All Access (abridged) The end is near for Tower Records. Great American will shut all 89 domestic Tower Stores within 8 to 10 weeks. The shutdown will eliminate about 2,700 jobs.
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In Portland, The Tower Store at N.E. 102nd received their last shipment of product last week.

It's another end of an era. I followed Tower over to the east side when they closed their Beaverton Mall store in August 2002.

I used to shop at the Tower at Beaverton Mall. I remember them hiring people that certainly couldn't work anywhere else, due to their crazy colored hair, tattoos, piercings, and whacked out clothes. Another reminder that digital music is here to stay!

This is going to suck, because the best way I could get sheet music was to order it through Tower Records' New York store.

Here's more on this from the Stockton Record:

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061009/NEWS01/61009007/100 1

Damn...

I like the Tower stores. Often, in the later evening, they will play interesting stuff. Bought many a CD from the in-store playlist.

Not quite ready to give up buying the CD yet either. It's still the best music copy all things considered. (Yeah, the DVD audio is better, but not that much better for the dollars on all but a few selections.)

shop at Music Millennium..LOCAL- Great stores.
Support the local merchants!

Hear, hear, Dave!

Some people thought Tower was evil corporation. Are they going to have a sale on LP's and 45's?

Stoner knows best!
MM is my store of choice and has been for a LONG time!
Most of the times local is best.

TOWER RECORDS DESERVES EVERY BIT OF THIS!!
Charging 16 dollars for a CD is insane, their prices on cds were horrible. Just as bad as those awful Music stores they have in Malls like Sam Goodey or Musicland. Anyone who buys music at those stores are getting ripped off.
I always thought it was halarious that an Everyday music opened up directly across from The Tower on Cedar hills BLVD. If i wanted a CD I would go to tower Records, find the CD I wanted, than walk over to Everyday Music and buy it used. Instead of paying 16 dollars I would pay 7 dollars.
If It wasn't a brand new cd you wanted, you were paying an insane amount of money at Tower Records!

Tower didn't set the rates for new product. The record companies are responsible for that. This is a little like complaining to the local Chevron dealer because you can't buy gas for 29 cents per gallon anymore!

I should clarify that when Tower left the Beaverton Mall I did check out east side Tower ONLY during the Christmas music season. As I did Music Millennium. But the rest of the year I found myself at Millennium because they do have a much better section. Over the years I've noticed Tower didn't have the selection as they once did. It might be because of the trouble they've been in, now for years. That's not to say Tower ever had a better selection than Millennium. That store is hard to beat!

I don't understand why a company would buy a chain of stores just to immediately shut them down, unless the buyer was an arch rival.

I don't like the inferior sound of MP3s, nor the excessive "copyright management" on iTunes, but the CD manufacturers shot themselves on the foot by overinflating the profit margin. Also eliminating or de-emphasizing "singles" has shut out the buyer who doesn't want to spend $18 for one song.

Tower Records in Tacoma and Bellevue, closed some years ago as well. Both locations opened between 1985-1987. This was also the same time period. Where Tower had a gotten in the Video and book store format as well.

What does King of Rock and Roll. Elvis have to say about this??? The Tower store in Memphis carried a lot of his works.

Did anyone notice that the Tower Records on Cedar hills BLVD, during its last few years started adding video rentals? They added a whole section on videos and Dvd's, which I thought was weird. They also added a smut section that had adult video rentals.(no joke!)
It was a bit odd, I would glance up and see the movie "Rumpelstilskin" then I would look next to it and it was "Rumpleforeskin". They had the adult movies next to the kid movies, very strange!

And Smoochie- I don't care who set the prices at Tower Records, the Bottom line is a majority of the CD's were way too expensive, and most people went elsewhere like Best Buy, Everyday Music and Fred Meyers.

Yes I remember that Sal:
I also thought it was a bit odd that they also added
an adult video selection in the Cedar hills Tower. I guess they wanted to get some business from all the pervs.

As far as The actual Videos, Tower Records used to have Tower Video in Beaverton Mall, It was right down by the penny fountain in Beaverton Mall. This was before The big chains like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video came to town. I remember you walked in the store and they had 2 sections, one for VHS and the other for Beta. Although the Beta section was always much smaller.

Heck! I remember when Tower Records had.............................RECORDS!!

Me too.

One thing I really miss is the nice cover art. The 12" form factor is an ideal presentation for the media assets that go along with a recording.

Re: Em and other local music stores.

Like them and frequent them. The biggie for Tower was location and operating hours. It's close to home and I liked the people in the store really. I'll clearly be driving more for the occasional music fix.

SELLING IT ALL TO THE BARE WALLS!

Cut out LPs now 99 cents!

hey, I need a new copy of "Golden Summer"

I've worn out the "Draggin Wagon" and "Beach Party" cuts on mine!

