preferred Aron's [RIP] over both of them either way.
i can only speak from my own experience... so,
ps: don't tell me that noone would buy vinyl in los angeles... tower just refused to cater that market anymore. yes, there was a decline in vinyl sales with the dawning of CD burners and what not... but every other music store in l.a. had a vinyl section as well that would put Tower to shame. i think they just had issues with vinyl because it is harder to pass off as new when resealed.
Alan at the Tower in San Diego had the rap vinyl game on lock during the mid 90's. They were one of the only record stores in our area messing with the independent rap labels during the indy label boom at that time. Obscure, but dope indy records/releases for days.
they haven't even sold "records" in about 15 years like their name implies.
Ease up son, they still slang rackords here in Atlanta.
tower records in ATL has been known to have solid records for CHEAP, off top of my head some of mine or my homies hauls have been kool and the gang s/t, joe bataan riot (gold label), ray barretto hard hands, 2 copies of spirit of atlanta, tom scott honeysuckle breeze, tom brock, etc
and these records have been priced 3-10 dollars a piece. I'll be sad to see that location go, though ive only been there a handful of times, ive never left empty handed
we dont have one out here in pa or in my part of jersey where i grew up so going to one was a raer experience, but the times that i did roll up in there i was more then pleased. The one down on broadway in nyc had alot of ill hip hop wax that i was looking for, and had tons of magazines i used to have to order online before that. To me it was just a cool music store, vastly superior to anything that i was used to in my hometowns. It kinda sad though, we really are going thru a transition now in the way the entire music industry operates. Due to downloading, amazon, best buy and walmart, there is no way for the indie or even commerical record stores to thrive anymore. This is becoming obsolete and that kinda blows. I mean i like to roll up to my music store and browse around. get some dope clothes and mags like wax poe and mass appeal. Its a good way to kill some time. Thats going to become a thing of the past and you will have to order all your shit online. Forget bout finding indie or specialist music at best buy, only them clearchannel bangers will be on the shelfs. pretty
So, it is obvious Tower Records was different things in different areas...no Tower in my area EVER had ANY used/old vinyl, nevermind gold label Fanias or Skull Snaps
Like I said earlier, I can see where their willingness to sell zines and hip hop 12" would be great in areas where this stuff was hard to find, but where I live, they came along in the 80's and were mostly viewed as the corporate biggie delivering knockout blows to small private record & zine shops, of which we had quite a few.
It did used to be the only place in town I could get BMX Plus! though
what other retailer carries the variety of zines, international magazines, and quality dvd, cd, etc.? RIP
Agreed, where else could a 13 year old pick up a copy of High Times, B&W East Coast Underground Graff Mags, Comet Bus and a million punk zines in the middle of Hong Kong. Tower went bust years ago out here but they are still going strong in Japan. Thats one of the first places I go when I get to Tokyo.
pjl2000xl
1,795 Posts
Comments
So what other big retail chains are left? Virgin? Best Buy?
This is pretty sad.
i haven't bought a cd in tower unless it was a box set gift for someone else.
fuck them for overcharging/fixing/gouging for all of those years.
they were the first to charge full srp [18.99] for a new release -ripped folks off for years on end,until the fed steped in.
their business model was outdated and they didn't change with the times
they should have embraced file sharing and converted /upgraded/modified each store
but dinosaurs have slept into distinction
good fucking riddence
and no i ain't mad doggie
i have copped freebees from tower forever since all my pals worked their back on the day at the downtown bdway spot
can you say free shoppping trips?
we used to grab anything we wanted ....arms full and our man who worked on the ordering/buying side always got us thru the front door with a receipt that was not in the system
it was "promo" stock hahahaha
rip
they also re-seal all returned [mind you USED at this point] open CDs brought back by customers and sell them as NEW [at full price]... this is a very weak practice if you ask me. especially since their prices are so outrageous to begin with.. even their employee discounts suck ass.
only good thing i can say about them is that they usually had a really good CD singles section... but that's about it.
