[kj] Re: Bye Bye Tower Records

[Michael Halsted]

Worked for different Towers for six years as my college
job - ending as the CD buyer for the Berkeley Tower in 1992. 
That place was slowly beginning to sink then.  The corporate
office kept making these new release deals where the stores
would end up with a metric assload of product.  After about
a year, I'd be packing up copies of Guns N' Roses' and
Springsteen's "Release two separate albums at the same time
to be a petulent pain in the ass" releases and Van Halen's
F.U.C.K. CD (it always comes back to this) since they didn't
sell.  And the discount on these bulk orders wouldn't offset
the loss of sending the crap back.

The Berkeley Tower was about 4 miles away from the Oakland
Hills.  When the Oakland Hills fire happened, the streets
were filling with smoke and we had to close down the store
not knowing if it'd be there the next day.  I can remember
myself and a friend of mine frantically going through our
hold bin trying to figure out what irreplaceable things we
need to buy so we could save them from the fire.  Then put
up the "riot boards" (seemed like twice a year there'd be
a riot of some sort - Berkeley CAN be fun!) and walk out into
the smokey streets.  About six months later I quit to finish
school...I still have dreams about being called in to close
the store and having no idea how the store's run...




TB wrote:
> The Tower Records music/video/book chain of stores here in the US has 
> been sold to liquidators who are immediately selling off all the 
> assets and will close down all the stores in the coming weeks.
>
> Personally for me, I have a lot of great memories of seeing on-store 
> appearances by bands at several California stores, especially the big 
> one on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. They also carried a lot of decent 
> imports as well as off-the-wall magazines that you'd never find just 
> about anywhere else. As more and more record stores disappear, Tower 
> has been one of the last music based stores I still liked browsing 
> through on a slow day.
>
> True, most of their catalog cd prices were high, ranging upwards of 
> $18.99 but even right up to the end before several record companies 
> cut off their distribution, you could still buy a new cd release for 
> anywhere from $9.99 to $11.99. Basically big chain stores that sell 
> cds as a "loss leader" have undercut them as well as internet sellers( 
> who do the same thing) in growing numbers over the last decade. Along 
> with the shrinking number of smaller "mom n' pop" record stores, it'll 
> mean far smaller sales for small independent bands and an overall 
> further lack of diversity in what you'll easily find in the remaining 
> big retail stores like Walmart and Best Buy.
>
> Starting this past weekend, they're beginning to discount everything 
> and as the next few weeks progress and they struggle to unload the 
> rest of the harder to move inventory, you see basically "fire sales" 
> leading up to the store closures.
>
> T.B.
>
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