Went to Clackamas Town center last weekend and the Sam goody there did not have any copies of "PULSE" on CD From Pink Floyd. Right across from it I noticed that Barnes and Noble was now selling music so I wandered in. They had three copies.

I think music stores are going to continue to fade away while internet purchases will grow. Much easier to get everything you want in one point and click than to drive around and find it.

I used hit Tower at Eastport plaza (when there was still a water slide) and buy 12" singles and 45's. For the longest time, they had a great dance section with many import CD-5 singles and 12" singles. Lately though, they have been focusing too much on DVD's and pushing mainstream product. Though I may have to make a trip to Seattle or San Francisco to raid the Tower stores before they close. As for Music Millinium, not a huge fan. They never seemed to carry music I prefered. I have started noticing Everyday Music is pushing some of the used CD prices up. Lately, I have been hitting CD/Game Exchange, or just finding stuff online ( GEMM or Ebay)

I remember going into a "record" store in San Jose and also in Hollywood, Florida (Ft.Lauderdale) in the late 70's/early 80's where they had the albums on the floor or on wooden crates (apple boxes?). I forget the name now but "Peaches" comes to mind.

Anyway, they were open all night and when out a club, I would hear a tune I liked, asked the dj what it was, and then go down to that store and find it at 2AM in the 12" single "disco" version.

Loved those stores.

Peaches & Herb?

The original Peaches Records was in Ft. Lauderdale on Sunrise Blvd. (I think). That was the holy grail of record shops in South Florida, and was a welcome true alternative to more corporate places like Specs and Tower.

Here are the basics if you don't wish to read and some speculation...

First the facts....

Trans World who owns Wherehouse, Sam Goody and FYE bid 500,000 less for the company than the eventual winner.

The website, while included in the sale will be sold off at a later date and will remain alive although attached to no stores, similar to djangos.com.

This liquidation is to be completed by years end.

The sale was transacted for $150 million.

Now, some speculation.

Why buy the company just to liquidate it? I think the people that bought it knew it had enough inventory and strong property that it made it valuable enough for simply the closure. Stores like the one in Hollywood and NYC can fetch a pretty big asking price to sublease or buy. As well if you think about all of the crap you see in the Gateway location alone, at hundreds of thousands of dollars that this can be made up through selling it off at cost or slightly above.

IMO, I think the judge in this case saw that twice already Tower has been in for bankruptcy, as recent as just a few years ago and that the trend would probably continue based on market factors.

Let's face it, these are no real deals right now (aside from the few LP's that are 99 cents), 10% off all items is hardly a savings over someone like Best Buy. If tower was getting a bad deal from the record companies, they should have renegociated or gone to a wholesaler who can get them things cheaper. I think the case is here is that Tower is solely based on the sale of music and movies, like an FYE or Sam Goody. When you have no other bigger ticket items like Washers or TV's to move, how do you compete against the Walmarts or Best Buy's of the world? Look at Borders or B&N even... They don't come near to Best Buy's pricing points on many of their cd's because they have few sources of big ticket revenue. Have to make it up somewhere.

Finally, looking inward, I haven't been to a Tower in years... One location in this area I wouldn't normally venture to is a problem for its bottom line. I wonder besides Portland how many of their stores don't have that prime real estate Hollywood and NYC have.

Was Stereo Super Store still alive in Beaverton Mall when Tower opened up? Like record stores, there have been many a stereo franchise that has gone by the wayside.

I hope the DVD's get discounted something lovely. The prices there have always been ridiculously ridiculous. Ridiculicious, if you will.

Will be rolling by to see if and when the discounts are gonna start coming.

I remember when I used to buy CDs at the Eastport Tower.

I remember when I used to buy CDs, period.

It's the end of an era. As goes the major CD retailers, so goes the major music labels. Good riddance, IMHO.

Imagine what might have happened if they all hadn't been so goddamn greedy?

It's the end of an era. As goes the major CD retailers, so goes the major music labels. Good riddance, IMHO.

its also the end of an era for RADIO STATIONS! If these companies like Cheap Channel were not so goddam greedy, Radio miight actually be thriving.

"The original Peaches Records was in Ft. Lauderdale on Sunrise Blvd. (I think)."
That is the one I went to in Ft. Lauderdale. I am not sure it was on Sunrise, but near it.

The one in San Jose may have had a different name. I liked those better than Tower.

However, that was a different era. A different time.

I went into Tower in Gateway a couple hours ago. No big deals that I could see. 10% off on CD's and DVD's. 30% - 50% on some used CD's. Also on magazines. But the big ones you want are only 10% off.

Not much for a going out of business sale. Most merchandise is 10% off. I wanted some 120 min cassettes and that is the only place I have seen them recently so I bought some. Otherwise, I have seen better prices at Walmart and Hollywood video.

