Oh, admit it.\u00c2\u00a0 You gave up on Tower Records long ago.\u00c2\u00a0 Your lamenting its loss is akin to finding out your mother threw out your baby toys.\u00c2\u00a0 They reminded you of a time gone by, but you hadn’t played with them in eons.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, given the option of staying an infant or growing up EVERYONE chooses the latter.\u00c2\u00a0 If for no other reasons than the freedom and the choice, the POWER to decide your own direction, your own fate.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what computer music gives you.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t have to get in your car to acquire it and you’re not limited to what a retailer can stock, either by physical space or financial demands.<\/p>\n
I remember reading in "Creem" that they opened Tower Sunset early so Elton John could shop.\u00c2\u00a0 And he’d buy hundreds of albums at a clip.\u00c2\u00a0 I yearned for the same power.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only to be able to own whatever I wanted, but to do it in a forum that oozed music, a veritable museum to the art.<\/p>\n
And when I arrived in Los Angeles and endured the Strip gridlock to finally see that garish yellow store with the giant album covers hanging on its sides, I felt I’d finally gotten to Mecca.<\/p>\n
Tower was like the great acts of yesteryear.\u00c2\u00a0 No production, no artifice, just meat and potatoes.\u00c2\u00a0 No barn board, no rugs, just fluorescent lights and paint.\u00c2\u00a0 The attraction was the albums.\u00c2\u00a0 Stacked impossibly high just as you entered the door.<\/p>\n
But getting to that door was not easy.\u00c2\u00a0 For you could never get a parking place.\u00c2\u00a0 Talk about marketing…\u00c2\u00a0 Doesn’t everybody want to go to a place they can’t get in?<\/p>\n
And after waiting your turn, after enduring the beeping horns, after finally sliding into a space in the lot or giving up and parking at a meter blocks away, you walked in.\u00c2\u00a0 And were confronted with not only the product, but the zombies.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember just after I moved here, in the fall of ’74, close to midnight on a Friday, encountering Morris Micklewhite and his exotic wife in the aisles.\u00c2\u00a0 Michael Caine was not posing, was not looking to be ogled, rather he was combing the bins, looking for gems.<\/p>\n
That’s the way it was.\u00c2\u00a0 You’d see stars.\u00c2\u00a0 Not doing in-stores, signing product that you had to buy, rather shopping for albums themselves!<\/p>\n
And that’s what they were, albums.\u00c2\u00a0 Not cassettes, and certainly not CDs.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, in time there was a small section on the far wall of those tiny little plastic boxes with ferric oxide inside.\u00c2\u00a0 But most of the store was filled with rack after rack of vinyl records.\u00c2\u00a0 Bearing titles that you hadn’t seen in a retail joint in many a year.<\/p>\n
Yes, Tower had the act’s complete catalog.\u00c2\u00a0 You might already own it, but you wanted to visit a place so cool, a place dedicated to your addiction.<\/p>\n
And the new albums, they were as cheap as anywhere in town.\u00c2\u00a0 And they were never sold out, there was always a copy to be had.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, they had fifty copies on the floor of an album only YOU thought you knew about.<\/p>\n
There was a fervor, a sensation, that made you buy like in a supermarket.\u00c2\u00a0 Having come all this way, and you had to drive, almost nobody lived nearby, and hyped up by the excitement, you purchased multiple records.\u00c2\u00a0 Tower Records was a dope dealer, and we were addicts.\u00c2\u00a0 And I’ve never heard of a hospital that can cure music addiction, there’s no rehab for this affliction.<\/p>\n
Amoeba isn’t the same.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a treasure trove of the past.<\/p>\n
Indie stores have some of the cred, but without the garishness.\u00c2\u00a0 Tower was sans atmosphere.\u00c2\u00a0 There was no smoke and mirrors, rather the records radiated an enrapturing aroma that was ENOUGH!<\/p>\n
Tower, like its customers, got old.\u00c2\u00a0 It was about rock and classical.\u00c2\u00a0 In an era that was suddenly about beats and boy bands.<\/p>\n
Boy bands were purchased at the big box.\u00c2\u00a0 When parents were shopping for other items.\u00c2\u00a0 Rap was bought either there or at the hipster store, akin to a nightclub.<\/p>\n
Boy bands died out.\u00c2\u00a0 But hip-hop survived.\u00c2\u00a0 Oftentimes brittle in sound, totally unlike the rich aural tapestries emanating from the vinyl Tower Records purveyed.<\/p>\n