Ease up son, they still slang rackords here in Atlanta.
A local record clerk got fired from our Tower in the 80s for refusing to reseal returned vinyl records and sell them as new.
When I started to learn about music (extraordinarily late in life; after HS) the local Tower Records was a haven for me. Wheaton isn't exactly a town that welcomes artistic development, and the store, which was stuffed with a plethora of stock, odd imports, and gregarious, handmade Fome-Core cover art, allowed for Options in a town known internationally as the city with the Most Churches Per Capita (check your Trivial Pursuit cards, folls). The fact that the store didn't close its doors until 11:00 (literally the only store open in Wheaton at that time) also added to the "I'm a grownup" feeling that a Good Christian Boy of 21 needs when he's waking up and struggling out from the suffocating clutches of Jesus, Paxil, and Evangelical Parishoners. I am aware of the fact that this revelation speaks more about me than the financial efficacy of the Tower Records business model.
Granted, I almost never bought anything at Tower that wasn't drastically reduced, and that was exactly the problem. Ultimately, I'd seen this news coming (as did the rest of you folks) for about 8 years now - you can't continue to sell music at full price and expect to stay in business in the age of Wal-Mart and mp3s and P2P. File this under Lessons Learned From Sam Goody. Honestly, the sole reason why Tower was not SG, laid in the impressive breadth of their selection. Revenant box sets, Bearbricks, and Bulgarian tattoo mags were bedfellows only in Tower, the store that made up for its prices in the early days with Things You'd Only Heard About And Couldn't Possibly Buy Elsewhere. But the mark of business failure is becoming the store cats and kitties go to to sample the goods before copping them for real on Amazon or WeirdFuckingShit.com. All the discounted McFarlane toys in the world only underscore this fact.
The death of Tower Records is yet another harbinger of the death of the brick-and-mortar mainstream music store. Mark your timelines and flowcharts. Really, how many harbingers will equate to alternate music industry business models? No matter: Tower is dead; long live The Comsumer.
Seriously fuck you....The only reason SOME Tower's stopped selling vinyl was because nobody was buying it. Not Tower's fault. Also once something is recorded, there is then a "record" of that incident. Therefor the name still applies and this is why they never bothered to change it. I also worked there in the mid-late 90's and found everything you said to be false. In fact our store was THE spot for hip-hop vinyl from about 1994-1999. Employees were treated fairly and YES we had medical coverage. The employee discount was the the same (or better) as most retail jobs. We had a reseal machine but our returns went back to the distributor every month. I still have some of my old sales chrats back then. If I posted a pic/scan, believe me peoples minds will be blown.
AND YES I GOT MY ORIGINAL SKULLSNAPS RECORD FROM TOWER IN 1997.
Damn dude - you act like Tower Records is your personal Dianetics or something.
Just a fairly lame retail chain, no need to get so worked up over the shit.
peace, stein. . .
I highly disagree. I would go on to say, I've had more satisfying purchases (CDs and Mags) and overall good experience than at an Amoeba for example.
find stores like that all that hard to find. And in my local
experience, the 2 Tower Records were both within a block of
Newbury Comics, a local chain that had as good or better selection
of CD's & magazines, and also sold new vinyl, which Tower stopped doing
for the most part years ago, and at the same or cheaper prices.
On the other hand, I am making the trek to the one near my job almost daily to try and catch the 50/60/70% markdowns that will become inevitable soon.
exactly. I'm just waiting to stock up... 10% off is a joke, thats pretty much just tax exempt here in WA.
Nope! 1997. At the Tower clearance center in San Diego. Along with many Black Jazz titles, Groove merchant titles, raers, etc... I still wonder what I left behind now that I am more educated about stuff and have resources like the internet etc..
damn.