Back in my record collecting days, I used to buy all my picture sleeve 45's at the Eastport Tower. I did like Tower Books at Gateway.

The Tower Records on Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood is a landmark in SoCal. A great store with about ten parking spaces.

Socially speaking, it's a hard transition the older you are. When the sale of discs no longer can support replication costs, distribution costs (a big piece) and royalties and a small profit, they will stop pressing them. We are entering that period. Obviously, the brick and mortar merchants with high overhead will be and are being the first leaks in the dike. Smaller retailers will be the next to go. "only available on line" is becoming more and more common.
The artists can sell their own stuff much to the chagrin of the recording companies. The music model has changed a lot. Radio airplay and album/disc sales have been lesser factors for quite some time, so Tower's failure should not be a big surprise especially to the radio savvy crowd around here.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/music/feature_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=20 07230

If a disc is available for no more than $11, it's still a "good buy" but if you can download the album for that much, why pay more?

Didn't Tower NOT have any 45's early on (i.e. LP's only)? I am thinking maybe there was more profit in LP's?

If record companies go away who will pay me to play their stuff????
Signed
DC

I remember shopping at the Tower Records and Tower Video stores in Phoenix and Tempe, AZ when I was in college in the 80's. Always the best place to go for music and videos at that time. When I moved to Portland in the early 90s the first question was, "Where are the Tower stores?"

In the early 90s, before DVDs came out, there was a little surge of production of Laserdiscs, a format introduced in the late 70's that took about 15 years to catch on. I became a collector - I still have over 150 of those damn things! It was a big deal for videophiles in the early 90s to get those Criterion Collection special edition laserdiscs - and Tower Video had by far the best retail collection to choose from. It was always fun to go into Tower and browse all the latest releases and look for special deals.

By the time DVDs came out, though, I had already lost interest in laserdiscs and I kind of stopped going to Tower. I remember being disappointed when the Beaverton store closed but I hadn't been shopping there for years anyway. Lately I've kind of been wondering how much longer Tower would be in business, given how they haven't kept up with the times in regards to new formats. The kids all have iPods, so why shop at Tower at all? I think time just kind of passed Tower by. Sad.

Andrew

How many of you visited Tower Records future stores that never took off? Tower never built one here but I visited the "Tower Records-WOW!" store in Las Vegas. Talk about huge!

http://www.towerrecords.com/stores/store.asp?storeID=t17835

There are sure a lot of record stores that have come and gone here aren't there? Why did Djangos go under? I used to go there all the time! I bought several CD's from Bob Galuchi's Yesterdays Records. Ever go there? I haven't seen Bob in a long time!

Django was known as a RECORD store with some CD's. then one day they went all CD. About that same time they changed owners.

It was all down hill from there.

Loved the future stores! Very cool. Lots of extras along with the music staples.

Django's went under because it was bought by people who had no understanding of selling music, they were dot.com people who found some deep-pocketed investors with an eye to being the major internet seller of CDs. They kept on buying inventory from closing stores without stopping to think that they were ending up with more crap that the store that closed couldn't sell. Django's never gave up on vinyl, they just moved it into the back of the store.
As for Bob Galucci's store, Yesterday Records, when his lease came up for renewal, the dog grooming place next to him offered three times the current rent, which he couldn't match and stay in business. He still has his mail-order business.

Wayne: Bob Gallucci is doing just fine. No wonder Yesterday Records had to close! You only bought several CD?

I remember when Bob opened that shop in 1975. He and a partner opened the original location on N.E. 42nd & Killingsworth in 1974. That's were I first bought 45's from Bob. Anyone else remember the Killingsworth location? It was a very small shop.

I went to the Killingsworth location one day when they were closed.

If you remember the Killingsworth location of Bob's Yesterday store, you probably remember the history of used vinyl stores in Portland.
I used to hitchhike up from Astoria as a teenager around 1970 and later to buy my vinyl in Portland. Where the Justice Center sits now was the Lennox Hotel, with a mini-mall of hippie stores that included Wooden Ship Records, a Collective that sold all its vinyl at cost, so new lps were mostly $3.17. Of course, they went out of business, and it was bought up by a guy who renamed it Mongoose Records around 1972. Longhair Music Faucet on SW 9th just north of the south park blocks was a good place too, down a long ramp into a basement with windows. Then there was Music Millenium on East Burnside, only half the size it is now. Great imports. It wasn't "hip" to buy 45s then, so I would have to silently shop 6th Avenue Records for my singles.
In the fall of 1973, I was walking down SE Stark after having just landed in town from a ride, I saw a painted window that said "Records". The name of the place was "Django's", and it was in a small space that was about 9 feet wide and not that much further back, but it was crammed with crates of lps, mostly jazz, with only two bins of rock. All of their prices were in vertical hashmarks (prison style day-counting scores) with a horizontal mark for an additional 50 cents.
The next all-used store I remember was Park Avenue Records, which opened up around 1977. Another place opened up on SW 1st in 1975(?), with a really cool mural painted on their back wall for their parking lot. It took a hell of a long time to open, and then it closed after about two months. I think it was called Peaches or some kind of fruit.