And then rap was no longer about social consciousness and the plight of the black man and more about getting ahead.\u00c2\u00a0 Lifestyle triumphed over the music.\u00c2\u00a0 And here we are today.<\/p>\n
Tower Records is an anachronism.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the horse and buggy.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the Smith Corona typewriter.\u00c2\u00a0 It outlived its usefulness.\u00c2\u00a0 And is now disappearing.<\/p>\n
Music is struggling to reinvent itself.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just that those who used to shop at Tower, who are grieving its loss, are in charge of the business today.\u00c2\u00a0 And want nothing to change, while they continue to make their nut.<\/p>\n
It’s survival of if not the fittest, those conniving enough to find a chair as the others get pulled away.\u00c2\u00a0 But now chairs are disappearing at a rapid clip.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is why those still in power are so vociferous in their complaints.\u00c2\u00a0 For soon, they’ll be gone too.<\/p>\n
The idea of spending $100,000 to make a record, if not a multiple of that, GONE!\u00c2\u00a0 Plying your wares to a vast network of far-flung radio stations of every format imaginable, GONE!\u00c2\u00a0 Making mini-movies to serve as marketing on MTV, GONE!\u00c2\u00a0 It was a shell game.\u00c2\u00a0 Making you buy the album to get the one hit song you wanted.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though that was the only good song on the CD.<\/p>\n
The Net killed the old business model.\u00c2\u00a0 Suddenly, you could get ONLY the track.\u00c2\u00a0 And it was about tonnage as opposed to the individual purchase.\u00c2\u00a0 Suddenly EVERYBODY was Elton John, shopping at a Tower store of seemingly infinite size, open 24\/7.\u00c2\u00a0 With communication amongst customers never seen in a brick and mortar establishment.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, the arrogant sales clerks at Tower were part of its charm, its magic, but once you could communicate with your team, the other buyers\/fans, you felt power, and had no need for the old dictators.<\/p>\n
Big box retailers are going to jettison music as quickly as DVD replaced VHS.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re into what’s selling, not nostalgia.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s what the CD is, nostalgia.\u00c2\u00a0 The last artifact of a dying age.\u00c2\u00a0 The digital creation that killed the golden goose.\u00c2\u00a0 Perfectly digitized, perfectly rippable, ad infinitum.<\/p>\n
I loved the old days.\u00c2\u00a0 I still play the music I acquired at Tower Records.\u00c2\u00a0 But rarely the vinyl or CDs.\u00c2\u00a0 Mostly the MP3s of those tracks I’ve acquired P2P.<\/p>\n
Not that I haunt the P2P services as much as I used to.\u00c2\u00a0 Because over the years I’ve stocked up on my greatest hits, I’ve got what I NEED!\u00c2\u00a0 Now I’ve got to find new music that I desire.\u00c2\u00a0 Via new avenues.\u00c2\u00a0 Ones that presently are not endorsed by the powers-that-be.<\/p>\n
It’s a topsy-turvy world.\u00c2\u00a0 First goes Tower, then goes the major labels.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the end of an era.\u00c2\u00a0 An era that rotted from the inside out long ago.<\/p>\n
If you think the death of Tower Records means anything, then I’m surprised you’re reading this, I’m stunned you know how to use a computer.<\/p>\n
Evolution is not the rule of the day.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s revolution.\u00c2\u00a0 This is anathema to the old guard.\u00c2\u00a0 But just like Google triumphed over not only AOL and Yahoo, but put a serious dent in Microsoft, the old record companies, the old employees, are no match for those savvy in the new ways of doing business.\u00c2\u00a0 If you abhor these new ways, if you believe something’s been lost, if you can’t lend a hand, get out of the new road for the times they are not only a-changin’, they’ve changed.<\/p>\n
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Oh, admit it.\u00c2\u00a0 You gave up on Tower Records long ago.\u00c2\u00a0 Your lamenting its loss is akin to finding out your mother threw out your baby toys.\u00c2\u00a0 They reminded you of a time gone by, but you hadn’t played with them in eons.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, given the option of staying an infant or growing up EVERYONE […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-8V","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}