I am not exactly gung ho Tower but that ish did piss me off. I wasn't really trying to attack dude personally. Perhaps I should have said "f*ck your temporarily lame attitude" or something a bit mellower. I had many good years there and I still have plenty of friends who still work there who will soon be unemployed and broke just in time for the holidays. Tower was a HUGE focre in the 70's for record sales. I bet most record collectors have at least one or two (if not more) records that were originally purchased from a Tower store in the 70's or 80's. Russ Solomon seemed like an alright dude the once or twice that I met him and I think it's cool how he started everything from selling records out of his dad's garden basket grocery store. Although I haven't bought anything there for quite a quile, I will indeed miss that place.
dude
what other retailer carries the variety of zines, international magazines, and quality dvd, cd, etc.? Borders and Barnes and noble barely scratch the surface.
And don't tet AlGarth's Tower findz, truly unfadeable and amazing
RIP
Thanks to super poor management. The guy who was initially in charge of European affairs was Ken Sokolov, and his poor placements of stores (accept for the Piccadiily branch - though the rent on the space was astronomical) and shoddy business acumen was bad from the off.
Tower UK was good whilst it lasted, but I don't think it ever made money - and it should have done.
I will say that they did have a decent selection of things but you paid for it with the huge price tags. Someone did got rich off those prices though.
I mean with wake of the internet, you would have to be an idiot to keep shopping there.
I used to go to Tower Records out in Seattle (the one right by U-Dub) when I was out in Wa. State.
Copped many ill magazines and records there.
I don't know of any other major retail record store that's on there level.
(Barnes and Nobles gets the gas face. Well the one in Columbus, at least).
- spidey
I suppose that for some of you living in smaller towns without a lot of record stores, Tower may have been like some kind of heaven-sent location for you to get your hiphop albums with parental advisory stickers on them that your local k-mart refused to sell... but when you live in a city like los angeles, you see Tower for what it is: an overpriced CD store with less than 200 records in the entire location. they may as well be a Camelot Music store in a mall. the one i worked at in 1998 had a tinyass section of two crates of 12" singles and nothing else as far as vinyl. the pay was MINIMUM WAGE with no benefits and the employee discount made things about as cheap as they cost in regular stores. the re-seals went BACK ON THE RACKS, not back to the distributors... one of my jobs there was putting CDs in their sections, you know the deal... ever wonder why a couple of the CDs in a section DONT have the white label sticker on top of the CD case??? must i specify that this was the location in west hollywood?... that alone is a retail nightmare. and yes i had to quit that job because they treated employees like shit. there was a virgin megastore down the road, and i always preferred Aron's [RIP] over both of them either way.
i can only speak from my own experience... so,
ps: don't tell me that noone would buy vinyl in los angeles... tower just refused to cater that market anymore. yes, there was a decline in vinyl sales with the dawning of CD burners and what not... but every other music store in l.a. had a vinyl section as well that would put Tower to shame. i think they just had issues with vinyl because it is harder to pass off as new when resealed.
tower records in ATL has been known to have solid records for CHEAP, off top of my head some of mine or my homies hauls have been kool and the gang s/t, joe bataan riot (gold label), ray barretto hard hands, 2 copies of spirit of atlanta, tom scott honeysuckle breeze, tom brock, etc
and these records have been priced 3-10 dollars a piece. I'll be sad to see that location go, though ive only been there a handful of times, ive never left empty handed
in different areas...no Tower in my area EVER had ANY
used/old vinyl, nevermind gold label Fanias or Skull Snaps
Like I said earlier, I can see where their willingness to sell
zines and hip hop 12" would be great in areas where this stuff was
hard to find, but where I live, they came along in the 80's and were
mostly viewed as the corporate biggie delivering knockout blows to
small private record & zine shops, of which we had quite a few.
It did used to be the only place in town I could get BMX Plus! though
Agreed, where else could a 13 year old pick up a copy of
High Times,
B&W East Coast Underground Graff Mags,
Comet Bus
and a million punk zines in the middle of Hong Kong.
Tower went bust years ago out here but they are still going strong in Japan. Thats one of the first places I go when I get to Tokyo.