Anybody remember Tape Town over at Jantzen Beach. As for other chain stores. Wasn't Musicland at Van Mall. The very first store in the Portland area.

I wanted to add that Tower had a unique opportunity about 3-4 years ago to carry the Apple line of Ipod's (I remember insiders at Apple wondering who to go with for their first retailers and they wanted someone who matched their independent vision which Tower was on the short list. Don't ask how I have that old info either). I still think due to store locations and appeal they could have turned the mp3 game into a gold mine.

Think of a place where you could pick up 5-10 different mp3 player brands. Test them, play music on them. A place to bring your mp3 player to download all of towers vast import collections and mainstream music for a monthly fee or per song download and be able to listen to them in house. Make it not available online so that you can control and keep people coming.

Tower didn't adapt and that is why we see it dying today. I would have made more trips to Tower solely for mp3 player shopping if not for much more had the opportunity actually come to fruition. It would have only taken a small portion of the store, but could have drastically helped the bottom line.

Yep i agree with the Good Dr. Tower didn't keep up with the latest trends, they seemed to turn a blind eye to the whole MP3 Expolsion. Plus Cd's are So 1989!

As a young person, I only went to Tower when I had a gift certificate. Their music selection was eh. And no matter who sets their prices, they suck.

If I want vinyl I go to EM.

If I want CD's, I go to Music Millenium.

If I want to skip the whole process...I look for MP3's elsewhere.

To me however...there's a certain amount of entertainment in going to a record store at 9pm and browsing until I either break the bank or they close.

Did you know that Bob Galluci is the cousin of Don Galluci of Don and the Goodtimes and formerly of the Kingsmen? I notice that EM's used CD's can be expensive, why is that? I compare their Beatles CDs prices with MM and don't see much difference! MM has used CDs and records on the second floor of the store on Burnside.

That "evil" corporation that owned Tower up until lately, MTS, was still owned and run by the founder, Russ Solomon, and his family. There headquarters are still in West Sacramento.

Russ started selling records in a corner of his parents' drug store in Sacramento, then opened up a record store across the street on Broadway, which is still there. See http://sacramento.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/2006/08/21/daily18.html?fro m_yf=1

When I bought records in Sacramento I WAS buying local!

In 1968 I started buying records at their Sacramento Watt & El Camino store (still there, too, as is "Fuzzy Bill" Thomas. See http://www.towerrecords.com/stores/store.asp?storeID=t17113). "Open every night of the year until midnight!" My mother was amazed when my brother and I would take off for Tower on Christmas morning armed with the gift certificates we gave each other every year.

When my wife and I acquired a 1979-vintage Seeburg juke box, we went to tower to buy 45's just as they were closing them out. (Didn't want to play the originals, plus the 2-sided hit ones give you more space for more songs.)

Read the Sacramento angle at http://sacramento.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/2006/08/21/daily18.html?fro m_yf=1

I agree that Tower has always been overpriced once the CD is no longer a "new release". I can say that I haven't bought a CD there in years since stores like Best Buy sell so much cheaper. I will miss the store itself though. The one in Gateway has an amazing selection of music related books and magazines. I love going in there and just browzing. Course I guess that's partly why they're going out of business eh? As us baby boomers get older it's hard to imagine that within the next few years we'll probably be uploading 250 gigs of music directly to a chip inplanted in our ear canals or something. I don't miss the sound of vinyl but I sure miss the thrill of holding that 33rpm cover in my hands and pouring over the nice sized photos and liner notes while listening to it. Plus does anyone remember the SMELL of a vinyl record when you first peeled off the plastic and opened it up?? Ok I'm dating myself....

Yup!
I hope cd's and music stores don't end up going out of business. Even though I would never be caught dead buying a CD at Tower Records, I admit It was A LOT of fun to just walk around and browze.Plus you just can't get that high when your downloading music. There is just something cool about going to a record store and buying a cd. I always liked to grab a cup of coffee, and just browze for a good half hour at Tower. I will miss that overpriced store... A lot of great memories.

They make records now!

Love the vinyl smell...

Still buy 12" singles when I see one I like.

When Tower Records closes. Here are some other options to consider.

Music Millennium is a part of this Association

Coalition of Independent Music Stores - www.cimsmusic.com/

Seattle Area records stores

Silver Platters - www.silverplatters.com

Ok so we have established that bricks and morter music stores are now pretty much a thing of the past. With that said:

Burnlounge anyone?