My first job was in 1969 at the SF Tower Records, at the corner of Columbus and Bay. I was 19, SF was being SF, and Tower was always jumping.
Now the question is: will the documentary bring up some good memories, or just piss me off because it’s too much about corporate machinations and not enough about the characters who worked there on the front lines, and the amazing things that happened there? For instance, will the film cover the time when we (successfully) went on strike because Tower tried to fire our one gay coworker?
Didn’t have Tower Records in my neck if the woods… Fortunately, I had The Electric Fetus for records-n-shit and a giant used book store that had an amazing selection of zines a few doors down (was a 40 mile drive, though)
The guy who ran the magazine section at Tower corporate for years was pretty cultured and really wanted Tower to have the best magazine selection of any chain, which is why they carried everything from gay porn to $200 fashion magazines to tons of zines, graffiti mags, etc.
Most of the unusual mags were sent to the stores directly form corporate HQ. There were all these rules about which magazines couldn’t be sent to which overseas stores. Sending gay porn mags, or even stuff like The Advocate, to the Singapore location would have resulted in serious legal issues for the employees at that store. High Times, tattoo mags, piercing mags, etc were forbidden in some countries.
Tower Japan still exists as it was completely independent from US Tower since 2000 or so. There is still a Tower.com website, as the rights to the .com name were sold off to an Amazon third party seller after the stores closed, but it has no real connection to the original company.
As far as successor stores went, I’m not sure if the “Halloween” store was before or after the Circuit City, but I regarded that particular storefront as a fucking insult. Now it’s a Joann’s fabric. I’m sort of OK with that. Maybe it’s because I find it useful. Maybe it’s because the Barans and Noble is just down the road.
Even so, Barnes and Nobles sometimes reminds me of a Borders with all the good stuff picked clean and replaced with mass market stuff. Borders had a massive selection of technical books.
Vinyl lives on far past its time because as a physical media not because it is technically superior to other forms. (Anyone who says otherwise is flat out wrong)
It lives on because it is fundamentally cooler. Vinyl is cool. The cover art is so big, you can hang it on your wall. The care with which you must treat the record and put the record on the player is ritualistic. It’s age as a medium makes it ironic.
Some people say it sounds better, warmer. This is subjective. I would say those feelings of warmth exist not because of its superior quality, but of its inferior quality. The scratches and dust give it an air of imperfection that scratches the same itch as Noise Rock. Similarly, it harkens back to an age without boy bands and auto-tune.
No other medium is as cool. Many sound great and are convenient to use, but inevitably will be replaced by even more convenient media. Mp3 will eventually die, and vinyl may even outlive it.
Borders had a massive selection of technical books
Yes, I ended up buying copy of Kimura’s “Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution” in a Borders once. Not even most university book stores would stock such a book (it is a classic of the evolutionary literature but more cited than read), and was amazed that a general book store would stock such a thing.
The Borders I’ve seen must have really sucked then. Maybe that was part of their marketing strategy? Anyone check out a Borders near Stanford, or Berkeley, or MIT? I can tell you the ones I saw kind of blew.
when I first started buying jazz records, the next gift-giving holiday, my mom went to Tower and asked for recommendations for a classic overview and something modern. they gave her this:
which was my introduction to both Art Tatum and Jimmy Smith; not to detract from the entire lineup, which is stellar.
and this was the modern (maybe 1990 at the time) pick:
which was perfect. still got 'em both.
thanks, Nashville Tower jazz staff circa '90!
