RSS FeedTower Records, R.I.P.
While perusing the last remnants of Tower Records’ inventory during my lunch break yesterday, I couldn’t help but think about the impending fall of retail music as we know it. When I was in high school, Tower Records at 2000 Penn Ave. (entrance on 21st Street) opened its doors and one of my four best friends secured a job as an evening clerk. Friday and Saturday nights frequently started with three of us heading down to 21st Street at 11:30 pm, just before closing, to join the fourth for a night out in Georgetown. On the way over to M Street, we’d listen to our latest purchases.
The store was a beehive of activity at 11:30 pm and there was something for everyone. Rock when you entered on the right and magazines on the left. Go up the curving rubber stairs and you entered another world. Top 40, urban and R & B greeted you. Take a left, walk to the end of the row, turn left again and you were in jazz alley. International and reggae were at the end on the right. One more world awaited through the double glass doors marked classical at the end of the hall. Throughout the store there was opportunity for music lovers to discover a new musical gem, band or style they hadn’t heard before. I made it to the Tower on Newberry Street in Boston, on South Street in Philly and the original on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and the experience was always equally awesome. I never made it out empty handed.
Now all that remains are picked over CDs, a few unwanted magazines and DVDs like Maxim’s Swimsuit Special, Volume 1. Upstairs is closed and even the racks are for sale. It is an undeserving end for a deserving enterprise. Maybe if the record industry had changed its business model sooner, ripples of retail bankruptcy wouldn’t have propagated through the industry. Everywhere I look, I see iPods and I see the future. It’s a shame that consumers put up with MP3s and iTunes. After all, the music is compressed and bears some but nowhere near the true fullness or resemblence of the original musician’s performance. The convenience and cost must be the equalizer.
No more Pulse magazine, no more Desert Island Disc (DID) lists, no more in store performances by artists and no more almost midnight music runs for this music fan. True to form, however, I lightened my wallet yesterday and discovered a new band called Los Mocosos (Latin ska, Afro-Cuban beats, urban hip-hop, and jazz-funk according to AMG). The last solace for downtown music lovers may be that Kemp Mill Records (1309 F Street) is still open. Check it out once in a while. You might find something new you like. Sadly, Tower goes dark tomorrow night. May she rest in peace.
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Comments
Melody on Ct Ave in Dupont is still a great, quirky, idependent music store – they carry lots of local bands and world music along with the standard rock, R&B, and classical CDs.
Tower Records went under because they refused to sell CDs at a reasonable price. Save morons, no one buys $18.99 CDs anymore. This was in the works long before iTunes or the iPod. The previous two postings are correct. Tower had neither the niche market of a Melody Music nor the bargaining power of a big box store like Best Buy. They were stuck in the middle and missed the boat.
Personally, I am happy using Amazon.com for my music purchasing of CDs (not iTunes – I agree there is a substantive difference in music quality). I get much better pricing from Amazon than any of the stores, and the web sites gives me samples to listen to and offers lots of great suggestions for discovering new music. I’d rather my money for music goes to artists and not to store clerks.
Ans – personally, when it comes to Tower Records, the closing frees up some large spaces for other retailers/restaurants!
While Amazon and Best Buy are great for price, what is absolutely lost is the experience of being around so many people knowledgeable about music and a physical space that encouraged musical exploration. You did have to pay full or almost full retail for a CD at Tower, but I never would have been exposed to Fugazi or Saint Saens or Art Blakey or The Brand New Heavies or The Color Blind James Experience at Best Buy.
Anon: I don’t know who sells vinyl but here is a link I just found to music stores in the DC area:
http://www.palewire.com/music/
Good riddance to bad garbage. I hope they demolish the building and sow salt.
Gougemeisters like Tower are the reason Napster was created. People realized that paying $18 plus tax for a piece of shiny plastic to replace something that they already had in vinyl was a stupid idea. It still is. Even dumber is the fact that $17.98 of that money went to the distributers, not the artist.
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Eh – it is a piece of our youth that is dying for sure. But I do love my iPod. I blame Wal-Mart, Best Buy and those types of stores far more than the iPod or iTunes though. Those record companies were dying before the iPod came out. My friend worked for Kemp Mill for years and was laid off four years ago before the height of iTunes. Plenty of people still buy the actual CDs, they just stopped doing it at Tower and Kemp Mill a long time ago because buying at Target, Wal-Mart, et. al. was cheaper. If Tower and Kemp Mill couldn’t keep up with the market and offer competitive pricing, they deserved to go under. I think they were buried long before the iPod, but I will agree that Apple hammered that final nail in their coffin.